[Video] Post-Processing Demo: Post-Trip Edit

Walking through an image edit from beginning to end.

Hi everyone, and welcome to this exclusive post-processing demo made just for you—our paying Fuelled by Creativity subscribers.

This image was captured during a trip to the Freshfield Icefield where we got a wonderful aurora display overnight. After shooting for a while, I realized I should get some sleep to prepare for the physical exertion of mountaineering the following day. After composing the image, I tucked into the tent and left the camera shooting (using the intervalometer on the Canon R5) and let the skies work their magic while I was asleep. The left-hand image here is the one I started with, out-of-camera.

In this video, I’ll walk you through my editing process, including:

• Denoising to clean up the image without sacrificing detail

• Removing distracting elements that pull the eye away from the main subject

• Fine-tuning contrast to bring out depth and dimension

• Cropping for stronger composition and balance

• Adjusting colour balance to better reflect the mood and light of the scene

• Sharpening to make the image print-ready

• A few final touches to help the story shine through

Let’s dive in!