Hey @dboontje! I wouldn't say nearly perfect right out of the lens - that part is critical, of course, but to me, these photos are nothing without the finish - the images I capture on location are just the raw material to be taken into Lightroom and Photoshop to be processed and refined. I deliberately edit my photos beyond technical accuracy to evoke a feeling: since a 2D photo can never fully relate the true experience of standing in a place and seeing it oneself with all senses, I try to recover some of that vibe by making my photos dramatic, colourful, and/or a little surreal.
The exact process is too variable for a simple tutorial - every photo is a new adventure in editing - but my basic workflow starts by playing with all the sliders in Lightroom, experimenting and trying to get it close to what I want the final image to look like. I'll often add a vignette or a gradient, or do some dodging and burning to highlight different parts of the composition. Then I'll take it into Photoshop for the final touches - I might play with the color grading using Lookup Tables, duplicate layers with different blend modes, and then more dodging and burning, before finally adding a subtle gaussian blur filter (often referred to as an Orton filter) to soften things up (this is my favourite trick, and possibly the thing that you might call Derekproofing - haha! - though I'm by no means the only one doing this).
Wow thank you for your explanation. I have no urge to judge on all that, on the contrary, I am fascinated by your photos and want to learn to become better in both handling the camera as lightroom or photoshop.
I only started using lightroom since a few a weeks ago because @guchtere explained the same thing as you did. But I still struggle finding the right balance between real and surreal. Any how,... Great fan! Keep up the good work.
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