More holiday snap editing tips (Blog #13)

Hi! Welcome to my latest blog, which is a quicky about editing your holiday snaps.

I recently spent a week in the English Lake District, an area my wife and I love, and an area that isn't noted for its glorious weather. That aside, you can still take some great photos of some stunning scenery. 

I want to walk you through my editing workflow of one photo I took, first critiquing the original, before I take you through my edits. 

All edits are done using the free version of Snapseed, and all on my android tablet or phone.

Here's the original, unedited version.

This is quite a dark image, very little light anywhere. The two boats in the foreground detract from the nice alignment of the boats in the middle ground. I feel as if I have to step over the concrete and the two boats before I can 'enter' the scene. I also want to remove the distracting people to the right, especially the figure in the red coat. 

First edit is cropping. 

You see that I have cropped from the botton to eliminate the horizontal boats and the jetty, and cropped a tiny bit from the left and the right. On the right I have got rid of one of the figures. 

My cropping was done with one eye on the rule of thirds, which I have adhered to in the image. You don't have to stick to the rule of thirds, but it is a good guiding principle. 

Next, I want to see if I can brighten the scene using the Tune image function.

I hit the auto button, which actually took the brightness down a notch. The difference is negligence, but as I have plans on how to brighten up the photo I am happy with this for now. 

Next, I want to play with the Details function to see if I can enhance the structure and sharpness.

Bringing out the structure of the slats of the boats and of the stone building improves the whole image, it has also brightened the photo slightly. 

Now to get rid of the people. For this I need to enlarge the area on which I want to work by pinching out then using the Healing tool.

The figures have gone!

Next, I want to see if warming the image up will improve it. I very rarely make my images look cooler.

I think the image now has a much warmer feel to it 

I like playing with the Styles options.

After trying several styles I opted for Bright, which gives the image an old fashioned look, which complements the old fashioned rowing boats.

You will see how the boats create a leading line which draws the viewer's eyes in, and there's also a diagonal created by the cars (which incidentally provide a nice counter point to the older boats). I hope you have also seen that some of my edits are quite subtle.

Photography, like any other art form is a very subjective discipline. You may not like my treatment of the original, or you may think the final product is better than the original. That's your choice. All I want to do is show how the dullest holiday snapshot can be turned into a nicer looking image in a few easy steps.

Two final edits I would add if I was thinking of sharing my photo on social media are to add a frame, white in this case and not too broad. Finally, I add my copyright notice by way of 'Mike Young's Photography'. 

Happy snapping. 

See you next time. 

Cheers.

Mike. 

©Mike Young 2023.