How To Retouch Your Drone Photography?

There are many ways one can edit their drone photos. An individual photographer has to use his or her personal preferences to ensure the photo looks fantastic. If your focus is on drone photography, there are ways to edit your photos.

When you want to edit drone photos, it’s similar to photos taken using a DSLR camera. Commercially, these aerial photos are captured with a marketing mind, and that makes then require unique requirements.

If you are going to edit drone photos, there is often no human subject. So, you can be more creative with toning and colors. When retouching photos where there are people, ensure they look human. Avoid going overboard; you need to make the photo look natural.

How To Retouch Drone Photos

Unsurprisingly, the first step is that the photos need to be taken with appropriate camera settings.

The post-production won’t save a terrible aerial photo, or that isn’t technically correct. The best photo is the one-shot manually and raw.

Here are essential tips for retouching your drone photos:

Profile corrections

The first thing is to scroll down for profile corrections.

Here, you can check the boxes to see where you should “Enable Profile Correction” and “Remove Chromatic Aberration.”

This step is essential in photo retouching as it helps to remove any chromatic aberration, vignetting, and lens distortion.

With any photo that you shoot raw, it has data that the lightroom can identify the type of lens you used. So, the lightroom will choose the best lens corrections automatically. Besides, you can manually click to decide the much you need to correct.

Basic corrections

The basic corrections will help you change the fundamental features of your photo. In these corrections, you will be changing some essential things such as exposure, temperate and tint, contrast, shadows, highlights, vibrance, saturation, and clarity.

Sometimes, you can pull the slider much further in either direction.

You will look for a middle ground that looks right. There are times that you will find more than one setting to be right. It is at this time, when you need to take some artistic license.

For example, you can edit one photo but in two different ways. The first time, use shadows lightened and a cool tone. The other time, use more silhouette, with a moodier and warmer tone.

So, there is nothing wrong or right. Use what you think will look great on the photo you want to edit.

Color toning

This is where you should be creative with the available colors. You will fine-tune those colors for the photo until it looks exactly as you want it.

It will depend on what you’re working on. Use HSL ( Hue, Saturation & Luminance).

There are some aerial photos you take that will need color toning while others little. So, it has to depend on your style.

There are those photographers that will want their photos to remain realistic, but others want to exercise artistic license by manipulating the photos.

Graduated filter tool

There are times you have to make adjustments at your photo. You make adjustments for one part only. This is possible with the help of the graduated filter tool. It helps you select the exact part to edit.

To use this, pick the icon, click it and drag your photo the part you should edit. If you move its sliders back and forth and will help to change the part you selected.

For example, you might need to brighten the exposure of your photo ground. When doing it, you might blow more color and texture. You can edit the ground, mountains, and use a graduated filter on your top to represent the sky.

Copy and paste

If you open the entire camera roll, it can be overwhelming.

If you edit each photo individually, that will be time-consuming.

With Lightroom, you can edit many photos quickly. After completely editing a photo, choose it and then select all and click “sync” to make all look like the first.

Export as JPEG

After you have your group of photos with the look you want, convert them into JPEGs. You will get a dialogue box, and you can choose where to save your photos.

Give them a name. But, ensure you save as JPEG.

Use Photoshop

After you have the JPEGs, then decide whether they need more retouching.

For most edits, you can do it in Lightroom.

If you need spot healing, you need can use Photoshop.

This tool will help you draw around the object and take out what you want. If you’re going to replace it, drag to your part you’re replacing.

Photoshop will help to blend the two, and it will fill the gap to ensure the new area is blending smoothly.

If you are to use Photoshop, you have to edit your photos one after the other. So, this is where you have to perfect your final touches by spending more time.

In photo editing, you have so much freedom. You can edit and change the photos the way you find it favorite.

This is where the drone photos will look amazing such as your landscape. Make sure you also experiment using new things, and there is much fun to experience.

Final Words

If you want to edit your photos, there is so much freedom. You can experiment with a few things as you’re having fun.

For a photographer, you need to have a high quality drone. You can’t take aerial photos without a drone. This type of camera is not only great in taking photos but will help you to take better photos. Photo retouching is an essential post-production service. This service helps you make better photos. Even when not using, it gives you a chance to rethink a scene and improve on making a photo. The process is sometimes not easy for everyone. But as you practice and learn, you become a pro!

There are countless online resources offering Lightroom training courses and editing suggestions. Here is one we found particularly useful for getting a soft photo effect without the use of filters.

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Featured image: Thank you to Matan Segev for use of his image via Pexels.