noma
Five insights to edit nature’s hues! With @lealguard / “One of the key aspects that helped me dial in my color palette was exploiting the natural tones in the landscape, mixed with the fact that I am almost completely colorblind. I can only see yellow, so utilizing what I know to be blue through the numbers on the dials, I can achieve the look and essence of how I see nature around me. Below, you can find my main editing steps, taking as an example image one:
1) The original image was taken from a plane with a cell phone. I started by adding some color and foreground using Object Fill.
2) It was during a time when there were wildfires, so the atmosphere was doing things I hadn’t seen before; to adjust, I enhanced the darkness of the background’s layers and tweaked the shadows to make them pop and add drama.
3) The color was washed out slightly, so I adjusted the color grading to deep blues in the shadows, mid blues in the mid-tones, and light blues in the highlights while reducing the texture and clarity.
4) Ultimately, I wanted to bring attention to the landscape’s separation, depth, and scope to give the viewer the sense that it can be projected across long distances. In contrast, other minimalist images often flatten and draw attention to one subject.
5) Use your editing process to your advantage and exploit the lighting that’s there. Add additional gradients to light and dark areas to enhance the drama and adjust curves in post-production to dial in the details or fade away further information depending on your goal.
Minimalism is hard, and it’s a lesson I’ve learned the hard way. There are multiple ways I achieve certain aspects of minimalism, such as composition, the golden ratio to align my subjects into specific areas of the frame, and constant seeking angles.
Lastly, I recommend removing any distracting backgrounds or foreground elements that take away from the story.” You can read the original story with @lealguard by visiting the link in our bio!