Photo How To

Yesterday we posted a very helpful tutorial describing five common shooting errors made by novice photographers and how to avoid them. Today's lesson from the Sightseeing Stan YouTube channel takes a similar approach with regard to post-processing mistakes that can easily ruin your images.

Instructor Stan Borgers is a globetrotting Belgian pro based in Germany's Black Forest—a beautiful location for shooting in the great outdoors. In this episode he takes a deep dive into the simple editing methods he employs, while demonstrating how to make your images shine like never before.

This Lightroom tutorial is targeted at beginners who will benefit from Borgers' valuable insights and techniques to create natural, stunning edits that bring out the best in just about every type of photo, from landscapes, nature shots, to wildlife images—and even environmental portraits.  He provides a variety of practical examples for putting these straightforward tips to work. You'll be able to quickly master what you learn, avoid common errors, and thereby greatly improve your workflow.

The first few mistakes discussed all occur when using tone-adjustment sliders in the wrong way. And it really doesn’t matter if you have Lightroom, Adobe Camera Raw (ACR), Capture One, Luminar Neo, or just about any other software. In all cases you'll likely find these basic sliders in whatever software you have.

Borgers' first example is a nice seaside shot, and he demonstrates how to make the necessary enhancements properly, while avoiding potential pitfalls. While dropping bright highlights in the sky he demonstrates why this familiar task is where many mistakes tend to happen. As he explains, "Most modern cameras have such a high dynamic range, with Raw files full of so much data, that we're able to recover an abundance of information."

So what's the problem? According to Borgers it's the fact that "some people want to recover too much information" with a heavy-handing editing approach that may result in a final image that's inferior to the original shot. In other words, taking the wrong approach can be worse than not editing the image editing at all.

Borgers moves on to a variety of sloppy edits with other common enhancements, while demonstrating the proper approach to getting the job done. As you'll see, sometimes the mistake is choosing the wrong tool, while other times the error is using a tool incorrectly.

By following Borgers' succinct advice, and learning the mistakes made by others, you'll be able to avoid making these errors yourself. After you're done watching head over to Borgers' instructional YouTube channel where you'll find a wide variety of helpful tips and tricks.

And be sure not to miss the tutorial mentioned above, with a straightforward approach to getting things right in the camera.