Wildlife editing masterclass

Whether you shoot in Kenya or Kent, editing wildlife photos requires special care and attention to detail. James Paterson shares some expert advice

- James Paterson

1 Keep it local

Local adjustments can help you to isolate and enhance your wildlife subject or their surroundings. What's more, the recently improved Masks panel in Camera Raw/Lightroom now makes it easier to create subsets of masks, which allows you to get really precise local adjustments in seconds. For example, one great edit for wildlife photos that include skies is to add a graduated filter to darken the sky. But what if your subject is on the horizon and gets darkened too? Simply choose to Subtract>Subject, and an automatic subset mask will exclude your subject from the darkening effect of the graduated filter, with each element in the local adjustment remaining endlessly editable.

2 Sync before starring

When elusive wildlife appears you’ll want to shoot lots of frames, which inevitably leads to whittling them down later. In Lightroom most would begin by starring their favourites and then work on enhancing their picks. But try switching this around. Make a few initial tonal enhancements to the first frame and sync those edits with the entire set, then begin singling out your best shots with star ratings. A quick tonal boost to the set can help you visualise the potential in other frames.

3 The raw safety net