How do I develop Images?

 

Personally, I cannot do photography directly out-of-camera. I need RAW and post-processing. You can accuse my of fudging. But I think post-processing is more realistic than point and shoot. All photographs are only a moment in time, taken at a specific angle of view and a well-chosen spot, then processed by technology, in camera or out of camera. I edit pictures to reflect the situation and my view of it as much as possible.

Here are the steps I take almost with all pictures, demonstrated using the picture above and its original below. I use Lightroom.

• I straighten the verticals and horizontals, using the embedded lens corrections as well as the Lightroom tool for the correction of the perspective. That is why the frame of the picture runs parallel to the sides of the image above. As much as I try, I cannot get this perfect on the scene. There is some optical waviness remaining in this picture, maybe due to the light shining on the frame.
• I crop almost any picture. I try to stick at 16:9 or 3:2 because I have passepartouts for that aspect ratio, and 16:9 fills the computer screen. But if that is not possible or I don't like it, I crop in other ways too. In this picture, all unnecessary elements are cropped, leaving the picture and the group in front of it as the main actors. I don't want to include the floor.
• In most cases, the highlights and shadows are reduced a bit for a less harsh look. But I hate any from of HDR and want contrasts. I often drag the whites up and add contrast to avoid a dull look.
• The colors need to be carefully fixed. Most of the time, I want more red, but not lose the blues from the sky. In this case, I just dragged the warmth up a bit. Often, I use the calibration, especially the slider for blue. In many nature scenes, it is necessary to calibrate the greens down. You can also do that in the color mixer, of course. Skin tones are most critical. For a fresh skin, you often need to add purple and reduce green.
• Noise reduction is rarely critical for me, because I stay below ISO1600 on full frame and ISO800 on APS-C. Of course, sports and kids in dark rooms require more to get a short enough shutter speed. I avoid such scenes. For ISO1600, I take at most 50% of noise reduction in luminance, much less for color noise. The details sliders are at 25%. To avoid fixing this every time, you can create a preset which depends on the ISO settings.
• All RAW images must be sharpened at least 40%. Otherwise, they are softened. I sharpen at 80% with 1.0 radius and 25% details. It is important to put masking on 50%. Otherwise, you sharpen the noise in the sky. Avoid over-sharpening. Have a look at contrasting edges. The should not get a border of brightness. The amount of sharpening depends on the output medium too.
• I often reduce the clarity to give images a soft look, pleasant to look at. Sometimes I do it only outside the main subject, or add clarity selectively with a brush or radial mask. 
• I often create a vignette using an inverted radial mask with -1 stop of brightness, sometimes more.
• For more drama, one can add selective brightness or darkness with a brush mask, possibly including contrast or clarity.
• It is also a good idea to try to dehaze some images. This adds punch to the colors. See, how it looks like.
• I do remove objects from time to time which make the image less powerful, things like branches in the sky, waste baskets in the distance, specs on flowers. If you do not like that, I can understand your concerns. 

In many pictures, I do only a fraction of these edits.

For another example, have a look at this original image. This was shot with a 16:9 aspect ration in mind. I only included the houses and the lamp because I had to. Exposure is for the sky, not the windmill.

Consequently, I chop away all elements which do not belong the main subject, increase the shadows, but not too much, and add some reds. That's all.