An amateur mistake made by the “pros”

This is not about the video game series.
And nope, not about the ring halo that you might see around the sun either.

We all make mistakes.
I often come across a lot of Social Media “pro” photographers making amateur mistakes and calling it their style. One of those mistakes is The Halo Effect. They kind of keep making the same mistake again and again without really putting effort in improving it. It can be extremely hard to avoid it.

I must say I have a keen eye for detail. This issue might seem silly to you at first glance, but trust me it ain’t.

The Halo Effect

If you ever tried making a HDR photo, you know what I am talking about.

Even if not, you might’ve seen many photos online in which there could be a white line, kind of disturbing, in odd places like on top of mountains or buildings. Similar to this:

That is called a halo, which appears near hard edges (areas of high contrast) if the photo is poorly edited. Especially if the photo is sharpened or edited more than necessary. To be even more specific, increasing the clarity or texture sliders too much in Lightroom easily adds the lines.

And not just a white line, there are cases where you can see a dark/light gradient falloff (depending on the background color) from the hard edge, merging into the background color away from the hard edge. Similar to this:

This happens not just because of all the above mentioned reasons, but also due to the infamous dodge & burn technique. Now I agree, this specific edit style does give a cool look to most images, but not all. And also if poorly done, this has the opposite effect which in turn destroys the photo overall. For that matters, any edit if done too much ruins a photo. Either ruins it or makes it digital art, and not photography.

How to avoid this?

It depends on your edit approach. 

At each and every step, make sure you are not over-doing anything. Keep an eye on local contrast across the picture, just not the overall contrast. If you are doing a dodge and burn close to a hard edge, you have to zoom in, pixel level, and paint carefully.

Here is a simple trick to remove the halo, demonstrated by PiXimperfect :

You can further fine tune this by reducing the quick select area. The more effort you put in, the better your shots turn out!

Does it matter?

Absolutely. That’s the reason why this blog exists. “Why”, you might wonder.

Hear me out.

These lines/halos are barely visible or noticeable on social media platforms because you look at them on your phone (mostly). Take a look at the same photos on a larger canvas. They could look way different, and probably disgusting. And one step further, imagine that same shot being printed. Flaws like lines or halos will be even more prominent. And I can’t believe how many people are not really paying enough attention to this. Head to #landscape on Instagram. Observe how many top shots have these lines and halos.

To me at least, it makes sense to say that if a “pro” thinks that processing a photo only to look okay on social media is good enough, then that person is not a pro. Just not. In a way, I am pointing fingers; hoping photographers would start putting in that little extra effort besides making IG reels.

Here are a few shots that I think are perfectly edited. If you like the photos, please support the creators by following their Instagram, simply by clicking/tapping the photos.

Questions? Don't agree with what I said? Shoot me an email! I’d love to know your perspective too.

Until then,
Wear a mask, vote and above all,
Stay curious, people!