Click the slider in the middle of the image and drag it to the right to see the image go from "before" to "after".

Use the "Details" link to see a side by side comparison, and read notes about the editing.
"See All" will let you choose other photos to view.

"Good Fences Make Good Dunes"

Description: This was taken on a crisp, dry Winter day on a Bay beach in Dennis. I liked the lines of the dune fence.

Editing Comments: Normally I'd think black and white since the colors were nothing special; the appeal of the composition was line and pattern (I did convert another images of a fence from that day to B&W). But the fence had been in sunlight so I knew there was more lurking in the RAW image. I brought out the light and color and then added a bunch of Orton effect (which I rarely use, it's a bit overdone out there) to soften the background details and keep the eye on the fence. Sort of after the fact bokeh. It's not a great image but it is a good example of the sort of thing that's there in a RAW file waiting to be released.

Definitions of the photographic terms I use on this site are below. I've kept it short, but there are many glossaries on the web if you want a more comprehensive guide.

Bracketing:

Bracketing simply means taking a series of photos rapidly in a row with slight variations. These exposures can then be combined an any number of ways to create an image that contains a widewr rnage of information than any single frame.

The most common type of bracketing is exposure bracketing, where the photographer uses different shutter speeds to take a sequence of photos with different brightness levels.

Bracketing can also refer to focus rather than exposure. In this case – “focus bracketing” – you’re shooting images in sequence that are focused at different distances.

In theory, bracketing can refer to almost any variable in photography – even something like composition – but exposure and focusing are the most common contexts.


Color Grading:

Color grading is the process of editing the color, saturation, and contrast of an image, usually to create specific moods in a photo.

Color grading can be one of the most impactful tweaks you can make to your work once it’s been shot. Color, like lighting, affects a mood and feel of a photo, which can obviously have a significant impact on how people respond to an image.


RAW File:

RAW contain all the imaging data from your camera sensor – meaning maximum image quality and editing flexibility.

For example, RAW photos have a lot of latitude for recovering dark shadows. A RAW image that appears severely underexposed usually still has enough detail to recover a usable image in post-processing.

The two main downsides of RAW compared to JPEG are that RAW files take up more space, and they almost always require post-processing in order to look good. By default, RAW photos are very dull when you open them in most editing software).


White Balance:

Your eyes automatically adjust to different light sources, but a camera can’t do that—that’s why sometimes you take an image and it looks very blue or very yellow.

White balance is what a digital camera uses to remove unrealistic colour casts when taking a photograph. You often find that photographs taken under fluorescent lights, for example, have a strange blue colour cast to them – this can be corrected by adjusting the white balance settings on the camera.

If the white balance has been adjusted accordingly, objects that appear white in person will look white in the photograph.


The unedited images are below. You can see a preview of the edited version by moving your mouse over them. Click on them to see a large version, and make it go from "before" to "after". Click the image to see a larger version and watch the transformation from unedited to edited.

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