Before and after editing of a sunrise photo

It’s World Photography Day today so I shared with the people on Periscope some of my editing techniques for one of my sunrise pictures that I took earlier this week. This post is a follow up to that broadcast where I changed a regular looking RAW image into one with vibrant colours to match what I witnessed in front of me.

Nikon D800, 1/8 sec., f/18, ISO 100, 165mm

Bringing the photo above into Lightroom, I envisioned in my mind what I wanted out of this particular photo. I wanted the silhouette of the Toronto skyline to be against the bright orange-red-yellow colour of the sunrise. This was easily achieved by tweaking some of the tonal curves, white balance, and sharpening enough to further accentuate the edges of the skyline against the smooth sky. I tried to not over-edit the photo as it can easily become unrealistic this way. The final image is below.

Nikon D800, 1/8 sec., f/18, ISO 100, 165mm

For those of you who are interested in seeing this live demonstration, please feel free to catch the replay here on my Katch page: www.katch.me/theSmaku.

The video is embedded below as well.

Share this!

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Scroll to Top