STEP BY STEP IMPROVING ACTION SHOTS EASILY

With a few simple tricks, you can turn an action photograph into something rather intense

When cropping bear in mind these tips. To start, it’s usually best to crop with a predefined aspect ratio like, 4:3, for example. However, you can experiment in DPP with your very own. Also, try to remember to crop to benefit the framing. What do I mean? Don’t crop for the sake of it! Do it to remove visual clutter (like a lamppost you didn’t have time to omit), or as in our shot, to position the rally car so it has ‘space’ to jump into in the frame.

01 FIX COMPOSITION

If you were focused on getting the shot, you might have less than ideal composition. With so many megapixels it’s easy to use the crop tool to enhance your shot. Open your photo in DPP, and go to edit image, then select the crop tool panel. There’s a few standard crop ratios already there.

02 BOOST COLOURS

Try the Landscape picture style – it ups saturation and contrast for primary colours. Also, have a play with different WB presets. Then, work with the gamma adjustment to lighten shadows and reduce the highlights. The auto button is a good starting point for working with the gamma adjustment.

03 ENHANCE SATURATION

The colour adjustment tab lets you adjust the tones of specific colours and, in some cases, where colour of the main subject is different from the surroundings – this is a good way to enhance saturation. You can adjust the hue of each tone, its saturation, and lightness for fun effects.

04 SHARPEN TO THE MAX

Increase the sharpness with the adjust detail tab. Firstly zoom in to 1:1 size on the image, then make sure to choose Unsharp mask. Up the strength value to the max, then reduce it to where the shot is not too crisp. I then increase the fineness a bit and tweak the threshold for the best balance.