Editing or "Editing"?

The term 'edit' or 'editing' in the current sense related to photography, has been thrown around far more than one could count. In today's world on social media platforms for example, the term is user in a way that adding a filter or modifying color curves are considered "Editing". This is actually the farthest thing from the true act or effort of editing.

First and foremost, something to be understood before diving deeper into the concepts is that art in and of itself has to be considered one (if not the most) subjective topics among any other. Now, to understand editing from a graphical perspective (rather than a more traditional instance as such of painting, or drawing with a pencil), respective to the true meaning is a more technical process and therefore making it less subjective. To be more specific, the example to support this will be the act of color isolation process applied to a photo and how layer masks are used in order to do just that.

Below is a photo of an individual's Ford Mustang Cobra that was taken at a car event. The photo is UNTOUCHED as far as editing goes.

Un-Touched Image

Take a minute to review the photo for any kind of blemishes, imperfections or otherwise 'eye sores' that you would make a point to otherwise have revised and removed for a cleaner photo if the option was given.

Now the next photo is the same photo, with true editing applied to what was previously mentioned to have removed. Keep in mind the process isn't finished, but utilize the instance to understand what is being done as a process.

While you might not be able to pick out everything up to the current point in the process, however subtle changes are made to keep the photo natural and not look heavily manipulated as a main goal when practicing high level editing. In other words you don't want people to see the photo and say "That's photo-shopped."

Edited Image

Now here is a side by side, with each example of what has been refined in order to clean up those earlier mentioned blemishes or 'eye sores' circled in red for your convenience .

Before And After Editing "Eye Sores"

Now Lets get further into the process after the refining and cleaning of eye sores has been completed. Specifically, layer masks are used to isolate the color preferences.

Completed Edits [Desat, Color Isolated, Gaussian Blur]

To be continued.....