How important is photo editing?
I think it's very important because it's the part of the process where I can bring out the best of the picture that I'm presenting.
During this process, I had to re-analyze the image and try to learn what could be the better composition for the image. Let's this shot as an example.
Here's the final edited image:
While this one is the raw image, untouched version:
As you can see, the original image has so much clutter in it and it's also too dark. It also lacks the contrast that I want for this image.
What I did on the final image is to crop it until the emphasis is towards the subject (insects wrapped with a spider web). As you can see, the extra elements are now out of the frame.
In addition, I added 2 radial filters on the top-right corner of the image to simulate the light source. And then, I also added a graduated filter to darken the bottom-left corner of the image to improve the contrast.
To achieve the cinematic look of the image, I added a blue tint on the shadow. Here's the result again.
As usual, I also made a black and white version.
I love to see how people are processing their photos. Are you using Adobe software? I'm a huge fan of Lightroom, but I canceled my subscription and I've started using Darktable.