Nature Photography How To

If you always limit yourself to one specific genre of photography your editing workflow may be pretty well defined. But most shooters have a more eclectic approach to our craft, requiring different processing methods depending up the type of image at hand.

In other words, it would be a mistake to edit a landscape scene using the same methods you employ when processing portraits, so it's very helpful be just as versatile during the processing task as you are when out shooting in the field.

The comprehensive lesson below is designed with one goal in mind; help you edit images of birds for the best results possible. Whether you specialize photographing our feathered friends, or just do so occasionally, this step-by step guide will help you up your game.

Photographer Chris Parker is based in Jacksonville Texas, and he's been a working pro for over 30 years. He posts weekly tutorials designed to help expand your skills and "challenge your creative vision." In this valuable episode Parker demonstrates his preferred method for editing bird photo from start to finish.

Parker begins with a pretty photo of cheerful chickadee, straight out of the camera. You'll then watch him perfect the shot using everything from Denoise AI to retouching in Photoshop and back to Lightroom, and much more.

You'll learn some pro tips for cropping and how Parker applies built-in Lens Correction presets to deal with distortion and skewed perspective. Likewise, he has a quick method for adding a vignette to direct a viewer's eye to the main subject of an image. Parker also discusses how to use the Tone Curve to make a variety of enhancements, and there's a detailed discussion of adjusting Contrast, White Balance, and Tonal Values to really make your bird photos sing.

The lesson wraps up with some solid advice for employing masks, using Denoise AI, and finishing the job with a quick retouch in Photoshop. Parker covers a lot of ground in just 20 minutes, so you may want to take a few notes for future reference.

There' much more to learn on Parker's instructional YouTube channel, so take a close look when you have time. We also suggest watching the tutorial we posted recently from another expert, with 10 pro tricks for shooting beautiful nature, travel, and wildlife photographs.