Beach Photo Editing Process

I really love this photo, mostly because the surfer is a silhouette against pretty sunsets, and I love the shapes of the waves and how the sun is reflecting right by his feet. This one was also an interesting one to edit, because it was hard getting the details in both the shadows and the highlights. I edited in Lightroom, and the first thing I did was increase the exposure and bring down the highlights, and then bring the shadows up, and then set the white and black points. This made it into a more HDR feel, and then to really make the image pop I also upped the clarity and vibrance. After these changes the image looked pretty good, but the sky was still too bright and the water really didn't pop. So, I used gradient filters to increase contrast and lower exposure in the sky, and then using adjustment brushes to make the color more blue in the water. After sharpening and some noise reduction (and a little bit of a vignette), the image was ready to showcase. Here's the before image at the bottom, and as you can see it lacks the contrast and color that the finished image has. 

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