35. Up to Eleven, I Say!

‘Sky on Fire Over the Valley’ - Pinggan, Kintamani, Bali Island, Indonesia
photo by İlhan Eroğlu
website - https://www.en.ilhanerogluphotography.com/
original image - https://drscdn.500px.org/photo/93273333/q%3D80_m%3D1500_of%3D1/v2?sig=87b1aa72c70a8a827215f446d82d1f469227a9cdcb88b933e77f48df17bdd833

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I mean, the Saturation slider does go to all the way to the end. Doesn't mean it has to.

Other than the unbelievable saturation level, great photo with great lighting and great atmosphere. There'll be more photos from this photographer, and he really does have a way with light. Oh yeah, there are some halos around the hills (see Pet Peeve #3), but here I'd say that's real mist, and not sharpening/clarity artefacts.

I set the color saturation to a more believable level, and fixed general contrast.

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After

34. Friends Don't Let Friends Abuse the Clarity Slider, or Pet Peeve #3 - Halos

Solar Eclipse of 2020, La Silla Observatory, northeast of La Serena at the outskirts of the Atacama Desert, Chile
photo by Sebastian Modak
website - https://www.sebastianmodak.com/
original image - https://static01.nyt.com/images/2019/07/14/travel/03ptg-eclipse-image1/8f230e43266f475b8fbbf671f9c0da85-superJumbo.jpg

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Ah, another Pet Peeve! Probably the most overused thing (along with oversharpening) in photo-processing is the Clarity slider in Lightroom. Now, I myself like photos to be really sharp - it really does level them up - but it has to be done right. That means using good tools, like AI-enhanced sharpening, which doesn't just increase edge contrast (that makes the image look sharper, but also creates awful white and black edges between very light and dark areas of the photo if you go overboard).

Clarity is even worse, because it is easier to misuse if you are not careful. And it is very enticing, because it immediately makes the image look more, well, clear. But there's a price, and that's the appearance of horrible halos around the dark areas of the image (in landscape photography, most often around mountains). This photo is a good example - the foreground hills have a pretty noticable halos around them, especially the tallest hill on the right. They are really hard to clean-up after the fact.

So I removed the aforementioned halos and sharpening artefacts, and got rid of some banding in the sky.

Before

After