Lightroom Editing for the Hunting Photographer
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A gallery of edited hunting images. Understanding and excelling at Lightroom will make your life much, much easier.
Today I want to go through editing a few hunting images with you and show you some of my process. My goal is always to shoot the images to the best of my ability in camera. This saves time editing photos and also makes you a better photographer. Being able to pull the camera up under changing conditions, adjust your settings quickly and snap a shot before the moment fades is key. And things happen quick in hunting so being able to make quick and quality snaps is important. Now real quick I like to shoot a flat profile in camera which should allow some more room for adjustments in post, and I also will error on the side of underexposed vs overexposed. That’s my personal preference as it’s about impossible to bring back any detail in a shot that is blown out in the whites. Ok let’s jump into editing two shots:
#1 - Mule Deer buck ready for Packout
This was a shot I took of my mule deer buck in November of 2017. Calvin and I had packed back in to take the head out and shoot some images. I thought putting the buck loaded on the pack on a clean patch of snow would make for a dynamic product shot. Having spent years editing images I knew the not quite perfect snow would edit out almost pure white with a little love in Lightroom.
The original shot on the left and the final edit on the right.
The unedited shot is on the left and the final edit is on the right. It’s a pretty drastic difference but it doesn’t take a whole lot to get there. We can see I shot the image underexposed. I almost always start by setting my exposure or white levels. In this case I brought my exposure up and then increased the light tones in my tone curve panel. This got me my general exposure correct. From there I fine tuned my whites by utilizing the white adjustement in my general adjustments panel and slightly pulling down the highlights. This gives me a brilliant white without blowing any detail out. From there you can see that there is some vignetting and fall off in the corners of the image due to the lens I shot the image on. To remedy this I went to my Lens Correction panel and clicked the box for Enable Profile Corrections. A slight bump in vibrance and shadows and this is where we now are.
We’re looking pretty darn good at this point. Now the next step is personal preference but for me it’s ok to sometimes remove things from the image. In this case you can see a few small leaves on the surface of the snow.
For a shot like this these are minor details that can be removed in my opinion. It’s akin to a lens spot on your camera filter putting a dot on a blue sky. To remedy this you simply go to your Spot Removal tool and make sure you’re on clone. Set your circle size to encompass the leaf and click. It should replace that spot with a nice piece of white snow that blends in.
Now I removed a few other small leaves and surface imperfections on the snow and we’re almost to our final edit. The last step I’ll take is to slightly sharpen the image.
I don’t generally use a preset for this but a sharpening preset can be a great tool to apply to all your images. I use my zoom view to set the sharpening amount and then will use the masking slider to set what part of the image I apply the sharpening to. If you hold the Option key down while sliding it you will see a black and white image with the white overlay showing you what part of the image you’re sharpening. With that done my edit is complete.
Montana Mountain Mule Deer - Nikon D750 24mm 1/500s f/5.0 ISO320
#2 - Elk rack with stories being told around the fire.
This shot I took at the end of my first trip down to Wyoming to film and shoot photos for GoHUNT and the guys at Born And Raised Outdoors. A few bulls had been killed that week and we were on our last night there. All the meat was taken care of and some of the hunt was being re-lived around the fire. It made for a great photo opportunity.
The original shot on the left (underexposed) and the final edit on the right.
Now this shot is underexposed. I like to error on the underexposed side in general. This shot is a result of my camera screen being very bright and making the shot look properly exposed when viewed at night although the actual shot is a touch dark. That’s okay as we’ll be able to bring it up and still retain detail.
Making my first basic adjustments to get overall look and exposure where I want it.
As you can see in the History panel on the right I made some basic adjustments to get my image to roughly where I want it. You can see amounts both in the History and also on the right in the Basic Adjustments panel. Now I want to lighten up the bottom half of the image to make the rack pop just a bit more.
Adding a Graduated Filter to lighten up the bottom half of the image.
To do this I’m going to use a Graduated Filter. This allows you to lighten a part of the image replicating the use of an actual graduated filter. By increasing the exposure and dragging up from the bottom I’ve been able to gradually lighten the bottom half of the image. Now I want to make the black and white parts of the elk rack pop a touch more. The whites could be whiter and some of the medium blacks could be slightly blacker.
Brushing in some adjustments on the elk rack.
To do this I zoom in and use the Brush Tool. I up the exposure and paint in the white tips and then add a second brush that has a slightly decreased exposure and slightly darker blacks to paint in the parts of the rack that could be darker. With images shot at night at higher ISO’s and images that you digitally alter the exposure substantially you will start to fight some noise in parts of the image. My last step is to zoom in to 100% and try to dial in my sharpening and luminance.
Sharpening and removing some noise.
Fortunately I was able to shoot this shot at ISO640 which meant noise wasn’t too bad to start. By zooming in there is some noise but not enough to hurt the overall image. I added some sharpening and then backed it off by softening the noise with the Luminance slider. This softens your noise. Drastically dragging the slider will show you what this does and if you drag it all the way to the right it should produce a very smooth but soft image. Adding just a little will often reduce enough noise and still keep a lot of detail. At this point I’m finished with my edit.
Wyoming Elk Rack - Nikon D850 50mm 1/100s f/1.4 ISO640
Most edits will be pretty simple so long as you know how to use the tools at your disposal in Lightroom and do your best to shoot your images correctly in camera. Be looking for videos going through the process here in the future and please add a comment on what types of things you’d like to see us share regarding the use of Lightroom. And as always if you haven’t already please sign up for our newsletter at the bottom of the page to stay up to date with all the latest regarding our courses and hunting photography.
Written by Zack Boughton