Cactus Blossoms

When editing my photos I work with Adobe Lightroom to improve the lighting, color, and clarity. My goal is to create a realistic image of the photographed subject but with the ideal lighting and color giving focus to a theme or primary piece of the image. Any viewer should be able to clearly see the colors and textures present in the photo and feel as if they were viewing the image in person, in nature.

Techniques
The image was first cropped for the desired size and position. Next, the tone curve under light was adjusted into an s curve by creating 3 points on the curve at the quarter, half and three quarter marks. The shadows point was taken down, the midtones point brought up, and the highlights point was brought up. Under effects, dehaze was increased slightly as well as clarity. Within the color menu, vibrance was increased and saturation was slightly increased. In the color mixer, the red hue was adjusted for luminance and saturation.