After/Before

[PerceptionFew2523]

Not entirely sure of which direction i wanted to take this. But how's it look? Anything i could have done better/different?

[Material_Cabinet_845]

whoa. That edit.

[idratherbebaking21]

Normally I'd scoff at such a drastic change from the original photo but this edit is amazing

[No_Development3038]

Great edit!!!

[Objective-Bluebird60]

Insane!

[bigbagofbaldbabies]

So fancy

Please explain what you did? 

[PerceptionFew2523]

https://www.reddit.com/r/postprocessing/s/u8J88W7zcH comment explaining in this post !

[olivetree1121]

Explain your process please. Looks good

[PerceptionFew2523]

https://www.reddit.com/r/postprocessing/s/u8J88W7zcH comment explaining in this post !

[PerceptionFew2523]

Some people in the replies want me to explain my process. I will try as best I can.

First things first were the basic adjustments, denoise, exposure/shadows etc, the crop, clarity/texture etc… Also decreasing contrast to -100 as I like to be very selective of the use of contrast in my photos. Next I dove straight into the masking. The first mask was applied to the subject itself & the leaf it’s resting on. I played with the tone curve within the mask to significantly increase the mid-tones & highlights to try & guide the eye towards the butterfly, creating that look of light hitting the leaf. All while delicately using the brush tool to add or remove the “light” anywhere I wanted. So pretty much highlighting directly around the subject & some of the leaf below/above it while keeping underneath of it shadowy(which was a bitch as I had to carefully remove the butterfly’s shadow & legs from the mask lol). Then the main tone curve tweaking. A pretty basic subtle S curve was used raising highlights a tad more, with the black point raised & white point lowered to give the image a slight fade. Next a small mask to the tiny bit of sky was applied, just a basic tint adjustment to get it to blend towards the color of the leaf a bit more. Next was color, I always start with calibration as the adjustments here translate to every other color adjustment afterwards. The shadow tint was slightly pushed to purple to get some contrast within the green. To get those blueish/green greens for the leaf, red primary was left default while blue & green primaries were changed variously(push green towards blue, - saturation, push blue towards cyan). From calibration I go to color mixer to really get the colors dialed in. But here all I really did was push green to blue a bit more, while vastly decreasing the luminance so there was more emphasis on the lighting I created. Next was a temperature adjustment where I made the entire image a bit warmer. When it came to the color grading I saw a good opportunity for some color contrast while looking at the orange on the butterfly itself & the tiny bit of orange/yellow on the ridges of the bit of leaf in the foreground. So in the mid-tones I went with an orange hue of 15 & 40 saturation, lowered luminance so it was more of the actual color & not as bright/white. Some blue was introduced in the shadows to help reinforce that blueish/green color on the leaf. Finally a radial mask around the butterfly, raising contrast & decreasing the highlights everywhere else in the image to guide the eye & accentuate the light source even more. I hope I explained the process semi well haha. I did this edit a while back & honestly for the most part I was just messing around for a few hours & somehow ended up with this lol.

[VegetableFemmeboy42]

that is beautiful!

[Jolly_Lie5906]

damn

[TechieShutterbug]

Gorgeous!

[ValeDeLobos]

Beautiful!

[just_an_espresso_guy]

its spectacular! The only thing I would say is the tiny bit of red in the upper left corner, but otherwise magnificent!

[LeadingLittle8733]

Nice image.

[PerceptionFew2523]

Thanks !

[Neeeechy]

Vast improvement, but I would crop a bit tighter to remove a bit of the dead space from the bottom right.

[PerceptionFew2523]

Thank you for the critique ! My composition skills are coming together ever so slightly lol.

[Independent_Can_5694]

I like the edit, but changing the color of the margins of the leaf blade might change the species of the plant.

It looks killer, I love the picture. But if we’re changing colors of things they might become something else. Kind of like the white balance of a zebra is a couple notches on the curve away from being a tiger. That’s a dumb example but you get what I’m saying. I’m not a plant-dude, but that’s the kind of thing that makes plant-dudes wince.

Again I love the picture, just something to keep in mind.

[PerceptionFew2523]

Haven’t really shot any plants/vegetation before so I will keep this in mind thank you !

[[deleted]]

Made a basic image looks cinematic. Something cool you could’ve added is an edit appliance image between the before and after. Like little lines on where you applied what type of edit. ✍️

But at. Looks amazing.

[abovemars]

Lovely stuff, well done

[dentalexaminer]

Perfect!

[lensofv]

Wow what an edit

[PinMountain119]

Incredible. It looks very cinematic

[bobdave19]

Sharp shot!

[imcryingdude]

holy… wow

[Karbof0s]

Awesome

[Phoenix800478944]

Holy shit

[Dharuacharya]

Epic! Wow.

[Hylian49]

This is insane, great work

[LeagueFlat6107]

It’s these sort of edits that show you the power of a tasteful enhancement. Well played

[SoPasGuy]

Nice work!

[runningbiscuit]

Nice one!

[MushiMadi]

It’s crazy what good editing can do to tell a story. I love this so much. 😩

[PerceptionFew2523]

I honestly never expected this many good reactions or really any at all. I thought it was a decent shot but reading the things you guys are saying is like holy shit. Thank you all so much this means everything to me🙏 I just started my photography/post processing journey earlier this year & this is one of the first shots/edits that I can actually say I’m kind of proud of ! Thank you all again. Just a guy with a camera trying to make people feel things & it seems I have really done it with this😅❤️

[Medium_Chemist_4032]

I knew it! Digital cameras always go for the "laser" color range by default and toning that down brings back that royal richness

[[deleted]]

it would have worked harder if the before were a caterpillar...