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In this part I will describe which software I use and how I post-process my photos. Probably, my post-processing pipeline is very different from most photographers, but it works pretty good for me and lets to finish photos almost anywhere. Most of my post-processing is done on my iPhone!
- Transferring from Camera. I always capture my photos on camera in RAW, as that allows to do advanced post-processing and particularly helps to recover blacks and whites as well as to have better color ranges. I start from transferring selected photos to my iPhone over Wi-Fi using Nikon's SnapBridge app. That lets to see full resolution photo right during photo shooting and makes quick adjustments in came settings if required.
Adobe's Lightroom mobile is my primary "hard work" editing software, including working with masks, subjects and backgrounds.
- Cropping. One of the first steps I do is to crop the initial photo to a composition I want. It's very often when you cannot have initial photo framed as you want in wildlife photography, as subject might be too far or actions are unpredictable and cropping allowing to frame the scene as you feel is right.
- Over/Under- Exposed areas. In the pre-processing stage I primary care about whites and blacks, expecting areas which might be on the edge of over or under exposure. In case photo has areas where important parts of the pictures are over/under-exposed and details are lost, I would not use it for further processing. In case details can be recovered, I adjust exposure and highlights for such areas and in some cases whole picture. As the result of this stage I have the photo which could be send to the next stage. In most case it's possible to export the photo to JPEG after this stage to minimize space and transfer time. In cases, where color range is very important I export pictures in TIFF format.
- De-noising. As most of wildlife photos usually captured using long tele-photo lens, having noise is very common and various level noise can be found in most photos, especially if ISO level is high. In most case, I'm trying to keep ISO as low as possible during photo-shooting, keeping it under 1000-1600. To denoise photos I use Topaz Photo AI from Topaz Labs on my PC, it's the part of the processing which I do on PC. This advanced AI-powered software can intelligently remove even high level noise, improving the quality of the photos. The most important thing is using AI-based software is to keep the reasonable level and do not try to do "impossible". Otherwise your photos will be looking as AI-generated other than photographed. I use "Standard" denoise level and often increase details preserving to have as more original details as possible. Often I also use Topaz Photo AI for improving sharpness, however it also should be done very accurately to not add "digital look" and Lightroom mobile also have great flexibility and adjusting sharpness. In some cases, I do process RAW files from camera in Topaz as it might produce better results with photos with high level of noise.
- Object removal. After denoising I transfer photos back to iPhone via iCloud on Windows. When photographing wildlife it's often when you have some small objects in your photos, which you want to remove. it might be some small dust / dirt particles on the animal, small over-exposed dots, artificial garbage on the ground and so on. When doing human portrait photography, models are preparing for the photo-shoot, use make up and so on. It's not possible in wildlife photography and we have to do a "digital makeup", cleaning up such small unwanted details. AI-powered software helps again to remove such small objects in just few clocks. Lightroom Mobile has powerful AI-powered algorithms for removing objects from the background. For removing small objects from subjects and low frequency backgrounds I use Retouch app from Adva Soft which, in my opinion produces the best results.
- Color Adjustment and Masking. In this stage I do adjustments for various parts of the image. Increasing lighting and slightly reducing shadows on the subject, adjusting sharpness to make the subject "standing" in the composing. Correcting lighting on the subject eyes, again to "personalize" the subject. Sometimes softening background and adding vignette, Correcting lighting in various parts of the background and so on. Most of these adjustments are done in Lightroom Mobile and also in another great mobile photo-editing app - Photomator from Pixelmator. It's particularly good to work with backgrounds.
- VSCO. And finally, when I do have almost finished photo, I'm adding final touches in VSCO. VSCO has great set of presets, particularly if your are Pro user. My most favorite presets are A PRO-series which works specially great with Ireland's nature adding "wildness" and true feeling of the nature on photos with meadows, fields and forests. In most case, I use preset levels between 3 and 5 and adjusting additional settings of the preset, like contrast and colors. But in some case level can go almost to maximum. The other feature which I love in VSCO is to adjust liner focus, creating slightly blurred top and bottom parts of the image.
And now my photo is ready and can be posted on VSCO, Instagram or other social media to share with friends. It might be looking complex, but in most cases, I spend from 15 to 30 minutes on post-processing a photo. In some cases it could take more time and in some case the photos are almost ready out of the camera.
In fact, the best photos require less post-processing or almost no processing at all!
