Skegss: Music photography editing tutorial

Episode 2 of my new photography editing tutorial shows you how I edited a photo of Skegss.

Matthew James Oxlade
Updated on

This is a photo I took of Skegss at Miami Shark Bar, and this article will show you my music photography editing process for getting the final result.

How I edited it

Step 1

I cropped the image to a square to focus the attention on the actual subject.

Step 2

Transformed the image into black and white

I decreased the highlights to limit the impact of the flash on the roof

I increased the shadows and the blacks to reduce some of the contrast

Increased the clarity to help make the champagne sit as individual droplets

Step 3

I used the masking tool to decrease the highlights on the roof only.

So the highlights the crowd aren’t reduced at the same time.

Step 4

I recovered the shadows along the midsection to bring back some of the details of the crowd.

I wanted it to be roughly a little less exposed than the champagne, which is the primary focus area of the image.

Step 5

I increased the exposure of the bottom half by around half a stop to balance the lower half to that of the top half.

Final image of Skegss

And that’s how I edited this photo of Skegss.

Skegss

Want more?

Check out the same style of editing tutorial I did for a photo of Dune Rats.