Step by Step make your wildlife wilder

Use the develop module to bring out the beauty of the natural world

01 set the tone

The image had a very grey cast to it, so the first thing we did was change the White Balance to Cloudy (found at the top of the Basic panel). For more control, alter the balance manually with the Temperature and Tint sliders. The Tint slider balances out excess magenta or green tones. Here, the Cloudy White Balance preset warmed the temperature to 6500K.

02 enhance the catchlight

Brightening the catchlight in the eyes of an animal can really help to lift them. With this in mind, we click the Adjustment brush, paint over the eye of the mouse only, and then boost the Exposure of this area to 1.70, the Contrast to 30, Highlights to 20 and the clarity to 20. Our Brush size was 15, but you’ll need to change this to suit different sized eyes.

03 fix the exposure

Click the Adjustment brush again when you’re finished to move onto general exposure enhancements in the Basic panel. We took the Highlights and Blacks to +50, and the Shadows and Whites to +30. The Vibrance was also upped to +30. The Tone Curve panel is another useful way to adjust exposure. Pay attention to the histogram as you edit, so you don’t clip detail.

04 add sharpening

After editing the exposure, move onto Noise Reduction and Sharpening as the final stage. Go to the Detail panel, keep the Radius at 1.0 take the Amount to 35 and the Detail to 25. If you sharpen excessively, you’ll notice that more noise starts to creep into the image. Use the zoomed-in preview square to see how the image changes as you edit.