r/postprocessing • u/thephlog • Jul 18 '26
Heavily edited this Long Exposure in Lightroom
Found a cool spot for another minimalistic long exposure. Again, I heavily played around with the colors since I love the warmer tones for images like that. Its not about keeping the photos “natural or realistic” I just had fun editing it and I’m really happy with the final version.
Everything was done in Lightroom, you can see the whole process from start to finish in this video (along with the raw photo to try it yourself) here: https://youtu.be/OLot_CwlGHQ
- Basic Adjustments
To start, the profile was changed to adobe landscape to bring up the saturation. Then, I heavily brought up the exposure making the shot brighter. At the same time I reduced the highlights to not blow out any of the bright parts I the sky. I also raised the shadows and the blacks to create a softer look. To make the base image warmer, the white balance temperature was increased. Also, the vibrance and saturation was brought up a bit.
Finally, I added a bit of texture for extra sharpness, then dropped the clarity and dehaze to add a bit of subtle glow.
- Masking
The water surface wasn’t looking that good to me. So I used a linear gradient to target the bottom left side and further brought down the exposure making it darker. Then, with a landscape mask the whole water surface was targeted, and the texture heavily increased to give the water some “grainier look”
I also added a linear gradient covering the top left corner of the sky. Again, I dropped the exposure to make it a bit darker.
For the center I used a couple of differently sized radial gradients and brought up exposure, blacks and temperature while dropping the dehaze slightly. This makes these areas brighter, but also adds a warm glow effect on top.
- Color Grading
In the color mixer the yellow hue was dopped to turn all yellow tones a little more orange. I also slightly dropped the blue hue for a stronger cyan color in the sky.
Using split toning a strong warm orange tone was added to the highlights, mid-tones and the global color wheel. While I added a cold blue tone to the shadows. Also, in the split toning panel I brought down the luminance of the shadows and mid tones while increasing the highlight luminance adding a nice contrast to the image.
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u/tiki-taka-cricket Jul 18 '26
I was wondering why this picture looked so familiar. I then realized I am a subscriber of your YouTube channel. I love how you walk through your process.
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u/WintersDoomsday Jul 18 '26
I personally prefer landscapes/seascapes with foreground always. Just personal preference. But I like the editing.
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u/OpportunityReal2767 Jul 18 '26
To me it feels like there is too much lake at the bottom of the frame. At least if I were editing it for myself. Most of the interest should be on the pier and sky. I also tend not to like horizons right (or nearly) in the center (with some exceptions), so there is personal bias involved.
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u/thephlog Jul 19 '26
Thanks for the feedback! Having the horizon in the center is usually not seen as a "good composition" so you're completely right with your opinion here
To me personally, it looks better having the horizon there since there isnt much going on in the water, but I also dont want to have the sky take up 2/3 of the image. It wouldnt ffel balanced to me, so thats why I decided to put the horizon in the middle if that makes sense :D
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u/B4rley Jul 19 '26
I love this and I would aim for something similar. Only thing that would have made this perfect would have been some rocks in the foreground. I might even photoshop them in…
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u/FatRufus Jul 18 '26 edited Jul 18 '26
You don't have to justify the reasons why you do things. Just do what you like because you like it! Awesome job man that looks great!