A Simple Edit...in comparison

Okay, so this is gonna be a pretty quick, just really basic edit of this photo. So what I'm doing right now is selecting the frames, that I took of this and then going through the first one is the ambient, putting on the ambient interior preset, doing the white balance and then deciding between the flash ones, which ones I want to use, adding the flash interiors preset to them, setting their exposure to what I want them to be and there are white balance as well. 

So for the first one is kind of that living room shot. The second one is the kitchen. So the white balance doesn't really matter in the living room for me, it only matters in the kitchen for what I want and the lighting too. And then the third one is this back section, it's actually the master bedroom. So just again, flash layer, preset white balance exposure to be what I want it to be.

And then I'm gonna take 'em all and open them as layers in Photoshop, which of course takes a hot second because my computer is slow.

Okay, so now that Photoshop has them finally all loaded up, I'm gonna take my ambient layer and I'm gonna drag it to the bottom of my layer load. I'm gonna align, auto align all of them just in case there's any sort of camera movement, which there's isn't really, 'cause I was using camera ranger, but all the same. It's good to align them just in case.

Once that's done, I'm gonna start combining the flash layers together. For this one it's pretty simple I just used flash pretty much where there were windows except for in the kitchen. That one I did on the opposite side of the windows, but this is just me going through making sure that they all align and they're not skewed at all. And then for these ones, it's pretty easy. I can just go and either use lighten or screen mode to connect them, to kind of get that put together.

So this is a pretty easy, easy way to do it. If I didn't have them like this, I would do the 50% mask and brush it in. 

Once my flash layers are done, I'm gonna click on the two layer blend and that's gonna create all these different masks and everything for me to play with. So the first thing that I like to do is add a little bit more depth and shadows back with my darken only layer. That's gonna gonna give you your window pulls, a little bit more contrast to the furniture, that sort of stuff.

The things that you want to have stand out more. So just kind of brushing that in. Gotta get that tree. 

After that, I'm gonna go to my color base just to kind of even out the wood reflections on there. So like the kitchen ceiling is pretty bad. You can see it going away. And the color base doesn't do it as much as the color clone does. The color clone is much more of a, gonna take everything out, but the color base just kind of gives you like a light version over it. So it still has that natural look to it, which is nice, but it does even everything out and kind of make everything that same color tone that you want it to be.

And this is gonna take me a little bit, change my brush sizes, get all the little, all the little areas. It will take color away from anything that's not like a white or an off white. So if I did it on the wood, it would kind of take away that orangey yellow coloring on the wood as well.

With greens it does take it away on some of it, but it's not horrible, so I'm not overly careful about it over greens you don't really need to be. And then the wood just kinda reflected a little bit on the marble for the fireplace around. So I wanted to make sure that that was, that was gone off of there. After I do kind of my color correcting there, I'm gonna go to my luminosity mask, which is basically just the ambient and just bring in some more of those ambient shadows and highlights where I want them to be. And I don't want it to be there, apparently, but there's a big wall of windows that's just behind the chairs. So I wanted to make sure that that came across on the chairs. I didn't like it on the fireplace, so I went to my flash base, which is gonna be more heavily flash side. I wanted that fireplace upper part to really stand out. After that's all done, I'm happy with the way that it looks color-wise and everything. I'm gonna flatten it and I'm gonna go in and start getting rid of anything that I don't want to be there. 

So that's just the what, the new remove tool that's on there. Sometimes it's slow on my computer, but I find that it actually works pretty dang well. So I deal with it. Just go through, get rid of the can lights, smoke detectors, um, little blue tape that they had up there. And the patio door was weird, it didn't wanna shut all the way. So, you'll see in a second I'll get rid of the gapping there to make it look like it's closed, for the most part. Does a pretty good job. You still have that shadow on the outside, but I got rid of this bar that was bothering me and then kind of that handle area on there to kind of just make it seem like that's more of a reflection than the door actually being open and what you would see through the window, which I thought worked decently well.

And then I'm just gonna continue removing light plates, outlets, floor vents, all the fun stuff. Sometimes I find that I have to go back through it a couple times just to make sure that it looks the way that I want it to look. But overall, I think it actually ends up being pretty good.

And then I noticed this line across here from the install where the acoustic slats weren't long enough. You know, it's the joining of them. I didn't like that. So I went through, took 'em out, 

But then that's pretty much it for the Photoshop side of things. I like the way that looks. I'm gonna go ahead, just make sure I don't have any image spots, which I didn't notice. And then I'm gonna go ahead and close it out, save it.

Then once it's imported back into Lightroom, I'm gonna put my finishing interior preset on. It kind of gives it a little pop of contrast and sharpens things back up. And then I'm just gonna go and do a guided upright for the verticals just to make sure that it's, it's on point.

And then after this I always do at least a small crop on there because even if I'm shooting on my iPad and auto aligning in Photoshop, sometimes there is just that tiny little bit of, um, tiny little bit of it that gets, you know, skewed and is off. So I always like to crop it just a little bit. And that is it, that is the final image