Image Post-Processing Using Adobe Photoshop Lightroom

I recently got interested in photography and decided to take it up as a hobby. So I went ahead and bought a Nikon D3300 entry level DSLR camera. Photography goes well with my other hobby of riding motorcycles and put together I’m having a ball of a time. By no means do I consider myself a professional photographer. I’m learning from other photographers and would like to share some of the things I learn on this blog from time to time.

This post is about post-processing images using software. Post-processing is basically enhancing the quality of an image to ready it for publication or distribution. A good photographer will keep post-processing to a minimum because he will have the best (and very expensive) camera and will have mastered the art of photography. Newbies like myself need to resort to post-processing to get high quality images until we figure out the art of photography.

To give you an example of post-processing take a look at this image I clicked with my Nikon D3300 camera.

Click to enlarge

I would like to think I did a good job at composing the shot. However, this is not how the sunrise looked that wonderful morning on my ride to Satara. It was way more beautiful and breathtaking. But a combination of a not-so-good camera sensor and poor understanding of photography resulted in this sad image.

In such situations post-processing can come to the rescue. I use Adobe Photoshop Lightroom to enhance my images. This is what I ended up with.

Click to enlarge

The only reason I edit images is to make up for my camera and photography skills. I don’t do it to make my images better than the real thing. That would be wrong in my opinion. I want my camera to capture Mother Nature as my eyes see her. The post-processed image above is exactly how I experienced that beautiful sunrise.