The Natural Wildlife Edit Workshop
A Stress-Free Guide to Wildlife Photography Editing
DxO Photolab & Adobe Lightroom Classic
Online Workshop
Dates: January 16th 2027 & April 17th 2027
Time: 10am until 2pm
Cost: £95.00
For a lot of wildlife photographers, the enjoyment of being out with a camera disappears the second they sit down at a computer. You come back from a great morning in the field, open up a RAW file, and suddenly you are staring at dozens of sliders—wondering why the edit looks flat, noisy, or completely unnatural.
I built this four-hour session to cut through that frustration and give you a straightforward, repeatable editing routine that works every time you sit down at your desk.
Crucially, this is not about teaching you to copy how I edit. Everyone sees light, texture, and wildlife differently, and the goal is to give you the technical confidence to edit your work the way you want it to look. I am simply showing you the mechanics: how to balance exposure cleanly, how to handle tricky greens and harsh contrast, and how to separate your subject from a busy background without leaving ugly halos or making the animal look pasted in.
I will be running the entire workflow live in both Adobe Lightroom Classic and DxO PhotoLab. Whether you are happy staying inside Adobe's subscription or want to move over to a one-off perpetual licence with DxO, the core principles do not change. Once you understand how to control tone, contrast, and colour properly, you can apply this workflow to whatever software you prefer to use.
What You Will Learn:
The Pre-Processing Clean (High-ISO & Demosaicing): How I clean sensor noise and recover critical micro-detail using DxO PureRAW—essential for low-light woodland and overcast UK conditions—alongside native Lightroom noise reduction workflows.
Foundational Tonal Hierarchy: How to balance exposure, dynamic range, and white balance accurately so the initial base grade accounts for 90% of your finished image.
Natural Subject Separation: Isolating your subject from complex backgrounds using nuanced, feathered luminance and radial masks, creating realistic three-dimensional depth without halos or cut-out artefacts.
Authentic Colour: Calibrating tricky hues—particularly damp temperate greens and harsh summer earth tones—to reflect genuine ecological environments rather than garish, over-saturated caricatures.
Discipline: Developing a fast, decisive workflow. If an edit takes longer than ten minutes, the frame likely lacks the underlying fieldcraft. I teach you how to enhance strong captures rather than trying to rescue flawed ones.
The "Only Exemplify" Standard: Ensuring every adjustment honours what was physically present in the field. No artificial rim lighting, no manipulated catchlights, and no altered sun angles.
Pixel Integrity & Cropping Limits: Understanding sensor resolution limits and focal length realities to prevent over-cropping and maintain gallery-grade sharpness.
The Workshop Structure:
Part 1: The Foundation: I will walk you through my complete workflow using 2 case studies (1 edited within DxO Photolab and one within Adobe Lightroom Classic), showing you every step from the original RAW to the finished image.
Part 2: The Application: We will all work on the same RAW file, and go through the whole workflow step by step.
Break
Part 3: The Implementation: A hands-on hour where you work on your own photos with my live guidance to help you navigate any hurdles.
Part 4: Review & Critique: A supportive group session where we review the edits made during the class and discuss those small, subtle refinements that make a big difference.
Part 5: The Close: The software giveaway and final Q&A.
Key Information:
Cost: £95 per person
Group size: Strictly capped at 8 places per session to ensure time for direct questions, live file troubleshooting, and personal feedback.
Format: Interactive, live online masterclass hosted via Google Meet.
Duration: 4 hours (including structured breaks and an open raw file review).
What Is Included:
DxO PureRAW Full Licence Draw: Automatic entry into an exclusive draw to win a full commercial licence for DxO PureRAW (Retail Value: £115).
Certified 20% DxO Discount: A dedicated 20% discount code valid across the entire suite of DxO software.
The Natural Edit Workflow Guide: A downloadable reference PDF of my entire workflow.
Permanent Recording Access: Downloadable, lifetime access to the full recording within 24 hours of completion, allowing you to revisit specific techniques at your own pace.
Next Available Date: 16/01/2027 | 10:00 – 14:00 GMT.
Subsequent Date: 17/04/2027 | 10:00 – 14:00 GMT.
What You Will Need:
Software: A working installation of your chosen editing platform:
If you use Adobe Lightroom Classic: Please download and install the free, fully functional trial of DxO PureRAW before we start. It integrates directly into Lightroom as a plugin, costs nothing for the trial period, and allows you to test the optical corrections and high-ISO demosaicing live on your own files during our practical sprint.
If you use DxO PhotoLab: You are ready to go (either with your existing software or the free 30-day trial). PhotoLab already includes the DeepPRIME demosaicing engine natively, so no additional software is needed.
If you use another editor (Capture One, Affinity Photo, etc.): You are welcome to stick with your current setup. While I demonstrate live in Lightroom and PhotoLab, the underlying mechanics of exposure balance, tonal distribution, and colour science apply universally, and I will help you translate them during the session.
Hardware: A desktop computer or laptop with a stable broadband connection capable of streaming video. A second display is recommended so you can have Google Meet open on one screen and your editing software on the other, though a single monitor with split-screen viewing is fine.
Your RAW Files: Up to two unedited, challenging RAW files for you to work on in part 3.
Good To Know:
Full Session Recording Included: Every participant receives high-definition downloadable access to the complete session recording within 24 hours. You can revisit the technical workflows, keyboard shortcuts, and masking steps at your own pace whenever you need a refresher.
No Presets Sold: I do not believe in universal presets. Light, white balance, and contrast change with every encounter. I teach you how to read your file’s data and make intentional, bespoke adjustments based on the specific geometry of light in your image.
100% Ethical & Competition-Compliant: Every technique taught strictly complies with international competition rules for unmanipulated categories. We cover raw sharpening, dynamic range recovery, local contrast, and colour grading—never composite work, AI generative fill, or subject tampering.
Practice File Pack: Ahead of the session, you receive a curated pack of my own raw field files to download, allowing you to test tools and follow each step live on your own screen.
