My edits for Photogames FixItFriday week #4

Last week I found @photogames, I really like playing the FixItFriday because you get to see so many creative outcomes from one photo. Each photostar submits a raw photo to edit. After the challenge is up that photostar picks their favorites.

Its a little tidius listing all the steps I did for the edits but I figured it might interest a few people. I am using lightroom to edit these.

The first raw photo that I edited is @jarvie's.

• I started out by hitting the "auto" button for tone and started looking at the different white balances. I liked the way fluorescent pops on this photo. Really makes those colors stand out.

• I pumped up the Clarity and Vibrance. Turned down the highlights and blacks, then lifted shadows. I used the luminance tool to bring up the blues, greens and reds.

• Played around with split toning just see what happened and really liked the mix of orange and blue.

• On to sharpening. I probably used to much here but wanted to exaggerate it a little.

• I just took the defaults for auto chromatic abberation removal and profile corrections.

• I always add just a little vignetting but don't want it noticed.

• And probably my favorite effect is dehaze. Usually I turn it up and enjoy the effect but on this I turned it down a little.

• I cropped and rotated a little then flipped horizontal.

• Last I used a radial filter to lower the brightness of the background.

This next photo is @intrepidphotos

• This time the first thing I did is crop. I found a focal point I liked and lined the mountain, horizon, and shrub on the rule of thirds crop grid.

• Next I hit auto on tone and cranked up the exposure. Increased the contrast, clarity and vibrance

• The person on the horizon was bothering me so removed him/her.

• I also used a graduated filter on the sky.

• Since I cranked up the exposure it created a lot of noise on the foreground so used a brush to decrease that.

• I decreased luminance on the red orange and yellows to make a little more orange visible on the horizon. I also increased the blue which brightened up the landscape a little.

• Increased sharpening and noise reduction. I used a little vignetting and increased the dehaze effect.

Next up is @scottshots

• First I found I crop that I liked then changed the white balance to fluorescent.

• Hit auto again on tone and then pumped up the shadows, clarity and vibrance.

• Next I turned down the luminance on orange, blue and purple.

• Really cranked up the sharpening, probably too much again. Increased the noise reduction a little.

• Used more vignetting than usual and cranked up the dehaze again.

Next up is @caseygrimley's photo.

• Started out by resetting the edits, It imported some previous edits with the photo.

• I changed up here and increased the dehaze, I was already down at the bottom of the panel and I wanted to see what it would do with the sky.

• Next I went ahead and added the vignetting. Then hit auto on the transform tool and enabled profile corrections/remove chromatic aberrations.

• Increased the sharpening til I could see it affecting the tree bark then backed it off. Added the noise reduction while I was there.

• At this point I could keep going upward I had to go all the way to the top and adjust the exposure. Working backwards was messing with my mind a little.

• The dehaze effect had darkened the bottom of the photo so I used a graduated filter from bottom to the horizon to increase the exposure.

• At this point I went ahead and cropped to put the horizon at the bottom third of the image.

• Last I pumped up the luminance for the blue.

My last edit for the night is @derekkind's. I have stayed up way to late on these!

• I hit auto on the tone controls and enabled the profile corrects/remove chromatic aberrations to get started, then hit auto on the transforms.

• While I was picking a white balance the grass in the water was bugging me so I removed that.

• Going back to the tone control I raised everything.

• I lowered the luminance on the orange and yellow, and raised purple and magenta. I next went down to the dehaze and cranked it way up.

• I increased the sharpening but used a lot of masking. I also used a lot more noise reduction than I normally do.

• I then cropped in a little. Last I used a brush on the rock in the foreground and increased the exposure a little for the shadows.

I think I have stayed up way to late on these but I did have a lot fun editing them. Can't wait to see what all the other creative submissions have done with these photos.