That comment about my nebula shot being 'overprocessed' stung but they were right

Someone pointed out I had clipped the blacks on the Orion Nebula so bad it looked like a cartoon. I backed off the curves adjustment by 15% and the natural dust lanes showed up way better. Anyone else have a harsh critique that actually made their photos better?

2 comments

2 Comments

adamgreen22d ago

@avery_lopez nailed it with that dehaze thing. Had the exact same issue with my Andromeda shot last year. Someone told me my stars looked like little fried eggs and they were right, I was overdoing the clarity slider. Dialed it back by probably 25% and suddenly the stars had that sharp pinpoint look instead of looking like I smeared butter on the sensor. Those one sentence critiques are brutal but they cut straight to the problem.

avery_lopez22d ago

The comment about "clipped the blacks" is the kind of thing that stings because you know they're right right away. I had someone tell me my Milky Way shot looked "flat" and it turned out I was using too much dehaze in Lightroom which was killing all the depth. Dialing that back by about 20% and letting the natural glow come through made a huge difference - the stars actually popped instead of looking like they were painted on. Sucks to hear it but those one-sentence critiques are usually the ones that fix your biggest blind spots.