Rongnongno Loc: FL

Should the global change to an image come first?

Exposure, color balance and the like that are global edit by example.

What do you think and more importantly, why?

47greyfox Loc: on the edge of the Colorado front range

Short answer is global first is the advice I’ve always been given. Only reason I could ever think (even tho I’m sure there are many) is other adjusts being affected by the process and causing the user to redo.

timcc Loc: Virginia

The global changes I usually start with are horizon straightening, key stoning, cropping and white balance, as needed. I then look at exposure, color balance, HDR, clarity, levels, etc., to decide whether to apply each globally or as local adjustments in layers, or not at all.

Then I don't look at the image for a day or so, at which time I often revise many of the settings again, in spite of myself. At some point, I decide enough is enough, and declare it finally done. Except, of course, when covid home detention leads me to look at it again a few months later. . . .

R.G. Loc: Scotland

Global changes first? Always. Doing them at any other time is asking for extra work. Having said that, global tweaking at the end of the edit is OK as long as the adjustments aren't too extreme. Messing with colours at the end of an edit could get very fiddly but tweaking things like global brightness, saturation and clarity is usually straight-forward. Sometimes you can spend too long looking at an edit and you can be blinded to things like the whole image being a bit too dark/bland/flat or whatever.

Where Lightroom is concerned I recommend doing any cloning before you make any local adjustments because if you clone over an area that's been worked on with the Adjustments brush, stuff under the clone patch can show through even with the opacity at 100%. If that happens you can set the brush to Erase and exclude the stuff under the patch. Global adjustments with cloning are fine though.

Mark Sturtevant Loc: Grand Blanc, MI

First time commentating in this corner of UHH.
Its an interesting question, but I expect what is best depends on the situation. If you need to reduce sensor noise to the background while preserving and even enhancing details on a subject, then that seems best to do these adjustments to selected areas thru a layer mask. The layers can be adjusted globally, but then you make them local thru the mask.
But the another consideration is time. Doing fancier adjustments takes more time, and sometimes its wiser to just do simple global adjustments in one layer only, even if the more time consuming layers and masking approach would be marginally better.

Fotoartist Loc: Detroit, Michigan

Sometimes in Raw you want to do local adjustments along with global. Almost every time I have done that down the line I wish I hadn't. So my philosophy now is to do global adjustments in Raw and all local adjustments in a layered non-destructive workflow in Photoshop.

mwsilvers Loc: Central New Jersey

I usually apply my geometry related global corrections first. These include lens distortion, chromatic aberration, vignetting, horizon, and perspective. After that I will correct white balance if needed, overall contrast and sharpening, and other global adjustments as needed.

I use local adjustments next, often extensively on most of my images, to bring out shadow detail, adjust colors locally , adjust exposure, contrast and sharpening on specific parts of my image among other things. Once that's done to my satisfaction I may re-address some global settings again. Cropping, assuming it's done at all, might occur anytime during an editing session.

I use DXO Photolab Elite which does not support traditional layers like in Photoshop. However, it does have powerful local adjustment tools.