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A Beginners Guide to Taking Portraits of Elderly Clients: Part 1 – Preparation and Rapport

17 Mar

The post A Beginners Guide to Taking Portraits of Elderly Clients: Part 1 – Preparation and Rapport appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Clinton Moore.

1 - Taking Portraits of Elderly Clients

You often hear it said that outstanding photography is about storytelling. An image may not have perfect lighting ratios or razor sharpness, but if it connects with you that can be all that matters.

Working with elderly clients can be the ultimate storytelling journey as these folks have experience in spades!

In this first of a two-part series on working with elderly clients, we’ll explore the practical and rapport building aspects of creating a story through the click of a shutter. Part two focuses on lighting and posing techniques.

How old is old?

Remember that there is a spectrum of seniors. Most do not think of themselves as frail or grizzled. Get to know your stereotypes and your subject.

One place where your point of view can get in the way of a great image is generalizations around age. You’ve fallen into this trap the minute you conceptualize your client as “old” or “elderly.”

They tend to hate these terms. Can you blame them?

It’s important to step back and remember that there is a spectrum of the elderly. A 65-year-old is probably going to be at a different place in their life, both physically and mentally, to a 90-year-old. This includes everything from their health and mobility to their attitude about what they desire in a portrait.

Just try getting a 90-year-old to go for a brisk walk down the beach at dusk as you do in your standard family portraits.

Step back and remember that you need to get to know where your client is at before you even pick up your camera. After all, age is a state of mind.

Rapport building

Older clients tend to take a bit more time to photograph. They’ve been around the block a few times, and they want to get to know you a bit first. Also, they’re generally not trained models looking for a glamour shot for their Instagram feed.

For them, a photograph is an event, not an addiction.

Older generations may only have had one formal photograph in their lives. Don’t assume they will be comfortable around the camera just because they’re there.

Communicate their way

You may be used to connecting through a world of emails and social media, but this isn’t always the case for older clients. For many older clients, their first instinct will be to pick up the phone (and we’re not even talking about a cell/mobile half the time!).

So be sure to place your phone number prominently on your website and any other form of marketing. This creates a sense of trust that you’re not going to just run off with their money.

Of course, many older clients do have email but may likely hold you to a higher standard of communication than you are used to on social media. Make sure you address them formally (i.e. “Dear John”), don’t use modern abbreviations or slang, and please check your spelling and grammar!

Creating comfort

When shooting a portrait, comfort should be your number one priority regardless of your client’s age. However, for older clients, you may have to do a little more than just making bad jokes from behind the lens.

Take the time to meet with your client before the shooting date. Sit down with them and be willing to share a bit of your personal story. This means more than just your shooting style. Tell them about where you come from, your family, or your interests.

This old school type of business approach might seem a little strange if you’re used to more modern online interactions. However, for older clients, it builds trust.

Try to keep in mind that older generations didn’t grow up with cameras being thrust in their face every second of the day. So your first job is really to make them feel safe. It’s entirely possible that the photo shoot was the idea of their children, and the client themselves may not be entirely on board.

So be sure to make them feel comfortable. Communicate your process and timeline clearly, and then stick to it!

Sitting down with your client can be the most interesting part of the whole process. Take the time to do it right.

Understand their goal

Who paid for the shoot? One of the tough parts about working with older people is that they may not actually be the client!

If their children are footing the bill, understand what they want from the session in addition to the older persons desired outcomes. Often this is going to be a case of compromise. This highlights the importance of communication and preparation.

Now assuming the older person is your client, the first step is to determine how they want to be portrayed. While this should be standard practice regardless of age, there are a few areas here that can trip you up.

If they’re quite old, this portrait could be the photo destined for the tombstone. No one will say it out loud, but people may be thinking it. As such, family members might have differing, but strong opinions about how things should look.

Keep in mind that some clients might want to be photoshopped back into their 20s, whereas others may proudly want their wrinkles on display. As always communication is vital!

Be careful about imposing your ideas of old age photography onto the session. Try to avoid the cliché shots of the serious or delirious old person. Instead, let their personality shine.

Avoid the clichéd shots and post-processing that portray older subjects as worn or child-like. Let their personality lead your images.

Get out of their face

Want to make an 80+-year-old client feel immediately uncomfortable? Get right up in their face with a lens. Aside from the fact that it’s probably not going to give a very flattering look, it can feel intimidating.

They may also not be over the moon about being surrounded by multiple light stands, softboxes, flags, and reflectors.

During your initial consultation, find out what level of gear will allow them to feel comfortable. If that means just the natural light through a window, then work with that.

Posed versus candid photographs

One of the most important initial questions pre-shoot is whether the client wants posed or candid shots.

While the client’s wishes should mostly steer this decision, you need to take a few factors into account.

Client’s who are experiencing dementia, particularly frontal dementia, may struggle with a posed photo shoot. Frontal dementia affects a person’s ability to plan and organize. So your usually simple instructions such as “open your eyes and smile on the count of three,” may quickly descend into chaos.

That said, if you’re doing a family shoot, a little bit of this chaos (provided no one gets too embarrassed) can be a great natural ice-breaker.

When in doubt ask yourself what style of shoot will best allow the client’s personality to shine through. A shot of grandpa tinkering away in his workshop might be infinitely more valuable than a stale headshot for the family.

Sometimes the best photograph won’t be the perfectly lit, composed and exposed image. A family snapshot can be infinitely more iconic if it captures your subject’s personality.

Length of sessions

When shooting significantly older clients, keep sessions as short as possible.

The process of having to concentrate on a range of different instructions can be quite fatiguing. There’s also a good chance that their preparation for the shoot started well before you arrived.

As mentioned before, clients suffering with dementia can also experience a phenomenon called “sundowning” which is a tendency to become more confused towards the end of the day.

See again the importance of making sure you know your client before you organize anything?

Jot down everything you can during your pre-consultation to create a fleshed-out idea of your client and their needs.

Mobility and location of sessions

Although a 60-year-old client can probably go anywhere you can think of; a 90-year-old client can’t. Something as small as a flight of stairs can pose a massive hurdle to a significantly older client.

Plan where you are going beforehand and give your client plenty of time to get there.

Asking them to cross a park to get to a beautiful spot you usually take your clients could end up taking more time than you had intended for the entire shoot.

As you can see, the minute you leave the client’s home, things get a bit more complicated. However, don’t let that discourage you from venturing outdoors. Just do the groundwork beforehand and make sure everyone involved is on the same page.

Be realistic about the areas an older person can access. A few steps may as well be a mountain for some. It never hurts to send your assistant to check it out first.

Conclusion

Working with older clients is a delightful experience. Their sincerity is hard to miss. To ensure you have the best chance at a successful shoot, take the time to prepare more than just your lighting diagrams. Focus on understanding the client’s goals and personality. Collaborate with the family where necessary, and make their comfort your number one priority.

Next time we’ll be looking at some ideas around lighting and posing older clients.

Do you have any other tips you’d like to share? If so, please do so in the comments section.

The post A Beginners Guide to Taking Portraits of Elderly Clients: Part 1 – Preparation and Rapport appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Clinton Moore.

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How to Edit and Retouch Images Using Capture One Pro

16 Mar

The post How to Edit and Retouch Images Using Capture One Pro appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Carl Spring.

Before and after split screen of edit

Whilst we all flock to Photoshop for our retouching, Capture One now has a lot of great tools. But is it possible to do a full image edit including retouching? More so, if it is, should you do it and avoid Photoshop altogether?

To find out, I closed Photoshop and settled myself down for a full edit using only Capture One Pro. Lets go through the process and see what I learnt.

Annotate

Capture One’s built-in annotation tools make it easy to plan your retouching for your images. A variety of colors can easily be added to the image should you wish. I really like this tool. It allows you to make simple notes on screen. While it may look like I am practicing my abstract expressionism, I am actually highlighting what I want to improve. In this case, the red is for retouching and yellow is for exposure issues. I love this tool! So far so good.

The annotate tool is great for making notes before you start the edit.

Colour balance

When the image comes into Capture One, the first thing is to get a good neutral color balance. I always start by letting Capture One get me into the ballpark via the Auto tool in White Balance. While not perfect, it gives a good starting point. I then tweak the color to taste. In most cases, it is only a small tweak from the auto white balance to get a starting point I am happy with.

Exposure

Continuing with the basics, next up is exposure. It always pays to get as close as you can in-camera, and this case required very little. For this image, I pushed up the exposure just under 0.5 stops and added a slight amount of contrast and saturation to my taste. All that was left was a slight highlight recovery to take away the worst of the hot spots. The worst highlights will be taken care of in the next step (and first layer) Luma masking.

Layer One: Luma Mask

New in Capture One 12 is Luma masking. I love this tool! It is such a great time saver for masking highlights. I use it here to mask out the highest highlights in the image and then use the High Dynamic Range sliders to pull back the highlights. Subtly is the key here. I only want to take the harshness out of the bright spots.

An image showing the luma mask in Capture One Pro 12

Possibly my favourite tool in Capture One 12. The Luma mask

Layer two (and three and four): Blemish Retouching

Trying to do any amount of blemish retouching in Capture One soon tells you that it wasn’t designed for this task. The system is clunky. You sample using the alt key (the same way as Photoshop); however, you cannot resample a different area on the same layer. Instead, you need to create a new layer and a new sample. I ended up using 3 layers merely to do basic spot removal (and this wasn’t even going as far as I would in Photoshop). Capture One isn’t effective for any serious blemish removal. I tried this process out on another image to see if it fared better, but it was worse. It got to the point where I just gave up. Yes, it works for simple items, but in the future, blemishes will be worked on in Photoshop only.

Layer five: Skin smoothing

The Skin Smoothing tool is a super-great way to improve skin with a simple mask and a couple of sliders. I use this tool all the time when editing wedding photography. It gives a great effect with such little effort.

The first step is to create a mask using a new layer and the Brush tool. Make sure you leave out areas of detail, such as the eyes and lips. You can then refine the mask to get it more accurate. I tend to use a number between 100-150 for most situations. After this, I go back in with the brush and erase tools until I am happy with the mask. A little tip here is to change the mask color from the default of red when working with people. It just makes the mask stand out more against the skin.

Next, the special sauce. A.K.A The Clarity tool. Just go to the clarity section, choose Natural as the clarity type and slide the numbers into the negatives. I generally find the sweet spot for this technique to be between -60 to -70. Much more than this and it can become a little fake. It comes down to the image you are working on. Simply adjust the sliders until you are happy with the result.

This on its own has a massive difference on the image, but when you add in the Color Editor tool, it takes this to another level.

Layer five continued: Skin Colour

The ability to work with color so precisely is one of Capture One’s greatest strengths. Editing skin tone is a great way to make your model’s skin glow. You can find this tool located in the Color Editor section. To start, click the icon and sample a skin tone. Next, you work with the two sections of this tool, Amount and Uniformity. The amount sliders are to get a skin tone that you are happy with. You then move onto the uniformity sliders to even out the skin tone through the whole face. As with much retouching, it is easy to go over the top. My tip for this is to do the edit, then take a break for a couple of minutes and come back. You instantly see if the image is over done and you can dial back accordingly.

We now have an even, soft skin tone through the image. This layer has made a huge difference to our image. It’s now time to finesse the details.

Capture One screen grab showing mask and colour tools

As you can see, the combination of the clarity slider and the Skin colour editor has really made a difference. The blue mask, maybe not so flattering.

Layer six: Teeth

The teeth need to be slightly whitened. This is as simple as a mask, followed by reducing the saturation. Again, don’t take it down to zero – it will look weird. Take it down just enough so that the teeth look naturally white. In this image, the sweet spot was -51. I then pushed the exposure just slightly to give a whiter smile. But again, as with all retouching, less is more.

Layer seven: Eyes

You sense a theme yet? I created another mask for the eyes. This time I added a very slight bump in exposure and some clarity to give them a subtle pop that was missing before.

Layer eight: The top

The red top the model wore in this shoot was just too bright. Using a combination of a mask and the color editor, I was able to easily reduce the red tone to something less overpowering.

Capture One screen shots showing before and after the colour editor

Toning down the red top means it is not quite as powerful in the image.

Layers nine and ten: The Hair

As the old saying goes; in for a penny, in for a pound. Having worked on the heal and clone layers for basic spot removal, this was going to be something that I was unsure would work. However, with a lot of trial and error, I produced something that was okay. Would I do it again? No. But, I did manage to improve the hair significantly from the previous state.

I ended up using a clone layer for one side of the hair and a heal layer for the other. Again, editing like this shows the limitations of Capture One for high-end retouching. However, after some trial and error, it did an okay job.

Layer eleven: Colour Grade

I generally don’t color grade images heavily – if at all. I usually prefer a natural look. But for this tutorial, I added a color grade. To do this, you add a new fill layer and add your grading there. This also allows you to reduce the effect by opacity or simply turn it on or off quickly to give different looks.

For this image, I decided to use Capture One’s excellent film grain emulations to add some soft grain. Next, I spent some time with the Color Balance tools pulling the shadows into the blues and highlights slightly into the orange. Finally, I used the levels to give a slightly faded look to the final color grade. That’s it. It’s done!

The final edit.

What did I learn?

Well, it is possible to do a full retouch in Capture One. However, in reality, it is clunky and nowhere near as powerful as Photoshop.

The worst part of this was the blemish removals. It was painful to use for more than a couple of blemishes in an image. Also when trying this on another image to remove an eyelash, it was impossible to get it to give a pleasing result.

The standout of this edit is a process I use all the time: the Skin Smoothing and Skin Color combination. These two tools can quickly take care of many skin problems you may see. As a wedding photographer, this is a powerful tool. I can make a bride’s skin look glowing, quickly and easily without the need to round trip to Photoshop. To give you an example, check out this before and after using only this combination. You can achieve quick, simple and powerful results in just a couple of minutes.

A comparison of before and after skin reoutching in Capture One

Such a vast improvement only using two tools.

Conclusion

In general, the color tools in Capture One are amazing, and as well as working well on the skin, they were great for color grading the final image. My regular workflow for an image like this would be a trip to Photoshop for the skin, then back into Capture One for color grading.

Overall, Capture One did give a good final result, but at the cost of time and with some frustration.

Can Capture One Pro do a full edit with retouching? It can – kind of.

Would I recommend it? No.

It’s just not quite precise enough to be able to use regularly for this type of edit. That skin trick though is gold!

Do you use Capture One for your retouching? What are your experiences?

The post How to Edit and Retouch Images Using Capture One Pro appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Carl Spring.

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Weekly Photography Challenge – Arches

16 Mar

The post Weekly Photography Challenge – Arches appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Caz Nowaczyk.

This week’s photography challenge topic is ARCHES!

Ryan Johnston

Your photos can include anything includes anything that has arches. It can be architecture, human, objects, nature, motion-blurred, cropped, minimalist, color-based or anything really! They can be color, black and white, moody or bright. You get the picture! Have fun, and I look forward to seeing what you come up with!

Holger Link

Some Inst-piration from some Instagrammers:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Evan Demas (@evandemas_art) on Mar 12, 2019 at 7:28am PDT

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Quima Montlló Sol (@laquima) on Mar 13, 2019 at 5:41am PDT

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Mohammad Ramezani (@mdri_dante) on Mar 13, 2019 at 3:27am PDT

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Vadim Sherbakov (@madebyvadim) on Mar 13, 2019 at 8:31am PDT

Check out some of the articles below that give you tips on this week’s challenge.

Tips for Shooting ARCHES

How to Tell Stories with Architecture Photography

6 Ways to Do Architecture Photography That Stands Out

4 Beginner Tips for Doing Architecture Photography

The dPS Top Landscape Photography Tips of 2018

7 Landscape Photography Tips You’ll Wish You Knew Earlier

Weekly Photography Challenge – ARCHES

Simply upload your shot into the comment field (look for the little camera icon in the Disqus comments section) and they’ll get embedded for us all to see or if you’d prefer, upload them to your favorite photo-sharing site and leave the link to them. Show me your best images in this week’s challenge.

Share in the dPS Facebook Group

You can also share your images in the dPS Facebook group as the challenge is posted there each week as well.

If you tag your photos on Flickr, Instagram, Twitter or other sites – tag them as #DPSarches to help others find them. Linking back to this page might also help others know what you’re doing so that they can share in the fun.

The post Weekly Photography Challenge – Arches appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Caz Nowaczyk.

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Lightroom Shortcuts Every Photographer Needs to Know [video]

15 Mar

The post Lightroom Shortcuts Every Photographer Needs to Know appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Caz Nowaczyk.

In this awesome video by Lucy Martin, you’ll learn Lightroom shortcuts every photographer needs to know to make their editing workflow faster and more efficient.

The Lightroom shortcuts every photographer needs to know

Help make your editing process be more efficient and fast-paced so you can deliver your photos much quicker by knowing these shortcuts:

G – Grid view
E – Loupeview
L – Lights Out – (isolates your image against a black background for previewing)
P – Pick (Flag)
x – Reject
Caps Lock – auto next
Cmd+Delete – delete rejected
D – Go to Develop
\ – Before/After
Y – Before/After Side by Side Comparison
V – Black and White
R – Resize and Rotate
Q – Spot Removal Tool
H – Hide adjustment Pins
Cmd+Z – Undo last action
Cmd+C – Copy Settings
Cmd+P – Paste Settings
Cmd+/ – Show all shortcuts

You may also find the following helpful:

Lightroom CC and Photoshop CC Keyboard Shortcut Cheat Sheets

How to Use Lightroom Star Ratings to Improve Your Editing Workflow

How to Customize Your Lightroom Workspace for Better Workflow

10 Tips to Make Lightroom Classic CC Run Faster

5 Adobe Lightroom Plugins That Will Make Your Life Easier

How to Find Your Photos in the Lightroom Catalog Using Filters

The post Lightroom Shortcuts Every Photographer Needs to Know appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Caz Nowaczyk.

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Polarr Online Photo Editor Review

15 Mar

The post Polarr Online Photo Editor Review appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Glenn Harper.

It’s hard to evaluate photo-editing software without comparing it to Photoshop. You tend to have preconceptions about what it should be capable of and how it should behave – even how it should look. In terms of functionality, many programs will struggle to compete against Adobe. In this Polarr online photo editor review, you’ll find out what you can get for free. Or not much more than free.

The colorful interface of Polarr. You can create specific effects under “Toning” by setting the hues of shadows and highlights.

Online photo editors work in your browser. They can be sophisticated, but the days of some of them (namely, flash-based programs) are numbered. Adobe will stop supporting flash in 2020, so anything that runs off it is likely to vanish or wither away.

Modern online editors are written in HTML5 code. They load quickly, but they also tend to be more basic than flash-based equivalents. Polarr is different. You can use Polarr online in a browser, or you can download it for offline use. There’s also an app for your phone.

Good first impressions

One of the best things about Polarr is its design. It doesn’t try to be Photoshop, and it’s intuitive to use. With filters on the left and most of the tonal and color tools on the right, there are shades of Lightroom about it, but it has a look of its own. You open Polarr, and you want to use it – or at least I did.

Polarr Image Editor review

A favorite Polarr feature of mine is its histogram. It’s neater than any other I’ve seen in online editors. It shows a colors histogram by default, which you can expand into separate RGB histograms. In the absence of a clipping display, it’s useful to see what your edits are doing to the image. You can drag the semi-opaque histogram wherever you want in the frame.

Not-so-good things about Polarr

Like most browser editors I know of, you can’t open hefty 16-bit files in Polarr. You’re limited to editing 8-bit JPEGs. This isn’t bad as long as the quality of the JPEG is high and it hasn’t been saved many times before. However, theoretically, you must submit to a lower-quality workflow.

A more limiting aspect of Polarr is that it exports everything in an sRGB color space. This might be a constraint of its coding, but it’s less than ideal if you want to print your files on an inkjet. For the web and online photo labs, it’s fine. In mitigation, it does embed a profile when saving, which some rival products neglect to do. You do know where you stand with it.

Who’s it for?

Polarr has one or two shortcomings, but it’s still a program with a lot of depth. Who would use it? Anyone looking for the following:

A free or cheap alternative to Photoshop and other costly pixel editors
Includes built-in special effects and retouching tools so you don’t have to learn complex editing methods or buy plug-ins
Auto image enhancer often a good quick fix for eye-catching web pictures
Intuitive to use, especially if you are familiar with sliders in other programs
No big downloads required and quick startup
Aesthetically pleasing user interface
Ideal for editing images for web or online labs
Backed up by an extensive library of online tutorials at Polarr Wiki
Option for more complex edits with the Pro version (subscription based, but low cost).

The Polarr Wiki website has had a lot of work put into it and includes many written and video tutorials.

Editing with Polarr

Polarr is nice to look at – clean and colorful – but how is it in use? I set out to learn what it could do. If I couldn’t do things the same way I can in Photoshop, what workarounds could I find? Polarr is sophisticated, so I was confident I could perform the most basic processing tasks and more.

Auto Enhance

I never shy away from hitting “auto” or “auto enhance” buttons in editing programs, because sometimes they give you a better starting point. In Polarr, Auto Enhance is aggressive with the Dehaze slider, and that tends to block shadows. You can tweak the result, of course, with the shadows, blacks and contrast sliders for instance. Auto-enhance does work well with flat, hazy images and can create eye-catching results in a single click.

This was a flat-toned file that has been made quite dramatic by Polarr’s auto enhance feature. The shadows have started to clip, but not anywhere important in this case.

Color and Tone Adjustments in Polarr

Leaving the auto settings and moving onto manual adjustments, Polarr offers Lightroom-style color and tonal controls (the latter called “Light”). It has Temp and Tint sliders for white balance, but no auto-white-balance tool to outrank your eyesight. A Vibrance slider boosts color without clipping.

When adjusting tone, Polarr offers highlights, shadows, whites and blacks sliders, which you move to achieve a full tonal range while watching the histogram(s). This replace a levels adjustment. Whites and blacks adjust large areas on either side of mid-tones. Highlights and shadows adjust only the brightest or darkest parts of the image.

Some basic editing in Polarr (original shown in inset – not part of software). Balancing the exposure a little, warming the color temp and adding some vibrance.

Again, the controls in Polarr are neatly laid out and colored according to their function. The controls haven’t been arbitrarily renamed, so you quickly know what things do if you’ve used other editors. Being mildly obsessive about detail, I miss the clipping display and being able to correct color by numbers (which is what auto-white-balance tools basically do). However, Polarr still has much to offer.

Polarr Curves

Polarr’s curves are modishly minimalistic, and they’re useful for some basic color correction. You have a composite RGB curve for adding contrast, and then there are the separate red, green, and blue (RGB) curves.

Not the finished result, but you can see how the color neutralizes as the histograms align. The left-hand picture is typical of artificial lighting. A blue histogram leaning to the left indicates yellow.

Used in conjunction with the RGB histograms, you can use RGB curves to remove color casts. You do this by adjusting any necessary curves so that the histograms roughly align with each other.

You can place a point in the middle of the curve and pull it up or down, or for shadows and highlights, place a point in the bottom or top corner and pull it along the outer axis. Polarr gives you the input and output RGB values while you work.

Sharpening in Polarr

Sharpening always strikes me as a bit of a dark art in that; whatever method you use, there’ll always be experts out there espousing a better way. In Polarr, you get a clarity slider that sharpens mid-tones and generally adds punch to images (easy to overdo) and a very basic sharpening slider with no radius control. The sharpening might be smarter than I’m giving it credit for, but there aren’t numerous fancy ways to sharpen in Polarr. I’m doubtful that that matters.

Other features and effects

Other useful features I haven’t yet mentioned include an elegant crop tool, a spot-removal tool with heal and clone modes, and distortion correction. Spot removal was a bit frustrating at first with my laggy browser, but it works.

I made the inset darker so you can just about see the original dust spot, which has been cloned over by the right-hand circle.

Polarr also includes film filters, a text tool with various graphics, and a face retouch tool with skin smoothing for flattering portraits. Plus, you’ll find grain, diffuse, pixelate and fringing effects. You can also add frames to your pictures.

One of Polarr’s film filters (M5) looks suspiciously like the teal-orange “movie” effect, which you either love or hate. Once I latched onto that, I started seeing it everywhere (Outlander, recently). Therapy is ongoing.

Pro Version

The Pro version of Polarr is subscription based, but it’s at a price you may not balk at. The Pro features are cleverly integrated into the free version, except you can’t save a photo that includes Pro edits. A pop-up appears asking if you want to upgrade or try the feature. What are the features?

Masks

The chief advantage of Polarr Pro is the inclusion of masks for localized adjustments. They include radial, gradient, color, brush, depth and luminance masking tools. These are all ways to select specific parts of the image for editing, and they work well.

Masking a bronze equestrian statue for some localized editing. Overlapping edges can be tidied up later.

You can use the brush tool if you want to manually select an area for better control. This includes an optional “Edge Aware” aid that, if used carefully, helps avoid overlapping edges when you’re painting areas in for selection. Brush size, compare, hardness, flow, feathering, erase, view mask and invert options are also present with masks.

In this picture, I’ve brought detail out in a near-silhouetted statue. Of course, I can alter shadows without masking, but other edits like clarity, contrast, exposure and saturation are usually universal.

Overlays

Whether with a mask or separately, you have the option of inserting an overlay effect. That might be your own added background or one of the many included ones (e.g., clouds, sky, weather, backdrops). This is all good stuff for people that like to experiment and create digital composites. A choice of blending modes helps you achieve the effect you’re after.

The sky in this photo was a little washed out, so I’ve dropped one of the more subtle Polarr skies in as an overlay.

Noise reduction

In Polarr, you can’t mask off sharpening in large single-tone areas. So, if your images are noisy and you think the noise will show in the final result, the Pro version offers color and luminance Denoise sliders. These are universal edits that don’t currently combine with masks.

The denoise tool is part of the Polarr Pro offering. Here you can see a before and after with quite a lot of luminance noise reduction applied to the right.

Summary

Aside from the sRGB constraint and occasional lag (perhaps my sluggish PC), I enjoyed Polarr. The sRGB thing may be universal among browser editors, and if you think of Polarr as a way of prepping photos for online labs or the web, it’d be hard to beat. Polarr is uncommonly pretty, which seems superficial, but the attention paid to aesthetics invites use. I’d love to know what you think!

The post Polarr Online Photo Editor Review appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Glenn Harper.

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Your Guide to Photography User Agreements

14 Mar

The post Your Guide to Photography User Agreements appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Darina Kopcok.

When you shoot for a client, you not only need a contract outlining the deliverables, but you also need a user or licensing agreement. You also need a user agreement if a brand or organization comes across one of your images on the Internet and wants to use it in some way.

User Agreements by Darina Kopcok-DPS

So what exactly is a user agreement and why do you need one?

A user agreement is a type of contract in which you as the photographer grant specific usage rights to a client or collaborator. They may only use the image within the bounds of this agreement.

Under most copyright laws, photography is as protected as any other artwork. In photography, you’re not “selling” your image or giving up your copyright. You’re giving someone a license to use the images for a specific purpose and time frame. In effect, you’re the “lender,” and they are the “borrower.” This is basically what happens when someone purchases stock photography.

The two types of licenses

There are two types of licenses: exclusive and non-exclusive.

An exclusive license does not allow the photographer to license the image or images to other third parties during the duration of the agreement.

A non-exclusive license allows the photographer to license the same image to other third parties under separate agreements during the same time frame.

Clients often want an exclusive license to ensure the images created for their brand don’t appear elsewhere. In some cases, so they don’t end up being used by their competitors.

However, be aware that they should be required to pay a premium for this exclusivity. This is why usage rates can go very high, depending on the client and their visibility in the marketplace.

When you give exclusivity to a client, it prohibits you from earning more income from your images by licensing it to other third parties, or through stock photography.

For example, I license my images through Offset, a division of Shutterstock. They offer high-quality stock photography for a much higher price point than microstock agencies.

I make a decent side income from being a contributor with them, without having the thousands of images required by other agencies to make stock photography worthwhile. Since most of my commissioned clients want exclusive usage, I don’t submit the images I license to them to stock also. Instead, I submit non-similar rejects from the shoot and even shoot specifically for my stock portfolio.

User Agreements by Darina Kopcok-DPS

What should go in the user agreement?

When you’re writing up a user agreement and setting your price, it’s crucial you consider the end use of the image and the visibility of the brand using it.

Licensing an image to a nationwide restaurant chain should have a different price and terms than the mom-and-pop taco joint down the street.

One example of how the details of a user agreement can become critical is when you’re dealing with a start-up or a growing small business.

If you provide licensing for several years or in perpetuity (forever ongoing), what happens if that business suddenly takes off and gains extensive exposure? Your image will become worth a lot more, but you won’t see an extra penny if you’ve given perpetual usage away.

The rule for user agreements is the wider the audience for the image, the more the image is worth to the brand.

When faced with a client who has good prospects to grow, keep your licensing period shorter and track when it expires via a spreadsheet.

The user agreement should also specify whether the license is exclusive or non-exclusive, and describe its intended use.

I don’t recommend granting unlimited use for an image; otherwise, a brand can use it across every conceivable platform – in advertising, on billboards and for product licensing.

Be very specific about how they can use your images. More and more clients are asking for universal and unlimited rights. If this is the case, they should be prepared to pay for it.

Specify the time frame in which the licensee is allowed to use the image. If they want to use the image beyond this time frame, they will have to purchase another license from you.

Another important tip is don’t provide a user agreement until the images have been paid for in full. Let the client know this policy and state on your invoice that the images cannot be used publicly until you have received payment in full.

User-Agreements-Darina Kopcok-DPS

Educate your clients

As with other types of contracts, a user agreement protects you as the creator of an image. It also prevents misunderstandings between you and a client that can lead to bad feelings and legal hassles if someone feels their expectations haven’t been met.

Unless a client has worked with photographers before, they may not understand the ins-and-outs of copyright law or why they need to sign a user agreement. Educating the client is vital.

If someone is questioning your contracts, they likely are not understanding the process. A local small business or startup brand may need your help in understanding the transaction.

User-Agreements-Darina Kopcok-DPS

Conclusion

When negotiating a user agreement, it’s important to communicate with self-confidence and to recognize your work has value to your clients.

At the same time, remaining respectful and professional can lead to building a mutually beneficial relationship – with more opportunities and income down the line.

If you have any other licensing and user agreement info you’d like to share, please do so in the comments section.

The post Your Guide to Photography User Agreements appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Darina Kopcok.

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A Beginner’s Guide to Stunning Close-Up Photography

14 Mar

The post A Beginner’s Guide to Stunning Close-Up Photography appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Jaymes Dempsey.

Do you want to take incredible close-up photos?

Here’s the truth: Capturing incredible close-up photos doesn’t have to be hard. In fact, it can be extremely easy – if you know what to do.

In this article, you’ll discover the secrets to gorgeous close-up photography. You’ll learn about the required gear (Hint: You probably have everything you need!). You’ll learn the tips and tricks for stunning images (and you’ll love trick number 3).

Bottom line? I’ll make sure that you leave with the know-how to take truly beautiful close-up images.

Let’s get started.

Step 1: Pick any camera and lens for close-up photography

First of all, the big question: Do you need expensive, specialized gear for close-up photography?

The short answer?

No.

You can capture incredible close-up images with almost any camera & lens combination.

Because here’s what you need for stunning close-up photography:

A camera (any modern DSLR or mirrorless camera will do just fine).

A lens that allows you to focus close to your subject (more on this in a moment).

That’s it.

You don’t need a tripod. You don’t need a focusing rail. You just need a camera and a lens.

Now: What counts as a close-focusing lens?

First, for a technical answer (that you’re free to ignore): I like lenses that give the subject a magnification of (at least) 0.20-0.25.

But here’s the thing:

Most lenses will actually get you pretty close to your subject – if you give them the opportunity.

So don’t worry too much about your lens choice. Just use what you have.

If you want to make sure you’re getting as close as possible, I recommend you test out a few of your lenses. Then pick the one that focuses closest.

Now, for a brief aside:

If you want to get especially close to your subject, then you can invest in a macro lens.

A macro lens isn’t necessary for close-up photography. But it does let you focus extremely close.

A great inexpensive option is the Tokina 100mm macro (for Nikon and for Canon).

Once you have a good close-up photography set-up, it’s time for the next step…

Step 2: Start with flowers for some stunning close-up photos

Close-up photography is thrilling.

And there are tons of subjects out there, just waiting to be photographed.

But if you’re a beginner, I recommend you start with one particular subject…

Flowers.

Flowers are easy to get ahold of. They’re not a super challenging subject. And you can capture some stunning close-up flower photos.

You can shoot flowers indoors or outside.

But I recommend you start outside.

This is for two reasons:

First: Natural light is stronger than artificial light. Which means you’ll be able to get brighter, colorful photos without much difficulty.

Second: Being out in nature is a great part of the close-up photography experience.

But, if it’s winter where you live? Don’t despair.

You can still take some great close-up photos of flowers.

Just buy a bouquet of flowers at your local supermarket.

Then you’ll be ready to do some close-up photography.

Is there a particular flower that you should start with?

I’d suggest you start with some bright, colorful flowers. I’d also suggest you start with flowers that are large.

Roses are a great choice.

Tulips are another option.

Once you have your flowers, it’s time for the next step…

Step 3: Find the best light for stunning close-up photography

You need to be careful about your lighting choices.

Because amazing close-up photography requires good light.

What do I mean by good light?

You want to portray the colors of your subject. And you want to portray some beautiful details (e.g., the curves of the flower petals).

This gives you a few lighting options:

First, you could use cloudy light.

Cloudy light is soft and diffused. This means that it will capture nice, saturated colors. You’ll also be able to portray some nice detail.

Just try to shoot toward the middle of the day. Otherwise, the sky might get too dark. And you need a lot of light for close-up photography.

Second, you could shoot on a sunny day. This will give you plenty of light for stunning close-up photography.

But be careful: The light on a sunny day can be very harsh.

So if you do choose to shoot on a sunny day, take photos in the early morning or late afternoon. That’s when the light is soft and golden.

(These times are often referred to as the “golden hours.”)

If you’re shooting inside, I’d recommend you go with the same set of options. Shoot on a cloudy afternoon or on a sunny morning/evening.

But make sure you place your subject near a window. Otherwise, you won’t have enough light to capture gorgeous details!

Step 4: Follow these close-up photography secrets to get amazing photos

You know how to select the perfect gear. You know how to find the best subjects. And you know how to choose the best light.

It’s time for you to actually take some close-up photos.

But how do you get the best photos possible?

Here are a few tricks you can use…

Shoot on a level with your subject for the most compelling photos

In close-up photography, it’s important you choose a great angle.

You want to portray your subject in a way that shows off its shapes and colors. And you want to take an intimate portrait – one that brings the viewer into the subject’s world.

That’s why I recommend that you shoot on a level with your subject.

What do I mean by this?

Simply position your camera so that it’s ‘eye-to-eye’ with your subject. You want to feel like you’re looking straight at the subject.

Only then should you take the shot.

You’ll probably have to crouch down low to capture this angle. You might even have to lie on the ground.

But…

…It’ll be worth it, in the end.

Shoot toward the sky for the best backgrounds

The best close-up photos have simple, uniform backgrounds.

Simple backgrounds don’t take away from the subject. Instead, they emphasize it.

So here’s a trick for some nice, simple backgrounds:

Get down low, so that you’re on the same level as your subject.

Look through your camera.

Then scoot around the subject, paying careful attention to the background.

Does the sky appear behind your subject?

If so, then that’s the photo you should take!

If not, you can try getting even lower. But don’t go too low – you want to remain as level with your subject as possible.

This works best on cloudy days. Your subject will have a nice, white background.

But you can use the sky as a background on sunny days, too. Just be careful not to shoot into the sun (because that will cause unwanted flare effects).

Use manual focus to portray the little details

Here’s your final close-up photography secret:

Use manual focus.

Why is this?

Manual focus allows for incredible precision when focusing.

And when you’re shooting at high magnifications, you need to focus as precisely as possible.

Here’s why:

In close-up photography, your depth of field is limited.

(The depth of field is the amount of the photo that’s actually in focus).

You can get the petal of a flower in focus, but then the stem will be blurry.

Or you can get the stem of the flower in focus, but then the stem will be blurry.

So you have to ask yourself:

What do I want to get in focus? What do I want to emphasize in this photo?

And then make sure you focus on that.

Unfortunately, lenses don’t autofocus well at high magnifications.

So you need to use manual focus, instead.

Start by switching your lens from autofocus (A, AF, or M/A) to manual focus (M or MF). There will be a switch on your lens body.

Then carefully roll the focusing ring between your fingers.

When focusing manually, don’t try to rush. Slow down. Glide from focus point to focus point.

You’ll quickly get the hang of it.

And you’ll be taking incredible close-up photos in no time!

Taking stunning close-up photos: The next step…

If you’re looking to take stunning close-up photos, I have good news for you:

You’re almost there.

You have the gear.

You have the knowledge.

You know how to find good light.

You know how to find strong backgrounds.

And you know how to focus carefully.

All that’s left…

…is to get out there and start shooting.

Do you have any close-up photos that you’re proud of?

Share them in the comments!

The post A Beginner’s Guide to Stunning Close-Up Photography appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Jaymes Dempsey.

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How to Tell Stories with Architecture Photography

14 Mar

The post How to Tell Stories with Architecture Photography appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Charlie Moss.

At first glance, it might seem like architecture photography is all about prestige projects, glittering corporate headquarters, and well-paid specialist photography gigs. However, there can be much more to architectural photography if you look a little deeper.

Architecture is a vast and diverse field. It basically means the design and construction of buildings or the style in which a building is built. Styles vastly differ from country to country, even from town to town. Very local architecture that is heavily inspired by the local conditions and traditions is known as “vernacular architecture” – and that is the kind of built environment that inspires me most in my architectural photography.

On weekends, it is quite common to find me out and about with a camera in The Cotswolds – the beautiful area of England that is on my doorstep. There I seek out beautiful examples of buildings crafted from Cotswold Stone – the local building material. The stone itself varies in color from beautiful honey to a rich golden hue, and it’s these variations that tell you where you are!

Head a little further south, and you’re in the city of Oxford, famous for its prestigious university. The story of the city and the university is told through its architecture and is a vernacular architectural photographer’s dream. It’s here in Oxford that I’ve based this article on architectural photography, but hopefully, you’ll find it full of tips and tricks for shooting any of your surroundings or those you visit on a trip.

1. Do some research

Before you grab your camera bag and walk out of the door, the first thing you’re going to want to do is a little research. See if you can read up on the most important buildings in the place you’re heading out to. Then see if you can work out why they’re considered the most important.

Look at images of the place that other people have already taken and see if you can pick out any themes. Other photographers might have had some smart ideas for locations – no harm in making a note to check them out while you’re there too. Is there a predominant style of architecture? A set of repeating motifs? Or perhaps a common building material? If there does seem to be patterns in the buildings, ask yourself why that might be and see if you can get to the bottom of what they could perhaps mean.

In Oxford, there is a long-running fight over which architecture styles best reflect buildings dedicated to learning and research. Are the Roman and Greek inspired Classical style buildings the most appropriate because of their obvious connection to ancient civilization? Alternatively, are the tall, soaring, pointed towers of Gothic architecture better for a university because it seems to be reaching ambitiously skywards towards God? The designers and patrons of the city have argued this backward and forwards for many centuries now, so it is the perfect place to tell stories about the architecture!

If nothing else, think of some themes that you might like to shoot while you’re out with your camera. I can never seem to resist a good photograph of a door, and nor can many other people judging from the subject’s popularity on Instagram.

2. Look for contrast

Images that juxtapose different but related buildings or themes can be very powerful when you’re photographing architecture. Well-considered juxtapositions of images can show both positives and negatives about architecture. In the first image above of the Radcliffe Science Library, I’ve tried to capture the contrast between the ancient Headington Stone used in the original Victorian library building, and the modern glass extension.

Both materials express different ideas about what it means to study science, and so together they tell the story of what science has become over the last two hundred years. The reflection of the tree brings the two together – reminding us that science is all around us and not just found in libraries and laboratories.

If you can capture scenes like this all in the same image then that is great, but do not be afraid to place two or more images next to each other as I did above in the images of Keble College.

3. Plan to shoot a series

Creating diptychs and triptychs in photography is as old as the medium itself. Setting out to specifically capturing two or three images that work together (and could perhaps be mounted together as prints) is a fantastic way to tell a story.

It might be that you plan these images specifically to be a series while doing your research, but often you might make connections while you’re out and about. The best tip I can give to you is to write down the connections that you’ve made while shooting in a notebook; otherwise, you’re bound to forget them while editing!

The two images above were a happy accident. I didn’t realize that there was a brand new physics building constructed in the last twelve months, and it perfectly reflects the chapel of the college across the road. This juxtaposition of science and religion is quite powerful, but also I enjoyed the way that the facade of the new building draws inspiration from the old. The tall rectangular windows of the new Beecroft building seem almost to be a modern version of the tall rectangular windows in Keble College built around a hundred and fifty years ago.

If you see an interesting image that wasn’t on your original itinerary, then stop and take a few minutes to photograph it. Don’t be so focused on your research that you miss unexpected gems – they might turn out to be some of the best photographs of your trip.

4. Bring the architecture to life

Regardless of how spectacular the buildings themselves might be, it is how the inhabitants of the city use the architecture that’s important. In Oxford, the primary mode of transport is the bicycle. There simply isn’t enough room in this medieval city for cars, and so pedal-power is far more efficient.

Every street and building has space for parking bikes – and if it doesn’t – the cyclists soon find somewhere to put them! To photograph the city of Oxford without photographing the bikes would be to miss out on a large part of what makes the place come alive.

Think of how you can show the life that lives alongside the architecture in your images. It could be something as iconic as a bright yellow taxi in front of the iconic Flatiron building in New York. Alternatively, it might be as simple as a reflection of a busy city street in a brilliant local coffee shop.

Try to capture what makes the place you’re photographing unique, both in the buildings and in what is happening around them.

5. Shoot the icons

While you’re focusing on the details and the hidden stories, don’t forget to tell the big stories too! Iconic architecture is iconic for a reason, so don’t keep it off your itinerary. The important thing is, once again, to find the story that you want to tell and try to capture that.

The above image shows the Classical versus Gothic war of architecture in Oxford in a single shot. The front building is the Radcliffe Camera, an historically significant library built in the English Palladian style inspired by the classical temples of the ancient Greeks. Behind its defensive wall is the soaring tower of All Souls College built in the Gothic style. You couldn’t get two more contrasting buildings in the same shot if you tried.

These contrasts and histories are the keys in photographing architecture. If you can seek out the interesting stories to tell, you’ll have no problem shooting great images.

The post How to Tell Stories with Architecture Photography appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Charlie Moss.

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When and How Often Should You Upgrade Your Photography Equipment?

13 Mar

The post When and How Often Should You Upgrade Your Photography Equipment? appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Lily Sawyer.

We have all heard of the shiny object syndrome have we not? Perhaps you have even fallen victim to it? It’s an easy trap; especially when we are newbies. I have certainly been a victim of it when I first started and was always thinking that my photography would improve if only I had better gear. Right? Wrong! However, your photography will be better if you have the CORRECT gear.

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From my experience of photographing professionally over a decade, I have realized a few things. One of which is that YOU control your gear – your gear does not control you. In other words, you can definitely produce mind-blowing images with the gear you currently have if you know how to use them correctly. Add a hint of creativity into it, and you are taking your images to the next level.

If you are a photographer, the very fundamental things you need to master would be understanding the exposure triangle, lighting (whether that be natural or artificial) and shooting in Manual mode. The first one underpins the last one. Without a solid understanding of the exposure triangle, you may struggle to shoot in Manual mode.

There is nothing wrong with shooting in semi-automatic modes like Aperture Priority or Speed Priority, but you get yourself in tricky scenarios if you rely entirely on shooting on Automatic mode. Your images will be inconsistent, and you will encounter problems in post-processing. Shooting in semi-manual mode still requires an understanding of what those modes do, so why not go the full haul and take the time to understand the exposure triangle.

With that preamble out of the way, I’d like to address the question “When and how often should you upgrade your equipment?” I offer my thoughts below which could greatly differ from other people’s opinions. That is all fine. It’s a free country, and we can exercise free speech.

Things to consider when buying equipment for the first time

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1. Your budget

Sit down and think about how much you can afford without getting into debt. If you are buying gear to learn on, I would not suggest getting into debt to buy your first equipment. It is true that professional, full-frame cameras are better, but do you need them to learn how to shoot? Absolutely, not! Can you only produce good pictures with these top-of-the-range cameras and not with old second-hand models? Of course not.

2. Your subject

Think about what you want to shoot. Your lens choice depends on what subject you want to learn to shoot. For example, if you want to shoot landscapes, don’t buy a zoom lens. If you want to shoot portraits, don’t buy a super-wide-angle lens. If you want to learn both, explore your zoom options. This brings me to the issue of whether to buy the camera body and lens separately or buy a kit.

Brands often offer a kit bundle to save you money on them and have a variety of options to choose from. This isn’t necessarily a bad choice, but it could also be a big waste of money.

A bundle often has a camera, a wide to medium zoom and a longer zoom. These are fine if you want to shoot outdoors in ample light. However, you will quickly realize that if you want to do indoor portraits, these lenses perform below par. These kit lenses are generally the cheaper range with a variable aperture starting from f/3.5 going up to f/5.6 maximum aperture as you go longer on the focal length. These would be inadequate for very dim lighting or indoor ambient light without flash. Ideally, you would need apertures of f/2.8 and wider.

If you opt for buying a camera body separately, then you have more options, both new and second-hand. Just make sure you check the shutter count of the second-hand ones to ensure they have not exhausted the upper range of shutter click guaranteed by the manufacturer before the shutter mechanism starts deteriorating. Most second-hand sellers provide this information; if not, you must ask.

Buying the correct lens for your photography purpose will put you in good stead right off the bat. Why? Because if say you want to photograph portraits, buying the right lens will help you achieve beautiful portraits. Portraits I’m sure you have seen done by other people compared to if you were to shoot them with the wrong lens. You’d forever be wondering why you could not quite achieve the look you want.

3. Accessories

Don’t go all-out buying every accessory on the market. These can be quite tempting but will burn a hole in your pocket and use money up earmarked for your main equipment. You would be better off buying the best main camera and lens your budget can afford and one or two essential accessories than spreading out your budget and making compromises on everything.

If you want to be a landscape photographer, for instance, buying a tripod and a remote shutter is a must otherwise there is little point in even trying. If your interest lies in still life, get a reflector. You don’t always need a tripod for still life photography, but a reflector always comes in handy. If you want to photograph people indoors, I’d say get a flash gun, even if you only want to use natural light. There will come a time when you realize that relying solely on natural light gets you into a pickle eventually and is no longer enough.

However, you mustn’t forget to buy absolute essential accessories – no matter what you are shooting:

a. Memory cards – don’t skimp on these. You want decent ones that you would be able to entrust your images!

b. A padded bag – there’s no point in shelling out good money for equipment and not have the proper protective bag for them!

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When should you upgrade your equipment?

1. Initial investment

This question kind of depends on your initial investment decisions. You see, brands often come out with new camera models every year or more to entice people to keep upgrading. However, while it is true that some of these new models have improved features, nowadays, things are being invented and improved at an alarmingly fast rate. So if you follow the trends, you’ll soon be out of pocket.

My advice would be to buy the best lens you can afford with your money and buy a camera with the remainder of the budget. New cameras keep coming out every year, but lenses stay the same for many many years! They hold their value more compared to camera bodies too. Not all good lenses are expensive. You can buy the 35mm f/1.8 (DX only) and the 50mm f/1.8, and they are excellent lenses for the money.

I have written an in-depth article on lenses which may help you decide when purchasing either as a first-time buy or an upgrade. See them here and here.

2. Upgrading

Upgrading is a good mentality to have but not to do often. Do have a plan for upgrading (which you may have to do eventually), but do not upgrade every time a new model is churned out.

Consider the following when upgrading:

Have you used your camera for the purpose that you have bought it for?
Is it now inadequate for your needs? Are you finding that you need better features now that you have mastered it? For example, you may want a camera with better noise-handling ability, silent mode or a swivel LCD to enable you to take high-up shots, or perhaps one with dual slots?
Are you at a point when you require another camera so you can use your first one as a back-up?
Is your current camera now broken or have broken parts? Then yes, now would be a good time to upgrade! However, if you really love it, you may want to opt for repair.

My first full-frame professional range camera is the Nikon D700. I have bought newer models since, but you know what? I still use the D700 for my own family photos; especially outdoors. I love the colors the sensor produces, and in my opinion, they have never been able to replicate it in the newer brands. The RAW images I get from that camera are the closest to that film-look that I love and the edits required are minimal. However, it’s poor in handling noise, it’s big and brick-heavy and only has one card slot. However, I won’t ever part with it and am happy to use it for personal shots until it breaks.

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Conclusion

I hope these considerations help you in your purchasing and upgrading decisions! Comments and suggestions of more factors to consider are welcome below!

The post When and How Often Should You Upgrade Your Photography Equipment? appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Lily Sawyer.

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How to Use Lightroom Star Ratings to Improve Your Editing Workflow

12 Mar

The post How to Use Lightroom Star Ratings to Improve Your Editing Workflow appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Ian Johnson.

Editing photos is time-consuming! The rule of thumb that it takes an hour of editing for every hour of shooting is not an exaggeration. You may find that sorting and grading your photos right after a shoot is one of the most tedious parts of your entire workflow – I know I do. Whether you are coming in from a long weekend of shooting wildlife or a busy day shooting a wedding, it is no small task to determine which photos to keep, edit, and store for later from a batch of a 1000 or more. Adobe Lightroom has several tools allowing you to sort, grade, and attribute your work to help you efficiently edit and store a photo. I will walk you through how I use the star-rating system to sort images for my editing workflow and long term archival storage.

My basic workflow is to import my images, use stars to curate the collection, edit the collection based on their ratings, keyword the collection, and then archive it.

Hot key stars

If you are thinking of stars as those little icons you click under an image to set the rating, let me change your world! Each star rating of 1-5 you can assign directly from your keypad! These “hot keys” are what makes the star rating system so convenient.

Your first assignment:

Open up Lightroom and select an image in your catalog. Now hit the “1” key on your keyboard. Lightroom tells you the image has now been assigned a rating of 1. With values ranging from 1-5, you can assign each value to an image for different things. Below, I’ll provide examples of how you may use these different values.

As a side note, Lightroom has hotkeys for everything. Learning them speeds up your workflow significantly; no matter which set of tools you are using to develop or print.

Lightroom has a star rating system which can be accessed under the thumbnail of each image in Grid View (G hotkey) in your Lightrom Library. Each image can be assigned a star rating of 1-5 by simply pressing the corresponding number on your keyboard. Using hotkeys will help improve your speed and make editing large photo shoots easier and faster!

Sorting files for deletion and advancing images to editing

Whether you are shooting wildlife, weddings, sports, or portraits the most important question you have after your import is: what photos do I keep? When shooting wildlife, you may have dozens of the same subject in slightly different settings or poses. At a wedding, you have many of the dance, but only a select few are going to make the cut to show your client, friends, or family.

You can use the star rating system to assign images for deletion. Why I prefer this over the “rejection” flag system is you can simultaneously start choosing what files to edit and which to delete using the range of values from 1-5 rather than the binary “yes” and “no” of the flag system.

There’s a lot going on during a wedding. When the day is all said and done you need to import the photos and then choose which you’ll keep, which you’ll develop, and which you’ll delete. Lightroom Stars can help you there.

Using Lightroom Stars to sort your work is easy and efficient.

Here’s a hypothetical situation: you import your photos and determine that a value of “0” (i.e., no rating) as photos to delete. You then decide that images assigned “1” are saved, but are a low priority for editing – perhaps these are b-roll images for applying general presets. You determine images set to “2” are developed immediately and images set to “4” are your best images. This multiple tier system ensures you only have to go through the images once and ideally not more than twice. That’s a huge time saver when dealing with large quantities of images!

I would recommend you avoid using “5” in your workflow. Reserve this for only your very highest quality images (more on that in the “Archiving content/ creating smart collections” section below.)

Once you’ve assigned ratings to all of the images, you can filter the image using the “attributes” filter while in grid view. Filter for all images = 0 stars to delete the images you no longer want and filter all images = 2 to start developing your shots.

Once you’ve chosen which photos to keep (rating 4) you can filter for them using the attributes filter in the Lightroom Library. Simply click “Attribute” and then set the rating to the image set you’d like to view.

Separating image content for keywording

If you are a wildlife photographer, and in particular if you are a bird photographer, it is very typical to change subjects (species) throughout the day. This may occur as much as every other shot. Once you’ve imported those images, it can be daunting to go about keywording your work so you can find them later. The star rating system can help you sort through them quickly!

Assign each star to a species and use your hotkeys to assign the star rating to that species. Once you’ve finished coding the species with stars, filter them using the attributes filter in Grid View and complete your keywording. You can then remove the star rating by highlighting the images and pressing the “0” key. There are many photography scenarios where you can apply this!

The diversity of birds creates a diversity of shots. It is critical to keyword your collection if you ever hope to find the images again. I used the star ratings assigned to different species to help sort them and keyword them.

Once a star rating has been set for a species filter for it to see all images with that rating. In this case, Marbled Godwit were given a temporary rating of 4, keyworded, and then the stars were reset for the image.

Archiving Content / Creating Smart Collections

Undoubtedly, you will create images you are proud of and want to save for future reference, printing, or portfolio work. As I eluded to above, these images should be assigned a value of 5 in your collection. Only a small percentage of your shots should achieve a rating of 5.

You can compile a portfolio of your best shots by establishing a smart collection in Lightroom. The smart collection automatically compiles all images in your catalog with a given attribute.

To create a smart collection right click on “Smart Collections” in Lightroom. Select create a new smart collection and then add the criteria for your collection. You can create a collection set from any attribute you can assign in Lightroom (e.g., stars, flags, keywords, etc.). As you go through the years, your 5-star collection set will continue to grow and document your progress and story.

You can create a smart collection to house your best work for printing or display by giving only your best images a rating of 5.

To create a smart collection you need to right click on Smart Collections and select create a new smart collection. Assign the attribute to the collection that you’d like it to contain. Simple as that!

That is it! I hope you see the value in using Lightroom’s star rating system in your workflow.

I’ll end by saying these steps are what work for me, but what works for you? Leave your thoughts on workflows in the comments below so we can learn together.

As I always say, “pixels are cheap!”. Be sure to make lots of them and then sort through them using Lightroom Stars.

The post How to Use Lightroom Star Ratings to Improve Your Editing Workflow appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Ian Johnson.

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