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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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How to Develop Better Black and White Photos in Lightroom

08 Mar

The post How to Develop Better Black and White Photos in Lightroom appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Darina Kopcok.

Achieving great looking black & white images in Lightroom is not about converting your colour images to grayscale with the click of your mouse and calling it a day.

Black & white photography is subtle, and it takes experience to see and understand its nuances. Lightroom has a fantastic set of tools to help you create stunning black & white images.

Here are some tips and some mistakes to avoid.

Develop Better Black and White Images in Lightroom-Darina Kopcok-DPS

Converting to black and white

There are several ways to convert your color images to black & white in Lightroom.

You can use one of Lightroom’s presets or completely reduce the color saturation.

Or you can convert your color image to grayscale in Lightroom by simply hitting “V” on your keyboard, or clicking on Black & White under Color Treatment in the Basic panel.

Whatever you decide to do, know that you will have to make some tweaks in Lightroom to get the best possible result.

Develop Better Black and White Images in Lightroom-Darina Kopcok-DPS

Using Black and White Mix

Once you have converted your image, a panel called Black & White Mix will appear under the Tone Curve panel.

The sliders here give you control over the way colors are translated into grey tones in Lightroom. When you convert to grayscale, all the colors will be at zero.

Develop Better Black and White Images in Lightroom-Darina Kopcok-DPS

Making some simple adjustments in this panel can make a dramatic difference in the quality of your photos.

For example, if you’re working on a landscape image, using the blue sliders will help you adjust the sky.

If you’re new to black and white processing in Lightroom, play around with the sliders to see how each of them affect your photo. With a bit of experimentation, you’ll get a feel for which sliders alter the various tones in your image in a way that helps you achieve the look you’re going for. You’ll also develop your signature black and white editing style.

Develop Better Black and White Images in Lightrppm-Darina Kopcok-DPS

Boost Tonal Contrast

In addition to tweaking the Black & White Mix sliders, you should make other manual adjustments in Lightroom to adjust the tonal contrast in your photograph.

Tonal contrast is the differences in brightness throughout your image. If there are stark differences between your tones – say, a very light subject against a dark background, then we would say the photo has a lot of tonal contrast.

One benefit of actually shooting in black & white is that you don’t have to ignore color and try to understand your scene in terms of light or dark tones. Shooting with your DSLR camera in Monochrome Mode will help you with your composition, especially if you’re new to black & white photography.

Develop Better Black and White Images in Lightroom-Darina Kopcok-DPS

Boost texture in your images

A key way to enhance your black & white photographs in Lightroom is to boost texture. Bringing out the texture emphasizes the details in a photograph.

One of the easiest ways to enhance texture in your black & white images is with the Clarity slider.

Clarity increases the contrast in a photograph, but not as drastically as the Contrast slider does.

You have more leeway with clarity in black & white than you do with color.

In Lightroom, there are to ways to work with clarity. One is to use the Clarity slider in the Basic panel. This is a global adjustment that affects the entire photo. You can also selectively add Clarity with the Adjustment Brush.

You want to do this when it makes sense to boost the texture in a certain part of the photo.

If you have an image where the subject is in focus but the background is blurred out, there is no point in adding clarity to the whole image. Focus on the area that you want to enhance. This will increase sharpness. Since the eye tends to go to sharper areas first, it makes sense to boost sharpness selectively. Adding clarity is one way of doing that.

Develop Better Black and White Images in Lightroom-Darina Kopcok-DPS

Mistakes to avoid

Common mistakes that photographers make are related to misuse of texture and contrast.

If you’re converting your color images to grayscale, you’ll notice that they look a little flat. You need to add some contrast, but the problem is that it’s easy to go too far and lose details in the highlights and shadows.

Look closely at your images. Are they too dark in the darker areas? Do they look muddy, or even “crunchy”–with angular rather than blurred edges?

This gives images an over-processed HDR look, which is not desirable in most cases.

Do add contrast and clarity, but fine the right balance for each particular image. The same goes for clarity.

Develop Better Black and White Images in Lightroom-Darina Kopcok-DPS

Again, the amount you add will really depend on the photograph. For example, you may want to add clarity to a portrait of a male to bring out the textures in the skin and hair, but use negative clarity to smooth the skin in a female portrait. Clarity can bring out wrinkles and imperfections in the skin and make the subject look older if not applied with care.

Another mistake photographers make when editing their black & white photos is to over-sharpen them.

When sharpening, I recommend using the Sharpening Mask.

To do this, choose the sharpening level you desire in Lightroom. Hold down the Alt/Option key and slide the Masking slider. You’ll see the image change to look something like an x-ray. This is showing you where Lightroom is intelligently sharpening your photograph.

Developing Black and White in Lightroom-Darina Kopcok-DPS

In most photographs, you don’t necessarily want every single bit of the image sharpened, the same way you don’t need texture in every part of the image. By using Sharpening Mask, you can apply the sharpening to the most important part of the photo. I often leave mine in the range of 70-90.

Plug-Ins

There are a host of plug-ins available for Lightroom that can really enhance your images and your editing process, such as Topaz Black & White, or Perfect B&W.

However, a lot of black & white photography photographers say the gold standard of plug-ins for black & white photography is Silver Efex Pro.

Silver Efex Pro has a tool called Structure, which works in a similar way to Clarity in Lightroom, but has four sliders that help you tweak your tones with a great deal of control. If you shoot a lot of black & white photography, or plan on doing so, this is definitely one plug-in I would recommend that you purchase.

Develop Better Black and White Images in Lightroom-Darina Kopcok-DPS

In Conclusion

To achieve better black & white photos in Lightroom takes a subtle hand and training your eye to look at tones instead of color.

The good thing about Lightroom is that your files are non-destructible, so feel free to tweak your images to your heart’s content. Everything is undoable with the click of your mouse.

With a bit of practice and experimentation, you’ll be developing brilliant black and white images in no time.

If you have any other tips or black and white photos you’d like to share, please do so in the comments section.

The post How to Develop Better Black and White Photos in Lightroom appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Darina Kopcok.

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How to Edit Silhouette Photos in Lightroom

05 Mar

The post How to Edit Silhouette Photos in Lightroom appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Kunal Malhotra.

Clicking silhouette photos is in itself a different kind of experience. Unlike photos where the subject is exposed correctly, here the subject appears completely dark.

However, there must be situations when you are not able to capture a proper silhouette image in-camera. The reasons could be anything from incorrect exposure settings to the insufficient dynamic range in the frame.

Even if you can capture a proper silhouette, chances are the colors might not be as saturated as you desire. Using Lightroom, we can get a proper silhouette with the required saturation.

Achieve ideal contrast

As I mentioned earlier, there can be silhouette images which might not have your subject appear as pitch black. Now to make your subject appear black and preserve details in the backdrop, you need to make a few changes in Lightroom.

As you can see in the photo above, I tried my best to capture a silhouette while maintaining details in the background. You can see the boat clearly, and the clothes are still visible. I have opened this image in Lightroom and made few adjustments, after which I was able to achieve a perfect silhouette.

If you refer to the toolbar on the image above, all I did was adjust the shadows and blacks. Usually while working on I silhouette, I always play with the shadows first and then blacks if needed.

In this situation, I was able to make the subject appear completely dark within seconds. However, this silhouette still lacks saturation, right? Let’s work on that too and make it a perfect silhouette.

Enhancing colors

You might make a colorful silhouette or convert it to monochrome, depending on what you like. If you plan to keep it colored, you might have to enhance the colors present in your frame. You can do this in Lightroom, and it is uncomplicated.

Primarily you have to play with four sliders: Vibrance, Saturation, Temperature, and Tint. Vibrance and Saturation allow you to boost all the color tones in the image whereas Temperature and Tint allow you to adjust the color tones ranging from blue to yellow or green to pink.

Using these four sliders, you can get your desired combination of color tones and vividness. As you can see in the two images shared above, the first one had cooler tones while the second had warmer feel to it.

If you wish to go a step forward and make fine adjustments to each color in the frame, you can use the HSL (Hue, Saturation, and Luminance) slider. Let me take another example at the above image does not have multiple primary colors.

As you see in the comparison above, the image on the right looks much more punchy and vibrant. If I wanted something like the image on the left, I could have simply adjusted the vibrance and saturation. However, I knew that I could achieve more by adjusting the HSL sliders. You can increase/decrease hue, saturation, and luminance of a particular color without affecting other colors in the image. This is the primary reason to use HSL sliders.

In this scenario, I enhanced the saturation of the majority of colors as per my need and reduced where I felt the need. If I had merely increased the saturation from the basic saturation slider, all the colors would have been affected equally. Whereas now using the saturation slider under the HSL toolbar, I can individually adjust the saturation as well as hue and luminance.

So next time if you try to click a silhouette and feel the in-camera file is not perfect, Lightroom is there to take care of it. Just follow these few steps, and I am sure you can achieve your desired results.

Feel free to share your views or silhouette images in the comment below.

The post How to Edit Silhouette Photos in Lightroom appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Kunal Malhotra.

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Review: Filterbooth Preset Collection for Lightroom and Photoshop

26 Feb

The post Review: Filterbooth Preset Collection for Lightroom and Photoshop appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Stacey Hill.

When it comes to post-processing, I have to admit, I like to use presets as part of my workflow. So when I came across this collection of filters from Filterbooth, I was keen to test them out and see if they were a pack I would benefit from using in my day-to-day editing.

The Filterbooth Preset Collections

Filterbooth has 12 collections in total, and each collection holds between 11-15 individual presets. The preset packs are available for both Lightroom and Photoshop ACR. For the purpose of this review, I have used the Filterbooth Professional Package which consists of:

Amber – rich warm autumn tones with a vintage touch
Azure – shades of seaside blue
Clean/Standard – clean standard finish
Emerald Forest – give landscapes and foliage and other greens some pop
Faces – adding impact to portraits
Night Owl – inspired by starry skies and deep nights
Food – for food
Golden Hour – warm and inviting tones to enhance sunrise/sunsets
Moody Vibes – what it says on the tin
Monochrome – black and white filters for all subjects
Urban Vibes – street scapes, city scenes, architecture
Interior – for inside of buildings

Mostly, the names are relatively descriptive concerning the intended use. The names of the individual presets are similar, in that they mostly describe what the effect they can do. If you would like to see examples of the effects, there are some Before/After slider examples on the website, which is always helpful to get an idea of the outcomes.

The whole collection has some common styles; Clean, Classic, Lucent, Vintage, and Warm are some examples that pop up in several collections. The style and result of the preset seem to be reasonably consistent for these as well, so if there is one style you particularly like, it may be repeated across different collections for some variations.

System Requirements – Filterbooth requires Lightroom CC, Classic CC, 6, 5, or 4 and for ACR requires Photoshop CC or CS6 to work properly.

Pricing

There is a free sample of 5 Presets to try out (which is a lucky dip of sorts as the website doesn’t tell you which ones they are). However, this is a nice touch, as a lot of the expensive professional preset makers don’t always offer a free sample.

Next, there is a Starter Kit (US$ 45) which includes 5 samples from each of the 12 collections (again, it doesn’t tell you the specific ones).

Lastly, there is the Professional Kit (US$ 115) which gives you every preset.

Keep an eye out on their website for special offers too, because, at the time of writing this, some discounts were on offer.

Testing out the presets

Presets use all the settings within Lightroom to do their job. Depending on their design, they may edit key things like exposure, white balance and so on. Some do, some don’t. Any image you are using should already have had your basic edit applied to correct for White Balance, Exposure, Lens Correction, Horizon Angle, Crop, etc. Therefore the preset affects the other editing tools.

As a result, some presets can be ‘stacked’ on top of each other to build up layers of effect. This works if the presets alter different settings from the previous one, and only those elements are selected to be active in the preset. I found it isn’t generally obvious until you try them out. The image at the head of this article did have several presets applied for a stacked effect, and then some manual edits to finish it off.

In general, most of presets don’t adjust the exposure when you apply them – however, some do, and it varies by the amount. So keep that in mind when you are applying them to your image.

Testing Technique

The example image I used for this review was edited in Lightroom from a RAW file so that the finished image was suitable for having presets applied.

After the preset was applied, I did NO FURTHER EDITS – all you see is the result of applying the preset. Once the I exported and saved the file, I removed the current preset from the Lightroom image. Therefore each time a new preset was applied, it was against a clean copy of the Base Image to maintain consistency.

I chose to use the flatlay food image because of it’s color range and texture. It also provided a good comparison on a close-up shot.

The second image I chose to use is a landscape with a bright blue sky, snow, grass, and rocks. This offered a larger scale scene with a typical contrast range of a landscape on a bright sunny day — typical of many landscape images.

I have noted the Collection Name, and the Preset Name in the captions and examples are in Alphabetical order of Collection Type.

BASE IMAGE FOR TESTING

Amber -Classic

Azure- Blues

Emerald Forest – Rich

Faces – Clean

Food – Classy

Golden Hour – Soft

Interior – Dim

Monochrome – Ageless

Moody Vibes – Blog

Night Owl – Crimson

Standard – Moody

Urban Vibe – Chilly

Next we have a Landscape shot of the New Zealand high country, taken from the rocks at Castle Hill. It has a nice blue sky, highlights in the snow, quite a lot of mid tones and it lacks a little contrast making it interesting to see how the presets work with it.

BASE IMAGE FOR TESTING

Amber- Warm

Azure – Mystery

Emerald Forest – Air

Faces – Warm

Food – Pop

Golden Hour – Pink

Interior – December

Monochrome – Ageless

Moody Vibes – Blog

Night Owl – Colour

Standard – Moody

Urban Vibes – Film

Conclusion

As you can see, there is a lot of variation in effect here. While crafted for specific uses, the collections can also be used outside of that as well.

In general, I found there was enough variety to make these useful, and enough similarity to feel comfortable in getting consistent outcomes by using Presets of the same name. While the full collection gives you everything, it may be outside the budget for some. In that case, the Freebie pack, or Starter Collection may be a better option.

The presets themselves, felt crafted for a modern, slick styling similar to what you might see in high-end magazines, or portrait and wedding studios. So if that is your thing, these are probably worth checking out.

For landscape, food or other photographers, I would recommend trying the free sample pack (what have you got to lose?) and then decide if you want to invest further.

As I mentioned, I use a lot of presets in my work and have many from a range of creators. This offering from Filterbooth is probably the most modern and professional set I have used. While the preset styles don’t suit the styling I have used for my photographic brand, I did enjoy the Moody and Vintage options, as well as the ones with a bit of desaturation and matte finish.

If you are a general purpose photographer, and considering presets, the Filterbooth Preset Collection is a great, professionally produced, collection with a wide range of options to suit many styles. So give the free sample pack a try and take it from there.

Review 4 and a half /5 stars (the extra half for having a Free Sample Pack)

The post Review: Filterbooth Preset Collection for Lightroom and Photoshop appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Stacey Hill.

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HMD Global unveils Nokia 9 PureView with penta-camera setup, Lightroom CC support

26 Feb

HMD Global has unveiled the much-anticipated Nokia 9 PureView smartphone at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona and the new device surely looks as if it had the potential to revolutionize mobile photography.

The main camera on the back features a total of five Zeiss-branded lenses which all come with an equivalent focal length of 28mm, an F1.8 aperture and a 12MP image sensors. Three of the latter are monochrome, two are RGB sensors. A sixth module captures additional depth information of the scene.

So, despite the number of lenses, the Nokia does not offer any ultra-wide-angle or tele capabilities. Instead the Snapdragon 845 chipset and a dedicated image processing chip combine image data captured simultaneously by all five 12MP camera to process single color or monochrome images with better detail and dynamic range than would be possible with conventional methods. In certain situations the camera adds frame stacking into the mix to record even more image information of a scene. Nokia claims the 9 PureView can record dynamic range of up to 12.4 stops which would put it on par with some DSLRs.

Thanks to the number of lenses and the additional time-of-flight depth camera the Nokia is also capable of creating much more detailed depth-maps than most other current high-end phones (1200 layers of depth data vs 10). This should allow for much better and more realistic results when using background blurring portrait and other simulated bokeh modes. The depth information is stored within the image file, allowing for post-capture bokeh editing in Google Photos.

Other interesting image features include a tripod detection. The device can detect when it is mounted on a tripod or supported in some other way and uses longer shutter speeds of up to ten seconds in low light. In addition Raw files include image data captured by all five cameras and Nokia worked with Adobe to include Raw support for the 9 PureView in the mobile version of Adobe Lightroom.

In video mode the phone can record 4K footage at 30 frames per second and the front-facing camera features an F1.8 lens and 20MP Tetracell sensor which uses pixel-binning in low light to output 5MP images with low noise. A dual-tone LED flash is on board as well.

The Nokia 9 PureView will come with 6GB of RAM and 128GB expandable storage at a quite affordable price point of $ 699. The bad news is that Nokia says the device will have a limited production run and become unavailable once stock is depleted. No word on how many units will be produced, though.

The Nokia 9 PureView isn’t for those who were hoping for super-wide-angles, long tele-zooms and seamless zooming on a smartphone. However, the multi-camera setup could be a step into the future of smartphone image quality. We’ll have to wait and see until we get a production device into our hands.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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How to Move Your Lightroom Library to an External Drive

19 Feb

The post How to Move Your Lightroom Library to an External Drive appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Simon Ringsmuth.

Many photographers put their pictures on their computer’s internal hard drive. This can be a great solution since even laptops now have fairly generous storage options compared to their counterparts in days gone by. It may take you a while to fill up a 1TB or larger internal drive even if you shoot in RAW, but at some point, you’re going to run out of space, and you’ll have to address this problem. Cloud storage is a good solution but often involves a monthly or yearly fee, and upgrading your internal drive can be expensive and time-consuming. One perfect solution is to migrate your entire Lightroom library to an external drive. While this might sound difficult and intimidating, it’s quite simple and is something that anyone can easily do.

Choosing your storage

Storage space is fairly inexpensive, but not infinite. There are always going to be physical limitations when it comes to how many images you can store on a single piece of media. This is true whether it’s a traditional hard drive, a solid-state drive, or a mix of both such as Apple’s Fusion Drives.

Thankfully, external drives can offer vast amounts of storage space for relatively little money. With the fast transfer speeds of USB-3, which is common on most computers today, you won’t lose anything in terms of editing efficiency by having your pictures stored externally.

The first step in migrating your pictures to an external drive is to buy an external drive, and you have several options:

• Traditional hard drive made with spinning platters. If you take this route, I recommend one with a transfer rate of 150mb/sec (megabytes per second) and an RPM speed of 7200. As I write this in early 2019, a four-terabyte drive, which can hold around 200,000 RAW files or half a million JPG files without breaking a sweat, can be found for US$ 100 to US$ 150.

Storage is inexpensive and prices are falling all the time. This 4 terabyte hard drive was only $ 90 when I bought it in the spring of 2019. (Guitar pick shown for scale.)

• Solid-state drive with no moving parts. These aren’t as cheap as traditional drives, and they don’t hold quite as much data. However, with prices falling all the time, it won’t be long until solid-state drives are the norm and traditional spinning platters become redundant. Transfer rates on these drives are going to be plenty fast enough for any photo editing.

• RAID array or Drobo. These are much more expensive than traditional storage options but offer redundancy in case of data failures, but they might be overkill for non-professional photographers. Besides, no matter what external storage solution you use, you should always have at least one off-site backup even if you do use a RAID array.

For most people, I recommend a simple USB-3 external drive, as it’s the most cost-effective solution and easy to backup onto another drive as well.

Once you have an external drive, there are two methods for getting your photos in Lightroom copied over to it. I’ll walk you through each of these methods as well as the positive and negative aspects of each so you can decide which is right for you.

Method 1: Use Lightroom

This process works well if you don’t have a large photo library. It doesn’t involve a lot of heavy lifting on your part because you can do everything within Lightroom. If you have a lot of images (a few thousand or more), I’d recommend against this because I’ve read reports that it can become a little unreliable when working with that many files. Your mileage may vary though, but know that you ought to proceed with a bit of caution when using this method.

First, locate your Folders pane on the left side of the Library module of Lightroom. Then click the + button in the top-right corner and choose “Add Folder…” This is going to let you create a new folder for storing your images. In this case, navigate to your external drive and create a new folder at that location.

Navigate to your external drive and create a folder on it that you can use to store your pictures. In the screenshot below my external drive is called “Untitled” and my folder is called “Lightroom Pictures.”

Once done, you should see the new folder show up in Lightroom, but it will be empty. This action also creates a new folder on your external drive, which you can see if you navigate to the external drive using Finder or Windows Explorer.

The final step in moving your images from the internal drive to an external drive is to drag-and-drop them from Lightroom. From the Folders panel, click on a folder that you want to put on the external drive and drag it from your internal drive to the new folder you just created.

Click the Move button and Lightroom transfers everything over to the external drive, with no extra effort required on your part. If you have thousands of pictures, this could take a while. So be patient. In the end, your images will be on the external drive and also removed from your internal drive.

Method 2: Copy files manually

If you don’t mind doing a little bit of work yourself using Windows File Explorer or the Macintosh Finder, this is the option I generally recommend. That’s because it not only gives you the most control over the copying operation but helps you understand exactly where to locate your pictures. This method also lets you decide when to delete the original images on your internal drive because you copy them to your external drive instead of moving them. The first thing you need to do is navigate to your Library module within Lightroom and look for the Folders pane. This module tells you where to locate your image files on your computer.

I’ve got images in Lightroom going back to 2013, and each year’s pictures are stored in a separate folder on my hard drive.

Right-click, or control-click on a Mac, on the name of one of the folders in your Folders pane and choose the option that says “Show in Finder.” If you are using Windows, this says “Show in Explorer.” This takes you to the location on your computer where your images are stored.

If you have multiple folders with images in them, do this operation one at a time for each folder. In this example, I started with the 2013 folder in Lightroom, and selected “Show in Finder.” Then it brought up the actual folder on my computer labeled 2013 that contains my images from that year.

When you get to this step, right-click (or control-click) the folder and choose Copy. Then navigate to your external drive and choose Paste. This makes an exact duplicate of the folder on your external drive which might seem redundant, but this is only temporary. A bit later in the process, you can delete the original folder on your internal hard drive once you are sure that everything worked with the copy operation.

Repeat this copy/paste process for every folder listed in your Lightroom Folders pane. After you are finished copying everything to your external drive, rename the original folders by giving them a suffix such as “2013-Original” or “2013-Old.” Again, this is only temporary, and you end up just deleting these folders entirely. But for now, you don’t want to get ahead of yourself and start deleting folders before you are confident that everything has worked properly.

Locating your missing folders

After you rename the original folders, Lightroom may have a bit of a fit because it suddenly won’t be able to locate all your images! With the folder names changed, it won’t know where to look for your pictures even though they are all still intact. The next step is to tell Lightroom where to find your images on the external hard drive instead of looking on your original internal hard drive. As soon as you rename the original folder, the icon in Lightroom changes to a question mark since it no longer knows where to locate your pictures.

Right-click on the folder with a question mark and choose “Find Missing Folder” to rectify the situation.

In the screen that pops up next, navigate to the folder on your external hard drive where your pictures are. This is the folder you copied over at the start of this whole process, and its name should be unchanged. Select it, to make it show up in Lightroom. All your photos should be fully intact.

Repeat this process with all your folders. When finished, your images will have successfully migrated to the external drive. You can verify this by scrolling through your Lightroom library and looking for any images with a question mark. If you don’t see any, then everything is fine. If you do, then Lightroom is having trouble locating the original image, and you might need to double check that all your pictures have copied to the external drive successfully.

When you are satisfied that you have completed the operation without error, you are free to delete the original images on your internal drive. However, I’d recommend keeping a backup of them just in case. When it comes to photos, you can never have too many backups!

Catalog vs. Photos

It’s important to know that your Lightroom pictures are not the same as your Lightroom Catalog. The latter is a reference file which keeps track of all your edits to your pictures, leaving the originals fully intact and unchanged. I recommend keeping your Catalog on your internal hard drive since Lightroom uses this for all your editing operations and internal drives are likely to be faster than external drives. However, it’s up to you. If you’re not sure what to do, just don’t even think about it, since moving your Catalog to an external drive is an entirely separate operation altogether.

The Catalog stores all the changes to your images and only takes up a few gigabytes of space. Your actual images can take up hundreds or even thousands of gigabytes.

Remember to Backup

A final step in moving your pictures to an external drive is to make sure you have a good backup plan in place. If you are on a Mac and have your computer backed up via Time Machine, it will not automatically back up your external hard drives, and you might also find yourself quickly running out of space on your Time Machine backup drive. I recommend keeping a separate backup of your external hard drive and using a program like Carbon Copy Cloner to make sure you sync everything correctly.

Windows has options available as well, but the bottom line here is that you can never be too safe when it comes to backing up your images. Hopefully, this tutorial helps you understand how to go about reclaiming some of the space on your internal drive and setting yourself up for success in the long run when it comes to external storage options. However, all will be for naught if your images aren’t properly backed up and your computer fails.

Once you have all these pieces in place, it’s time to get off your computer, start shooting photos, and know that you’ve got plenty of storage space for years to come!

The post How to Move Your Lightroom Library to an External Drive appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Simon Ringsmuth.

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The Basics of Simulating Vintage Film in Lightroom

15 Feb

The post The Basics of Simulating Vintage Film in Lightroom appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Adam Welch.

Like all forms of art, photography can be a complex and contradictory medium. It’s straightforward yet complicated; personal but at the same time wholly based in exhibitionism. In recent years perhaps the weirdest and paradoxical event to happen in the world of photography is the idea of simulating film photographs with our digital photography. Think about it for a second or two. We’ve moved (for the majority) from using physical photographic film to digital sensors, and still, we are searching for the feel and aesthetic quality of the very process we left behind.

$F:\DPS Images\Simulating Vintage Film\simulating-vintage-analog-film-in-lightroom-adam-welch-dps-8.png$

A digital photo split toned for yellow in the shadows and blue in the highlights. Faded and then finally grain added to approximately simulate ISO 800 film.

We’ll leave the discussion of the currently popular “analog renaissance” for another day. For now, let’s talk about how you can go about simulating the look of a photographic film. More specifically, creating vintage or expired film looks using Adobe Lightroom. Adobe has made a couple of big updates to Lightroom lately that make working towards that “vintage film look” more effective and easier than ever before! Simulating the look of any film consists of four core dimensions: color, contrast, and grain. Before we get into the “how” of simulating film in Lightroom, let’s first briefly talk about some of the confusion surrounding film photography in general.

Film photography is full of variables

There’s a misconception that the look of film is set in stone; meaning that “XXX type of film always looks like this and XXXX type of film always looks like this.” Nothing could be further from the truth! There are all kinds of factors which play a roll (film humor) in how the final negative or print appears to the viewer.

simulating-vintage-analog-film-in-lightroom-adam-welch-dps-

A Nikon F3 35mm film camera. Shot with a digital camera…made to look like a vintage film. Ironic.

The age of the film, how it was stored, type and temperature of chemicals used in development, the duration of development, even how we agitate the chemicals around the film all play a major part in how the finished film appears. Also, when it comes to the final print, there are even more variables that can affect the look of the picture. The reason I’m saying all of this is to make sure you understand that simulating the look of vintage films has just as much to do with your creativity as it does with understanding the basics of how film works. There is no explicit right or wrong! So relax and let’s get to work learning how to simulate the look of vintage film in Lightroom.

Color

Color is the most effective part of the simulation process and there are many routes we can take to manipulate the colors of our vintage film simulations. The “vintage look” comes about literally by the progression of time. As the light-sensitive emulsion of the film degrades, it produces all sorts of funky color tones and nuances. To simulate this effect of color aging, we will use the tried and true Split Toning Panel and also one of the biggest and newest features to come along for Lightroom: Creative Profiles.

Split Toning

Don’t worry, split toning can look a little intimidating but it’s really not! Split toning is just a way for us to add in specific color tones to the shadows and highlights within our photo.

simulating-vintage-analog-film-in-lightroom-adam-welch-dps-2

To change the color tone of the highlights move the highlights color slider to the color tone you like or select it from the color palette.

simulating-vintage-analog-film-in-lightroom-adam-welch-dps-3

You can also change the saturation of the highlight colors by using the saturation slider. The same goes for the color toning of the shadows as well.

The balance slider is just a way for us to control the bias of the split toning to favor either the highlights or the shadows. Moving the balance slider towards the left makes the shadow toning more prominent while sliding it to the right makes the highlight color stand out. There are limitless combinations of colors and saturation balances so feel free to experiment. Just remember that using complementary colors for the shadows and highlights (blue and orange, yellow and violet) are always a good choice when it comes to split toning. Also, color changes in an expired film are usually quite subtle so keep that in mind as well as your tone.

Creative Profiles

One of the coolest and most versatile new features to come along for Lightroom recently is the introduction of “Creative Profiles.” Profiles have long been a part of Lightroom, but now we have the option to apply our own custom profiles that we’ve either bought or made ourselves. To learn more about the full power of Adobe’s Creative Profiles check out another one of my articles here. For our purposes, Creative Profiles allow us to introduce color grading to our vintage film simulations.

simulating-vintage-analog-film-in-lightroom-adam-welch-dps-3

The great things about creative profiles are that they apply themselves without disrupting any of your development settings. What’s more, you can dial in the strength of the profile using the density slider. Being able to use controllable color grading with creative profiles not only opens up a whole new world when it comes to simulating vintage film but in all areas of your post-processing workflow.

Contrast

Unlike color, simulating the contrast of vintage film in Lightroom is more or less a straightforward idea. Generally, as the emulsion of a photographic film ages its contrast usually decreases. This is due to the breakdown of the light sensitivity of the film.

$F:\DPS Images\Simulating Vintage Film\Simulating_Vintage_Film_simulating-vintage-analog-film-in-lightroom-adam-welch-dps-3.png25.png$

A 4×5 large format negative

The amount of contrast lost depends on a number of things such as the age of the film, the way it was stored, and the actual type of the film itself. The take away from this is that a good guideline for vintage film simulations is to essentially “fade” the image by decreasing its contrast. You can achieve this in a few ways. The most simple being to use the contrast slider to lessen the contrast. However, there’s a more precise and arguably more appealing way to fade the photo; by using the tone curve.

simulating-vintage-analog-film-in-lightroom-adam-welch-dps-5

To decrease the contrast and ultimately simulate the fading of an image all we need to do is take the control point at the bottom left of the tone curve and move it directly upwards. This controls the luminance values of the darks in the photo and makes those areas appear lighter which in turn makes them less contrasted. In most cases, you’ll want to add at least one more control point to the right of the one you’re adjusting and pull the rest of the tone curve back down. Of course, this is completely subjective. Feel free to add other control points and play around with the tone curve to really control the way your fades appear within your photo. Remember, there is no correct amount of fading so experiment as much as you like!

simulating-vintage-analog-film-in-lightroom-adam-welch-dps-6

Grain

The final facet of our vintage film simulation routine is to add in and control simulated grain to our photos. Not to be confused with digital noise, film grain is a direct result of the visibility of the individual silver crystals present in the films light-sensitive emulsion. The more/larger the crystals which present in the emulsion, the more sensitive the film to light and the higher it’s ISO rating. While the overall appearance of grain depends on a vast array of variables, a general rule is that the higher the ISO of the film the more pronounced the film grain becomes. So if you are attempting to make your simulations appear as a highly light-sensitive film such as ISO 1200 or ISO 3200, the more grain needs to be added to your simulations. If you are shooting for a lower ISO film for your vintage film simulation, say an ISO 80 or ISO 100 speed, you add less grain or even none at all. Here’s an image from a medium speed expired 35mm film, Kodak Tri-X 400. It was developed at a higher temperature and agitated quite a bit to bring out more of the grain.

simulating-vintage-analog-film-in-lightroom-adam-welch-dps-8.png

To control the presence of the grain we add in Lightroom we are presented with three sliders: amount, roughness and size.

simulating-vintage-analog-film-in-lightroom-adam-welch-dps-5

When you think about each of these sliders, it’s easy to visualize how they affect your image if you imagine them as physically controlling characteristics of the light-sensitive silver crystals of the film’s emulsion. The Amount slider would add in more or less crystals. Roughness is how raised or bumpy those crystals appear. Lastly, the Size slider controls how large or small those crystals seem. I know…that might still be a little confusing. So I’ve made up a quick guide for adding in your grain and given a couple of common real-world 35mm film stocks as reference points:

ISO 50-100(Kodak Ektar 100, Ilford FP4 Plus, Fujichrome Velvia 50)
Amount: 15
Size: 10
Roughness: 10
ISO 200-400(Kodak Tri-X 400, Ilford HP5 Plus)
Amount: 30
Size: 10
Roughness: 10
ISO 800-1600(Fujifilm Superia X-Tra 800, Fujifilm Superia 1600, Kodak Portra 800)
Amount: 45
Size: 40
Roughness: 15
ISO 3200 and above(Kodak T-Max P3200, Ilford Delta 3200)
Amount: 60
Size: 40
Roughness: 45

Lightroom automatically sets the “size” and “roughness” sliders to 25 and 50 respectively. If you add ANY amount of grain to your photo remember that those defaults are set out of the gate. Also, something to keep in mind, the amount of grain added largely depends on the original digital ISO of your photo. The values listed above are merely baseline approximations.

Vintage film simulations: Why?

Even as we steep in the digital waters of today’s modern photography world, I still have a love and lust for shooting film. Film, especially expired and vintage film, carries an aesthetic that goes beyond digitized image files of “1’s” and “0’s”. Speaking just for myself, the majority of my professional work consists of digital photography – not film. To that end, I’m sure that some of you are still thinking, “If you want the look of film, just shoot film.” Yes, I understand that even at its most basic applications, film photography isn’t for everyone. That’s why being able to approximate the looks of so many different types of film in Lightroom is such a wonderfully paradoxical thing. We can still enjoy the accessibility and convenience of digital photography without wholly sacrificing the “feel” of film. What’s more is that thanks to the recent advances of color profiles in Lightroom, we can now blend and mix our settings until we reach that perfect imperfectness which captures the organic unpredictability of vintage film. Which, when you think about it, should grant each of us the realization of how extremely fortunate we are to be living in such a cool time to be photographers.

Test out the ideas in this article and try some vintage film simulations of your own. Be sure to post your results in the comments. We’d love to see them!

You may also find these articles on vintage techniques helpful:

How to Add a Toy Camera Effect to Your Digital Images Using Photoshop

How to Mimic a Digital Cyanotype Using Photoshop with Ease

How to Create a Lithography Effect Using Photoshop

How To Mimic a Cross-Processing Effect in Photoshop

How to Mimic Lomography in Photoshop with Ease

The post The Basics of Simulating Vintage Film in Lightroom appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Adam Welch.

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Adobe Lightroom February update adds AI Enhance Details feature, HDR and HDR Panos

13 Feb

Adobe has updated Lightroom CC, Lightroom Classic CC, and Adobe Camera Raw with a new AI-powered feature called Enhance Details. The feature is made possible by Sensei, Adobe’s artificial intelligence and machine learning platform, and it works on nearly any raw image file to improve fine detail and color rendering, as well as resolving issues that some users with Fujifilm X-Trans cameras have reported.

The new Enhance Details feature utilizes a convolutional neural network (CNN) that was ‘extensively trained,’ according to Adobe, to deal with issues like zippering and false colors while improving the overall quality of fine details. The feature ‘works well’ on X-Trans and Bayer raw mosaic files, which can have their resolutions increased by up to 30%. Adobe digs into the technical details here.

An example panorama stitched together using the updated Lightroom CC application. Provided by Adobe.

In addition to the Enhance Details feature, Adobe has updated Lightroom CC for Windows and Mac with new HDR, Pano, and HDR Pano merge tools, histogram clipping indicators, and a Target Adjustment tool. The HDR and Pano features support both raw and non-raw images, though the company points out that merged raw files retail the adjustment benefits inherent to the file type.

A screenshot of HDR exposures ready to be stitched together into a panorama. Provided by Adobe.

The HDR and HDR Pano tools are best used with a camera’s auto exposure bracketing mode, which captures images with varying exposure. Lightroom automatically merges the images for HDR and, in the case of panoramas, automatically adjusts alignment and corrects distortion. These features are joined by the Target Adjust Tool for precisely controlling an image’s tonality and color, as well as the histogram clipping indicators.

As far as mobile is concerned, the update enables users to create ad-hoc photo shares on Lightroom CC for iOS. Finally, Lightroom Classic users received improved Nikon camera tethering stability and performance. The updates are available now.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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Understanding and Unlocking the Power of the Lightroom Vignette Tool

06 Feb

The post Understanding and Unlocking the Power of the Lightroom Vignette Tool appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Simon Ringsmuth.

The Lightroom vignette tool is like adding a bit of spice to your favorite meal. Without a bit (but not too much) garlic, basil, thyme, or other even salt, your food might taste bland. Add too much, and it can ruin the whole thing. In a way, the vignette effect does the same job. It adds a bit of spice, flavor, and panache, to give your photos that little extra push over the cliff. It turns them from mediocre to magnificent. If you want to unlock its full potential, it’s important to understand what it does and see how, when applied to different pictures, it can dramatically affect the final output.

You and the Lightroom Vignette effect: A match made in heaven.

About Vignettes

Vignette effects are nothing new to photography. The word itself has French origins. It refers to the wavy lines that would appear like vines (or in French, Vignes) drawn around page edges marking the beginning or end of a book chapter. Over time the word was adopted by artists and photographers to refer to the gradual fade or darkening of an image near its edges.

While vignettes can be distracting if implemented poorly, they can result in a pleasing artistic effect when applied like spices when cooking. The outcome is akin to laying a reverse darkened oval across an image so that the corners and edges of the picture are a little darker. This method also serves to draw the viewer’s attention to the center. You’re basically trying to achieve the Goldilocks balance where it’s not too much and not too little, but just right.

Understanding the Vignette Options

The first step in using Vignette is simply locating it. You’ll find it in the Effects panel on the right-hand side of the Lightroom Develop module. You’re presented with an option to choose a particular style along with five sliders that help you fine-tune the vignette to taste. All of this happens after your image cropping has been applied, so if you use a vignette and then re-crop your image the vignette changes to suit your new crop.

There are three options for the Style of vignette:

Highlight Priority – Ensures that the bright areas of the image blend more smoothly with the darker areas. The downside here is it can make areas of the image with a lot of colors appear a little strange.
Color Priority – The opposite of Highlight Priority, this style makes sure that color is preserved across the vignette. However, it can make the bright areas have some jarring shifts.
Paint Overlay – This is a blunt instrument. It just darkens the image where the vignette is applied, with no attention paid to highlights or colors.

If you’re not sure which of these to use, I recommend sticking with Highlight Priority. Both that and Color Priority produce similar results which are not unlike the Burn option in Photoshop (which itself mimics the process of selectively over-exposing parts of an image when developing film in a darkroom). These two also let you use the Highlights slider at the bottom which helps you recover some of the brighter portions of the image that are darkened with a vignette, whereas Paint Overlay disables the Highlights slider entirely.

Additional options:

In addition to the style of vignette, you have additional options that allow you to precisely control how the effect is implemented.

Amount – How much vignette is applied. Moving this to the left adds a dark vignette while sliding it to the right adds a white vignette.
Midpoint – The degree to which the vignette reaches the middle of the image. All the way to the left results in much more of the vignette reaching the center, whereas all the way to the right keeps the vignette at the most extreme edges and corners. If you’re not sure what to do, just leave this in the middle.
Roundness – All the way to the left makes the vignette into more of a rectangle. Leave it in the middle for an oval-shaped vignette. Slide it all the way to the right to make your vignette a circle.
Feather – How smoothly the dark areas blend with the light areas. All the way to the left results in a harsh edge and all the way to the right gives you a nice smooth blend.

If you don’t want to over-complicate things you can leave all these sliders at their default values and you’ll be fine. However, they are fun to experiment with over time to get just the right look you are going for.

Visual explanations

This tool is easy to explore on your own but looking at how it affects a black and white grid may give you a better understanding of what is happening. I used the Paint Overlay instead of Highlight or Color Priority because in a simple black-and-white grid Paint Overlay gives the clearest visual representation of how the vignette is applied. The left side of each is the original un-edited grid while the right side is the same image with a vignette applied. The settings used for each one are described in the caption.

Amount -50, Midpoint +50, Roundness 0, Feather +50

Notice how the vignette gradually fades from dark to light, with the center portion of the image on the right being the exact same brightness as the grid on the left with no vignette applied.

Amount -50, Midpoint 0, Roundness 0, Feather +50

With the midpoint set all the way to 0, the unaffected portion of the vignette is concentrated in the middle with the edges and corners being uniformly dark. This highlights the center portion alone but there is very little fade-out between that and the vignette.

Amount -50, Midpoint 0, Roundness 0, Feather +100

The midpoint here remains the same but there is now a more gradual fade-out to the darkened portions thanks to an increase in feathering.

Amount -50, Midpoint 0, Roundness 0, Feather 0

Reducing the feathering to 0 makes the vignette clearly visible with virtually no gradation in how it is applied. I would never use this on an actual photo, but it is useful to understand how the vignette function operates.

Amount -40, Midpoint +25, Roundness +100, Feather +30

Setting the roundness to +100 gives you a vignette that is a perfect circle instead of a more oval shape. It’s important to remember that vignettes are applied after cropping, so if you start with a square image then you will have a circular vignette even with the roundness value set to its default value of +50.

Hopefully, these graphics give you a better understanding of how the vignette effect works. However, to really see it in action, it helps to look at what happens when it’s applied to actual photographs instead of just a blank grid.

Vignette examples

Almost any photo-editing app will let you apply a vignette, but with the extensive tools available in Lightroom you can customize your vignette to do precisely what you want and shape your viewers’ perception of an image in a very specific way. If you control parameters like midpoint and feathering, in addition to the amount, you can create vignettes that impart certain overtones and even emotions and transform your humble images in to works of art.

No vignette applied.

The above image looks fine on its own, and the viewer’s attention is meant to be drawn to the droplet of water right in the middle, but there are other portions of the image competing for attention. Adding a vignette completely changes the mood of the scene and makes the viewer feel like they are in a much more intimate setting. Notice how, with the darkened corners, your eye gets immediately drawn to the center and not to the edges at all.

Highlight Priority. Amount -30, Midpoint +50, Roundness +20, Feather +40

Vignettes can be used to eliminate distractions in the edges of the frame as well, and in doing so draw the viewer’s attention to the subject in the center. In this image below, there is a fence on the top-right and a black climbing rope on the top-left. They don’t really add much substance to the image and instead can take your attention away from the rabbit in the middle.

One way to solve this is by adding a vignette. Through some tweaking of the parameters, the end result is an image that still contains the fence and the rope but makes them far less prominent while focusing your attention squarely on the bunny.

Highlight Priority. Amount -42, Midpoint +50, Roundness 0, Feather +70

I do a lot of family pictures for clients in my city, and one of the final touches I’ll add to most of my pictures is a simple vignette. It’s often very subtle, usually only -10 or -15, but depending on the Style (Highlight or Color Priority), I might need to add more and then tweak it with the sliders. Below is an image with no vignette applied. While it’s fine on its own, the subjects are competing with the bright edges and corners for your attention.

A Color Priority vignette helps maintain the integrity of the colors while darkening them a little, and then I brought back some of the highlights particularly in the top-right corner by adjusting the Highlights slider to 10.

Color Priority. Amount -53, Midpoint +55, Roundness 0, Feather +45, Highlights +10.

Positive values

One thing I didn’t mention in this article is positive Amount values, which make the edges of the frame brighter instead of darker. In my years as a photographer, I can’t think of a single instance in which I have used this option, and I don’t know anyone else who uses it on a regular basis either (editor’s note: it may be used it in high-key photography). You may find instances in which you want to make the outer portions of your image brighter instead of darker and, if so, then positive Amount values would do the trick. Just know that it’s easy to overdo it and the results can sometimes come across as a little cheesy and forced.

Conclusion

These examples and explanations are designed to give you a better understanding of what the vignette effect does and how it impacts an image. I encourage you to try it out for yourself. Use the different sliders and style options and notice how they affect the vignette which, in turn, can have a profound impact on your image as a whole. Just remember the cooking analogy: you don’t want too much vignette, nor do you want too little. Strive to get it just right, and your pictures could take on a whole new life.

Feel free to share your thoughts and comments below.

The post Understanding and Unlocking the Power of the Lightroom Vignette Tool appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Simon Ringsmuth.

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8 Lightroom Controls for Aurora Editing

02 Feb

The post 8 Lightroom Controls for Aurora Editing appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Ian Johnson.

One of the most amazing phenomena of the night sky is the Aurora Borealis (or, “the Northern Lights”). For as long as humans have existed the dancing, brilliant curtains of light have dazzled the viewers below. For some, the opportunity to see the Aurora is a bucket list item, and the opportunity to view and photograph the Northern Lights draws thousands of people to polar regions every year.

Aurora, Editing, Lightroom, Aurora Borealis, Northern Lights

In the images above, I minimally edited the Aurora and was sure not to over-enhance it. Understanding how the Lightroom slider controls impact your Aurora shots can help you achieve natural and beautiful edits of the Aurora Borealis.

Advancement of digital cameras and photo editing software has created an incredible opportunity to edit your shots after a night out under the stars and Lights. The advent of post-processing technology has, in my opinion, resulted in many Aurora photographs which are over-processed to bring out rich saturation and contrast that did not exist in the original scene. Because many of the middle tones (colors) of the Aurora are so pure and contrast so highly with the sky, it is easy to eject the equivalence of pixel-steroids into your image giving them a false look.

It is my goal when editing Aurora shots to enhance but not over-enhance. Understanding how each of the basic Lightroom editing tools impacts an Aurora image can help you tell the story of your night out by making your image look like they did when you saw them.

Lightroom basic sliders

To illustrate how the Lightroom basic sliders (contrast, clarity, dehaze, tint, saturation, vibrance, shadows, highlights) affect an Aurora image it is easiest to look at how extreme values for each setting impact the image. For each slider type, I will walk you through how the slider impacts any image (i.e., the definition of the slider). I will apply it at extremes to the same Aurora image to show a before (no edits) and after (extreme applied) comparison.

1. Contrast

Contrast is a very useful slider and a fundamental one for editing. By definition, the contrast tool darkens the darkest mid-tones in the image and lightens the lightest mid-tones. In an Aurora image, many of your mid-tones are going to be in the Aurora itself. So, you can see as you slide the contrast to 100% that the colors in the Aurora darken giving the image a more saturated look.

Extending the contrast to +100 increased the saturation in the Aurora and the foreground shadows became much deeper. Boosting contrast and adding saturation or vibrancy can have a compounding effect and lead to an image that appears over-processed.

2. Clarity

The clarity slide adds contrast in the mid-tones without adding much noise. The tool is often used to bring out texture and details. Again, Aurora colors fall into the mid-tones of your image, so a clarity boost impacts them strongly. Boosting clarity to +100 creates definition in the banding of this Aurora shot because there are vertical dark lines of the sky in the Aurora. You may like the clarity slider for Aurora shots because it doesn’t add as much contrast as the contrast slider does and can make stars in the image pop and seem crisper.

Adding +100 clarity increases the banding in the Aurora and you can see the stars stand out more. It did not add any saturation or other artifacts to the image.

3. Dehazing

Similar to clarity, the Dehaze slider increases midrange contrast and shadows giving the images a slightly dark and more saturated look. However, the Dehaze slider was built to remove fog from a scene. When you apply its technology to an Aurora shot, it adds a lot of contrast and saturation to the image. This is a slider to use gently (if at all) for Aurora image editing.

In comparison to Clarity, the Dehaze slider adds a lot of contrast and saturation to the Aurora image if it is boosted to +100. The Dehaze slider can be useful but use it sparingly (if at all) for editing your Aurora images.

4. Saturation

The saturation slider globally (for the whole image) deepens, intensifies, and brightens the color. In an Aurora image, you will find it is very, very easy to overdo the Saturation of an image. So, use Saturation sparingly. When slid to +100, it turns the Aurora to an almost neon appearance. At -100, it strips all color from the image. There are times when bringing the saturation out of your Aurora image by -5 or -10 can help improve the appearance of the image and make it easier for the eye to comprehend.

Bringing all of the saturation out of an image renders it to black and white

Over-saturating your Aurora image gives it a fake, neon look

5. Vibrance

Vibrance is the “less aggressive” form of saturation. It’s a smart tool that increases saturation and tones in more muted colors. In Aurora shots, the Vibrancy slider focuses on the Aurora and provides a more realistic enhancement of the colors. You can see in the examples below there is still danger in over-using it. A vibrancy value of +100 creates neon colors similar to overusing saturation. However, at -100 you can see there is a distinct difference from -100 Saturation. The -100 Vibrance does not remove all color from the Aurora. You may find it a powerful technique to decrease your saturation slightly before increasing vibrance.

You may find Vibrance to be the most useful for natural Aurora image editing. However, boosting it too much will still result in a highly over-processed image

In contrast to Saturation, you can remove all of the vibrancy and still have some color left in the image

6. Shadows

The Shadow slider increases luminosity in the darkest parts of the image. With a picture of the Aurora, you have a distinct advantage in that the Lightroom program interprets almost any part of the image that is not Aurora to be a shadow. So, you have the power to lift or darken your foreground very easily. You can see in the +100 shadow example below, details were brought out of the shadows in the silhouettes of the trees.

There is a very clear definition in an Aurora image between the highlights and the shadows. Increasing the Shadows will raise the luminosity of any part of the image not covered in Aurora

7. Highlights

The Highlights slider increases luminosity of the brightest parts of the image. As I describe above, Lightroom interprets any part of the image with the Aurora to be a highlight. That means an increase in the highlights to +100 effectively increases the exposure of the Aurora. If you over-expose an Aurora image in the field, decreasing the highlights can help you reclaim lost detail.

There is a very clear delineation between shadows and highlights in an Aurora image. Increasing the highlights to +100 only impacts the brightness of the Aurora. In this image, it gives the Aurora an overexposed feeling

8. Tint

The Tint slider is a meant to be used for color correction in correspondence with the temperature slider. You can use the tint slider to neutralize the snow which tends to turn green during intense Aurora outbursts. Use a Graduated Filter, coupled with increased pink tints and decreased saturation, to return your snow closer to white. Often, this helps your eye focus on the Aurora and can restore balance to the shot.

Using tint to do color control on an Aurora image is a bit more advanced, but you will find that you can control the color of the snow by combining the Tint and Saturation slider controls

Putting it all together for a final edit

Now that you know how each slider impacts your overall image, its time to combine each in moderation to achieve a final edit. In the edit below I wanted to make sure the banding in the Aurora was enhanced along with the purples of the “sun-kissed” Aurora. My final edit brings out features of the image without over-enhancing it.

Using the controls described in this article, I edited the Aurora image to give it a natural look and enhance the features I liked most about it such as the purple colors and banding

I want you to experiment with editing aurora images. Please feel free to download and edit this high resolution image of the Northern Lights. If you can, share your edit so I can see! Like I always say, “Pixels are cheap” so I hope you make lots of pixels making Aurora images and have fun editing them!

The post 8 Lightroom Controls for Aurora Editing appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Ian Johnson.

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