Editing is an art in itself. And like any other artform, it’s quite subjective. Every person has their own way of editing a particular photo. And what may look like a great result to you, may not necessarily be appealing to others. Photographer Jessica Kobeissi decided to test this theory out in an interesting way. She ran a competition where she circulated one of her photos among her subscribers asking them to edit it. Later she picked the best from the bunch and awarded them. When you look at the results, it’s quite interesting:
Even with the handful of selections that Kobeissi had narrowed down to, you could see the variations in the levels of editing done to the image. A few of the artists stuck with simple edits like exposure correction, skin retouching, and brightening the eyes. And the results were pretty good nevertheless. On the other hand, quite a good number of artists opted to go that extra mile. They went on to do some complex edits like adding textures, lens flares, applying filters, color grading, and even background replacement.
As we said earlier, all the artists have a vision and a taste of their own. So, there was nothing too surprising with the pool of submissions. However, what’s surprising is how Kobeissi chose two edits which had the least amount of edits to be the winners. If you pay attention to both the winning entries, both feature some simple and soft edits. There are no extra elements added to the photograph, and the simplicity is what makes them stand out from the rest. Maybe that’s why she thought they were deserving.
What do you think of the winning entries? Are you a fan of the basic edits or do you prefer going that extra mile? We’d love to know.
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Nice to see, everyone has his own methods. I like Basic retouching more naturaly touch.