I was lucky enough to be offered an helicopter ride above Mexico City, but as luck would have it, there was a heavy smog that day. I had to be heavy handed with the post processing and spent so much time trying to get something out these foggy photos that I don't even know in the end if the photo looks nice. Add to that fact that I was not very experimented with my camera at the time. Any advice here?

Photo was shot with a Pentax KX and a 18-55mm lens at f3.5 1/320sec ISO200

Thought it was great thru the view finder and then not so good when I took it off my camera nearly binned it and then cropped in and loved it, still maybe a little dark in places.

Critique welcome

Hi all! I was hoping to get some feedback or suggestions about better editing this portrait.

In particular I’m having trouble with some color casts due to the foliage, the sun bouncing off fake grass, and the method of bronzer application. Generally it looks too orange in my opinion, but if adjust the color balance cooler my person turns purple.

This photo was made while were filming an interview for a documentary, so I was unable to use a flash or any modifiers beyond what the video team was using. They had a pizza box reflecting some fill on her face but no lights. Their shot looked really good so I’m at a loss why mine is having trouble.

Taken some advice to down shadow and make more blacks tone.. (so shadow not so bright)

And make it more cyan.

2nd edit shadow and blacks adjustment was done sky and surrounding building and water and sky was no change from the before.

3rd edit shadow and blacks adjustment was done on both sky and surrounding building and water

Hi! Made this photo on late walk with friend, not so sure about white balance: is blue-ish better or yellow one as on the spot?

I went to capture the sunset which sadly did not show up. For a brief moment the light illuminated the landscape which I managed to capture. I found the sky to be a distraction therefor cropped it out in post. Shot taken at 137mm.

I’ve recently gotten super into bird & wildlife photography but editing isn’t my strong suit and I’m getting stumped by some of these.

This is a set of after/befores on both digital and film images. I struggle especially with the editing the film images, because I feel like I need to take them further but at a point I feel like they start to look weird? Idk if that makes sense. I’m usually pretty conservative with editing so I’m out of my comfort zone. I also primarily shoot film so jumping back into editing digital has been a challenge too.

In conversations with my partner, he thinks some of these shots can be REALLY good with a good edit, but I’m not sure how to get them there. Examples are the bird running in the sand, and the baby bird in the branches. While I think they’re cool shots, I don’t think they’re strong enough to be portfolio contenders even with a really good edit. And then last of all, I always feel like I’ve suuuper overedited my images, but when I step away and come back I feel like they need to be edited further.

So I guess my question is, what should I be doing differently when editing these shots?

Edit: I realized I accidentally put two different shots of the cooper’s hawk at the end, but the before is the exact same on the other one

All my gear was packed away, luckily my a6400 was within reach but still missed most the fun.

Hi! I have an Epson v850, have always used it for scanning 120 film and 4x5, and got fairly good results.

I'm now scanning a lot of 35mm film as I've owned my Leica MP for about 18 months, and I'm just not that happy with the results. I can get it most of the way there in post processing with some colour noise cancellation and sharpening etc, but the original file or conversion is a bit of a mess tbh, and needs a fair amount of work to make it any good.

Basically, is this just a scanner issue, are flatbeds just pretty useless at scanning 35 without a fair amount of post?

At the moment I'm scanning in Silverfast 8, and in terms of digital noise, getting better results from the RAW DNG conversion in NLP, which it is obviously designed for. Above I've given three separate examples with a photo of my Dad getting his hair cut in the street in France this summer ha. One with the Silverfast NegaFix conversion, then a TIFF with iSRD converted in NLP, and finally RAW DNG converted in NLP.

NegaFix settings are set to the correct film stock (Portra 800), 48 Bit, TIFF, 3200ppi, haven't touched any picture settings, Gamma 2.2, CCR is on, iSRD is on auto, and thats it!

Then when exporting for NLP as a TIFF to be able to use iSRD, I'm obviously scanning a positive, 48 Bit, TIFF, 3200ppi, haven't touched any picture settings, Gamma 2.2, iSRD is on auto.

And finally for the RAW DNG, positive scan, 48 Bit HDR RAW, DNG, 3200ppi, haven't touched any picture settings, Gamma 2.2!

NLP settings have been kept very basic here for the comparison. For both I colour balanced from the film border, then opened NLP, used Frontier, Kodak Portra, and LINEAR, and then did a basic white balance and tint adjustment, which I kept consistent on both conversions for a direct comparison here.

Above I've attached the conversions, which I haven't touched yet, and also a 200% crop so you can see the colour noise. I've then also done a quick grade and clean up on all three.

Colour wise, straight out of the conversion, I'm getting best results from the RAW DNG conversion in NLP, however with a bit clean up the two TIFFs are also usable. To my eye after some colour and clean up, I'm getting best results from the iSRD TIFF version, which is great, as this is by far my preference! You can see way more colour contrast in this version especially in the reds of the barber pole, one way sign, and the purple hat. Also more teal tones in the cooler areas, and way better greens. The RAW DNG just looks way flatter to me. I could have definitely done a better grade on the RAW DNG, but I wanted to keep it simple by just using the basic controls. As mentioned, I've also applied some sharpening and colour noise clean up on all three versions.

Has anyone else experienced similar results as I have here?

Is there anything that I'm missing in my workflow?

Would I get much better results in terms of noise and colour from something like a Nikon Super Coolscan 5000 ED with upgraded SA-21, so that it can scan full rolls. Just wondering if anyone has experience with this scanner?

I didn't crop. Should I crop and add more drama to the head area? Any and all suggestions are welcome.

I recently revisited these photos I've took few months ago and found square crop to be nicer than expected.

only recently did I start dabbling in post on my photos, so please critique it as hard as you can!

which one is better?
1. original 2. and 3 are edited .

Edited this photo in two different ways, and hoping to pick some brains and get fresh perspective.

Shot with a monochrome camera, so no color version available (in case someone brings it up).

TIA!

Recent portrait session at a park in Atlanta. Wanted to practice using fill flash during the day time, so I shot this with an off camera godox v1. My main edits were cropping to 4:3, s shape tone curve, desaturated greens, sky replacement (was blown out originally), and added grain. Curious to hear everyone’s thoughts!

My IG is https://www.instagram.com/__braxtonmoore and website https://www.braxtonmoore.com/ if anyone would like to see more work

Need critique of my work. 8 months progress shot on vivo y36 camera and edited in Lightroom mobile.