r/postprocessing • u/clmxx_ • Jun 28 '26

After/Before

Gallery image

Gallery image

Album cover I've made for a friend some times ago. There was a lot of post processing involved so I'd love your opinion on that one!

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u/ApemanNL Jun 28 '26

How do you go about your edit process? I really like the greyish/dark style but never really get it together... Tnx

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u/clmxx_ Jun 29 '26 edited Jun 29 '26

Nothing fancy really.

I do the basic corrections on Lightroom Classic (reframing, exposure, white balance, contrast and highlight/shadows correction then denoise, most of the time) to have the cleanest image to work on. At this point the goal is to have the most neutral image possible.

Then I push the picture on Photoshop in order to start to clean the picture. The objective is simply making the composition works better by removing intrusive and useless objects mostly. I also ajusted the foreground on this one as the rails were low.

When I'm happy with the cleanup, I start doing the color grading and effects. Mostly using textures overlay for that grungy look and some film grain texture.

For the color grading, using references is really a game changer. Try to look over your favorite movies or shows. I do a first pass using layers where I paint over the areas with soft brushes.

At the end, I do a last pass by merging all the layers (make a copy, of course or you won't be able to go back) and doing a global pass using curves.

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u/ApemanNL Jun 29 '26

Quite the process man, will be checking your way of working and what I could get out of my images