Edit Before You Cull Your Photos with Adobe Camera Raw

I usually cull my photos rather fast and delete them before they have a chance to see the light of day.  Why?   Because 42 Megapixel images take up a lot of space and if the shot was bad, there is no sense keeping it.

Recently, however, I have started to cull my photos differently.  I found that sometimes an image offers something more than its composition at first glance.  For instance, as a landscape photographer, I take a lot of pictures of the same thing with minor changing variables like waves, clouds, the direction of light, etc.   Sometimes those small details can be difficult to see when you cull before you edit the images.

Adobe Camera Raw, Lightroom, and ON1 Photo RAW afford us the ability to edit one image and then synchronize the settings across a large group.  I am using that ability to my advantage now by taking a base image with similar settings to an entire group.  I get the exposure and minor tone settings dialed in, and then I synchronize it over a group of photos.  Then I begin the culling process when I can see the potential of the image before it meets the chopping block.

Adobe Camera Raw image setting syncing

In this video tutorial, I will show you why this is paramount when editing your photos.  On a recent trip to Olympic National Park, I was in a rush to get a shot, I was light painting, and a wave was fast approaching.   I didn’t have much time to think, just shoot.  In turn, my white balance did some funky things, but I kept the shot just in case.   During post-production, I was curious to see what I could get out of it and found it to be the best shot of the night.

Had I played the game of “Which One Of These Is Not Like The Others”  and deleted it, I would have lost it forever!  Take a look at this in-depth video tutorial to see the process in action!

Blake Rudis
f.64 Academy and f.64 Elite are the brainchildren of Blake Rudis. While he is a landscape photographer, he is most passionate about post-processing images in Photoshop and mentoring others.

For Blake, it's all about the art and process synergy. He dives deep into complex topics and makes them easy to understand through his outside-the-box thinking so that you can use these tricks in your workflow today!
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