garbage in, garbage out.

>>4500839
true, and still how do I know the best settings?
Because for example I like this tone, and someone else likes another, how do I know which one is better?

>>4500845
Subjective, art is subjective. There is no better "tone"

All forms of art, at its core is reductionism and framing. The skill of photo editing is in how well you throw away whats not needed and show / create a picture of what you want to show.

Technicalities aside, a simple example would be, you highlighting the blueness of the sky, or a warm yellow at sunset.

There's three things:-
1.) Composition/Framing
2.) Exposure (As in luminance)
3.) Coloring (As in tones).

The first thing is essential, without it, garbage in garbage out. Exposures can tell a whole other story, the way you modify light in your frame, the dynamic ranges, and constrasts, can be used for narrative purposes. Coloring works to give a extra layer of detail, personally the first two give form, and color gives soul to the form.

I sound pretentious, because i dont have a better way to explain it. I understand you want a quick easy way to somehow master a skill that takes years to make, but its not that easy.

For now focus on getting the composition and lighting correct (i.e dont make it too dark or too bright, simple stuff, dont sweat the complex stuff rn)

>>4500847
https://files.catbox.moe/ah1y5z.pdf

this manual is more than enough to teach you the basics of the craft, it has a lot of extra stuff mentioned for newcomers.

As for after you learn the basics, you can delve into photography sub-genres, what you just shot cannot exactly be classified, but maybe car or street photography?

Oh and after you learn to nail your framing and exposure, feel free to use LUTS or CUBE files for film simulation. It gives a nice way for newcomers to learn about color grading.

Once you find a particular type of film simulation or LUT you like, then analyze why, and try recreating the settings yourself, this is the fastest way to develop associations between abstract concepts in your mind and sliders and curves in your program. A suggestion would be to see a basic tutorial on color grading in your program of choice, to get a feel of what to do, and proceed learning from there.

>>4500851
Once you get a feel of how to color grade, you automatically will reject LUTS (or use them rarely) because the sheer flexibility of just doing it yourself cannot be matched.

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDhXA9nCkoqbThLirwLkb64n0WUPqqz5t
this guy's playlist is surprisingly good at compressing and presenting the key details.

As for gear, it does not matter usually. Sure IQ depends on the quality of the lens and noise will be bad in old devices, but one can usually work around said limitations, focus stacking for quality, regular stacking for noise reduction, exposure bracketing to combat low dynamic ranges and many more. If need arises learn it, or get better gear, post 2010 cameras with decent consumer/cheap lens will do it.

>>4500836
Its not my place to question where and for what you practice your photography for, but your two examples are the worst newcomer trap ever.

Fashion magazines take photos in studios with lighting equipment worth 5x that car, and im not including the cameras. Instagram is full of deep fried shit and nostalgia fagging, that feels more like a larp of photography than true exercise.

I suggest looking at the /rpt/, /fgt/ and /bpd/ to get a feel of stuff, also the fred miranda fourm is pretty good. If you have a phone the /ph/ thread shows that devices dont matter.

https://files.catbox.moe/4na0u0.apk
this is ProShot, a full dslr level control apk for android cameras, you can do great stuff with this.

Tl;dr git gud and practice more

>>4500836
not saying this to be a dick but getting your composition and exposure right is 90% of the work. "right" depends on what you want to do. If you don't know what you want to do when you're behind the camera you're going to spray and pray.
I notice the better the pictures are that I take, the less adjustments are required in post.
Typically when I know I've got a good picture I might make a few small bumps in the general exposure sliders in lightroom and maybe a tone curve adjustment. Localised filters (brushed or radial/linear) are handy when you're not in a complete controlled studio enviornment but these always come last in the workflow.

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>>4500836
>>4500851
Thank you for this PDF

>>4500851
Nice pdf, man
Saved

>>4500847
Wow all wrong. Luminance, tone, coloring are meme app words.

Photo editing concerns itself with manipulating the histogram (learn it and tools like exposure, contrast, local contrast and terms like tone and dynamic range will become clear). The second part is colors. Its simple, learn about saturation, white balance and hue. You are now knowledgable enough to take a vision and make it reality from a raw. This skill kan never be obtained by slider riders and phone app editors (Lightroom users included ofc). There is more to learn but if you take a week or two to understand the basics you will easily master the rest over time.

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>>4502650

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>>4502656

>>4502650
>>4502656
>>4502657
If you check the manual of your camera, there will be some form of exposure hint you can check to make sure you dont underexpose so much. Or if you try shooting raw you can brighten the image afterwards when it looks like this

>>4502655
>There is more to learn but if you take a week or two to understand the basics you will easily master the rest over time
Where can I find those basics? Is there a book or a YT video with everything I need to know about the topic?

>>4502657
These cars are suspiciously clean for a rally stage. Last group N event I saw everything and everyone was just covered in shit

>>4502661
it was CER25, asphalt stage. Almost no dirt tracks... sadly

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Since this is the unofficial /cum/ thread (old one is 2 posts from hitting the limit)

I took these pics of my '16 WRX STi last weekend

Left = Super Takumar 55mm f1.8 M42 lens from late 60s, thorium element iirc with some yellowing

Right = Pentax 35mm f2.4 DA SMC AL released in 2010

Body = Pentax K70 APSC DSLR

All shot raw and edited

I think I just left the takumar at a wider open aperture (since its manual) so it had more subject separation while the 35mm was at f6.7 and f8

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>>4503037

I did notice the DA 35mm had more of a cool tone (blue tinge) I had to keep editing out, while the takumar's warm tones worked better. This car can be a little annoying to take pics of, its a blizzard white in the sun and if you take the highlights out it gets more of a cream color (crystal pearl white k1x)

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>>4503038

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>>4503039
oh i like how these 2 came out but these are 35mm da

>>4500847
>Subjective, art is subjective
Wrong.

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>>4503040
What is your honest opinion on this editing?

>>4503038
>>4503039
>>4503040
You're really posting your plate number multiple times on 4chan?

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>>4503671
/p/ is a friendly board

>>4502655
Can we see some examples of your editing?

>>4503687
Why anon? If you werent convinced about something I said Im happy to discuss it. Which part of my post do you want to talk about?

>>4503671
oh no you will find out i have a excellent driving record behind my 2016 subaru wrx sti

>No unpaid parking violations were found for the plate number you have entered. Please note that parking tickets issued in the past four weeks may have not yet been added to our database. If you wish to pay a ticket you just received, search by the ticket number to ensure it has not been entered into the system.

america is difficult to get pertinent info out of number plates imo vs other countries. unless you have access to a police/law enforcement database in which you would be a complete idiot to risk your job to threaten strangers on 4chan. its probably why no one really edits them out car photos taken in america if you notice while japs/euros autistically edit them out

>>4503670

too brown, i think its the sharpness that makes it look wonky desu. maybe it needs added grain/softness.

>>4503703
>america is difficult to get pertinent info out of number plates imo vs other countries
Here in Australia if you pay the $20 you can get someone's address and name iirc. Haven't bought one in ages and they're meant to be for when you're buying a car as a background check on it, but if $20 is all you need to follow someone home after a road rage incident, it's had to have happened at least a couple times.

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>>4500836
My best advice is- learn the software. Learn what each area is affecting.
Then take a HARD look at the picture. Is it even worth editing? If the composition is bad, it's out of focus, or it's blown out... work on taking better pictures. THEN worry about the edit. There's only one thing worse than a bad picture- it's a bad picture someone tried to fix.

When you're ready to edit, decide where you want the viewer to look. Every aspect of the picture should guide the viewer's eye to that spot. Ask yourself, when you take AND edit the picture, what emotion are you trying to convey? Unless you're taking pictures of a shampoo bottle for an ad company, work on evoking emotion in the viewer.

And, give yourself enough room to crop.

>>4504056
Who gave you permission to post another dog snapshot?

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>>4500851
Thank you anon.
Ps fuck captcha

>>4504057

Thanks for the meme.