What is the most common mistake that beginners of photography make?

Post-processing is an important part of modern digital photography. It is very likely that you are processing the image. But what did the treatment bring? Is the photo getting better or worse? Every day, I often receive many similar post-processing problems and see the mistakes made by photographers in the process of processing. To this end, Bian Xiao switchboard learned the most common mistakes of beginners in photography.

First, the saturation is too high.

Of course, for many people, this is an obvious fact, and the most common mistake is too high color saturation.

We all like color images, but at some point they become too saturated. When the color no longer looks natural, it is worth pulling the saturation slider in the opposite direction.

There is a more effective way to add saturation than using the saturation slider. It would be more correct to selectively increase saturation.

When using custom colors, the HSL section in Lightroom and similar menu settings in Camera RAW (available in Photoshop). Of course, even if you use these tools, you can overuse them through saturation, but you will adjust the background of other colors, and these colors will remain unchanged, so overuse will be more difficult.

Second, sharpening is too large.

Like color saturation, sharpness may need to enhance the control of some specific areas.

Excessive sharpening will lead to unnecessary noise, so some areas, such as the sky and smooth surfaces, should be limited when sharpening.

Third, too much noise reduction.

When we want to highlight and sharpen the details in the image, we also want to reduce noise and graininess. This is a bit controversial because sharpening will highlight noise.

Most image editors provide denoising tools. However, excessive noise elimination will lead to reduced contrast and unnatural smoothness.

Excessive noise elimination will eliminate microscopic details, and we will get an unnatural smooth image. This effect is particularly obvious in smaller textures such as grass and needles.

Fourth, the definition is too high

Lightroom and Photoshop have a sharpness setting that can increase or decrease the micro contrast. This setting can make the image very sharp and attractive from the beginning, but as always, pay attention to the intensity and selectively increase or decrease the clarity.

Like many other changes, sharpness should be added selectively, not globally, because some areas of the image should not be highlighted.

Fifth, only make global adjustments.

Another very serious mistake made by beginners is to apply all the adjustments to the whole picture.

To make really interesting images, you should use masks and limit the application of effects to areas where they are needed.

Using any slider in Lightroom and most adjustment layers in Photoshop will affect the whole image, but in order to work in a specific area, you need to use a mask.

Only the selected area can be changed by using various masking tools in Lightroom or various masking techniques in Photoshop.