Really Nice Images (RNI) has released RNI Aerochrome, a new preset for Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Camera Raw that emulates the look of Kodak Aerochrome, a discontinued specialty film that was sensitive to both infrared and visible light.
Emulating the look of Kodak Aerochrome with digital images is no easy feat, but RNI says it’s preset was meticulously ‘handcrafted by some of the most pedantic digital imaging and film photography experts out there.’ In total, there are 18 variations of the RNI Aerochrome filter in the pack, alongside the RNI Toolkit, which offers add-on settings to further tweak the image.
Below is a collection of sample photos edited with the preset:
The RNI Aerochrome preset pack costs $ 96 and works with Lightroom CC, Lightroom Mobile and Adobe Camera Raw. RNI says it’s not currently possible to port the preset to Capture One, but suggests it could be possible down the road should Phase One add the appropriate functionality.
Last week, Adobe released its latest updates for Lightroom, Photoshop and Camera Raw, bringing new and improved features to each of its photo-centric apps. While the list of updated features is exhaustive, Colin Smith from YouTube Channel Photoshop CAFE has broken down every new feature so you don’t have to.
Smith’s feature overview is split between two videos: one that focuses on Photoshop and Camera Raw, and one that focuses on Lightroom Classic.
For the 12-minute Photoshop video, Smith covers the improved AI-powered Select Subject tool in Photoshop as well as the updated Lightroom-inspired interface for Adobe Camera Raw.
The Lightroom video comes in at 11 minutes and addresses the new Local Hue tool, the updated Tone Curve interface, ISO Adaptive Presets and the new performance improvements Adobe has made throughout the app.
You can keep up to date with Smith’s Photoshop and Lightroom tips and tutorials over on the PhotoshopCAFE Youtube Channel.
The post Adobe’s Exciting New Updates to Lightroom, Photoshop, and ACR appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Jaymes Dempsey.
Adobe has released several impressive updates to its Creative Cloud programs, including Lightroom, Photoshop, and Adobe Camera Raw.
The changes give Adobe users a number of features to be excited about, including:
Enhanced subject selection in Photoshop
Easy movement from Lightroom to Photoshop on iPad
An interface makeover for Adobe Camera Raw
The addition of local hue adjustments in Lightroom
While you can read about the many new and improved features on Adobe’s blog, I’ll run through the most important new upgrades for photographers, starting with:
Photoshop offers updated Select Subject tool
Photoshop’s Select Subject tool has been steadily improving since the feature was first released.
But with these new updates comes a huge advance in terms of Select Subject’s capacity to identify complex edges.
As explained by Adobe, Select Subject has advanced in two key ways:
First: “Select subject is now content aware, and applies new custom algorithms if it detects a person is in the scene.”
And second: “Hair and treatment around hair has been vastly improved.”
When it comes to subject selection, any improvements are welcome; for most folks, better selection tools means less time spent in Photoshop and more time out shooting photos.
Hair has traditionally been the most difficult aspect of selecting, even with Adobe’s most powerful tools in hand. But with these improvements, subject selection should become at least slightly easier.
Lightroom on iPad offers easy Edit in Photoshop button
If you frequently edit images in Lightroom on your iPad, you’re in luck:
Adobe has now added an easy method for moving your photos from Lightroom to Photoshop:
The Edit in Photoshop button, which you can access from the export menu in Lightroom and use to quickly open an image in Photoshop.
Adobe explains that, after editing an image to Photoshop, “you can either send it right back to Lightroom, or keep it as a new cloud document.”
This should be a massive improvement for folks frustrated by the lack of integration between Lightroom and Photoshop on iPad.
(According to Adobe, this was among the “top requests” of iPad users.)
Adobe Camera Raw starts to look sleek
The new ACR layout looks far more stylish!
It’s finally happened:
Adobe Camera Raw has shed its aging skin and turned into something better; it’s still not exactly modern, but it’s certainly much sleeker.
Take a look at ACR, and you’ll now see a new interface, one that’s designed to “feel familiar to any Lightroom user.”
The layout has changed, the sliders have changed, and you even have some tool enhancements (for instance, the Curves tool is much easier to work with).
You also get a brand new tool, which comes to both Adobe Camera RAW and Lightroom in the form of local hue adjustment:
Lightroom and ACR gain local hue adjustment feature
Lightroom (and ACR) has long offered global hue adjustment capabilities in its HSL panel:
You select the original color, then you shift it along the color spectrum via a slider.
Up until now, this has remained a global editing tool. Lightroom included no option to selectively adjust hue via the adjustment brush, radial filter, or graduated filter, which meant that selective color editing was a feature largely confined to Photoshop.
But all that has changed, because you’ll now see a new slider when using local adjustment tools, one that allows you to select an area and shift its colors via a handy hue slider.
With this new local editing option, you can selectively adjust skin tones, clothing color, sunset color, and much more.
So here’s my recommendation:
Head over to your Lightroom, Photoshop, and Adobe Camera Raw applications right now.
And try out these new options!
Now I’d like to ask you:
Which of these new updates are you most excited to try? And were there any changes that you’d still like to see from Adobe? Share your thoughts in the comments!
The post Adobe’s Exciting New Updates to Lightroom, Photoshop, and ACR appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Jaymes Dempsey.
Adobe has released its June Creative Cloud updates, bringing with it a number of new features for its cloud-based product suite, including Photoshop, Lightroom and Adobe Camera Raw.
Adobe Photoshop
First on the agenda is Photoshop for desktop. Adobe has updated its Select Subject tool with new algorithms to help it better recognize what’s being selected and alter its selection accordingly. Specifically, Adobe has worked on portrait selection, which will recognize when a person is being selected and more accurately select the subject’s hair and other details using its Sensei AI machine learning technology.
Adobe has also added rotatable patterns, Adobe Fonts auto-activation (no more messages about missing fonts) and an updated Match Font feature that can detect fonts in an image and suggest similar-looking fonts within your library to use in the image.
You can find a detailed post explaining all of the new Photoshop features in depth on Adobe’s announcement blog post.
Adobe Lightroom
Moving on to Lightroom, Adobe has added a new Local Hue adjustment (ACR, Lightroom Classic, Lightroom CC macOS/Windows, iOS and Android), Versions (Lightroom CC macOS/Windows, iOS and Android), Raw defaults (Lightroom CC macOS/Windows, iOS and Android) and ISO Adaptive Presets (ACR and Lightroom Classic).
The new Centered Crop Overlay makes it easier to center a subject in an image.
The Local Hue adjustment makes it possible to edit the color in select areas of an image, the new Versions feature makes it possible to create and edit multiple versions of the same image without needing to duplicate it, Raw defaults makes it so you can apply specific default settings to Raw photographs to make the images reflect the internal picture profile you’ve set in-camera and the ISO Adaptive Presets makes it possible to change how a specific preset looks based on what ISO the image was captured at.
One of the new features in Lightroom CC for macOS, Windows, iOS and Android is ‘Versions,’ which lets you make multiple edits of the same image without having to duplicate the file.
Other new features include Centered Crop Overlay, Watermarks and Lightroom for iPad finally has an Edit in Photoshop’ option for immediately editing the image in Photoshop for iPad (with a reverse option to ‘Send to Lightroom’ when you’re done with your edits).
The ability to export an image from Lightroom for iPad to Photoshop for iPad and back is a very welcomed addition that’s been requested by users for quite some time now.
Lightroom Classic has also received performance improvements. GPU acceleration for image editing came about last year, but these new improvements focus on a smoother experience while scrolling through your library, searching and filtering collections and scrubbing sliders in the Develop module. Adobe says ‘you’ll experience faster scrolling and less stuttering especially while navigating up and down larger catalogs and sifting through longer lists of collections.’
You can see a detailed breakdown of each of the new features and updates in Lightroom on Adobe’s announcement blog post.
Adobe Camera Raw
The new ACR interface more closely resembles that of Adobe’s more recent Lightroom and Photoshop updates.
Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) has also received an update that brings its interface and feature set more in line with Lightroom. In addition to the Local Hue adjustment, ISO Adaptive Presets and center crop overlay, ACR has also moved many of its local tools to the right-hand side of the interface and put its various adjustment in stackable panels, similar to what’s found in Lightroom’s Develop module. You can also choose whether the Filmstrip (image thumbnails) appears on the left-hand side of the interface or on the bottom, underneath the images.
You can find a rundown of all of the new features on Adobe’s ‘What’s new in ACR’ announcement post.
The post Lightroom Moon Editing Tips for Awesome Moon Photos appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Simon Ringsmuth.
One of the most fascinating photos you can take is a crystal-clear shot of the full moon. Pictures like this don’t require a lot of fancy gear, but you do have to be in the right place at the right time. To make matters even more tricky, you only have a handful of opportunities each year to even attempt a moon shot. Getting a picture is just the beginning, though. If you want to make your shot stand out, it helps to follow these simple Lightroom moon editing tips.
The benefits of RAW over lossy formats like JPG are well documented. While there are certainly times where JPG is useful, RAW is essential when taking shots of the moon. You need all the editing leeway you can get to adjust colors, exposure, and other parameters.
For example, the photo below might not look like much, but it’s fairly typical of the types of moon shots most people would get with some basic camera gear. I shot this with a crop-sensor camera, which is much more common than expensive full-frame models. I also only zoomed to 200mm, and a lot of kit zoom lenses can easily reach this far.
This is straight out the camera with no postprocessing applied. Nikon D500, Nikon 70-200mm f2.8, 200mm, 1/200 second, f/5.6, ISO 720.
At first glance, it probably looks like there’s not much that I can do here. The moon is overexposed and a little blurry. It’s way too small, and the power lines cut right through the frame. Also, the sky has a weird blue tint to it that’s a bit unnatural.
However, hope is not lost! Thanks to the power of RAW files, and a little bit of editing prowess in Lightroom, this photo can be turned into a frame-worthy image.
Crop
Back in the early days of digital photography, people often debated the importance of megapixels. A common, though incorrect perception was that more megapixels equal better photos. While that is not necessarily true, having a higher megapixel count does allow you to have significant room for cropping, which is great when your subject is far away – 239,000 miles, to be exact.
Most cameras today have upwards of 20 megapixels, which gives you a huge amount of freedom to crop your photos. If you don’t have a huge telephoto zoom lens to zoom into individual moon craters, use Lightroom instead. Crop your image until it’s nice and tight with the moon right in the center.
Go ahead and crop your photo. If you have a modern camera you have plenty of leeway.
In this example, I cropped the image tight enough to get rid of everything but the moon and the sky. Gone are the power lines and trees, and what’s left is just the moon in all its glory. Even cropped in this much, the resulting image is 4.3 megapixels – more than enough to get an 8×10″ print made.
There’s still a lot of work to do, but cropping already helped a great deal.
White Balance
At this point the picture is better, but still has a long way to go.
The next step is to adjust the white balance. The reason I recommend doing this after you crop your moon photo is that it helps you focus on just the important part of the image. If you adjust the white balance before cropping, you might be focusing your edits on parts of the image that you discard after cropping.
There’s no right or wrong way to adjust the white balance on a moon photo. It all depends on how you want the final image to look and what you want your viewers to feel when they see it. If you want a starting point, here are two options I recommend.
Use the Daylight preset
Use the Eyedropper and click on the moon.
Both of these produce vastly different results. You can also play around with the sliders until you get a look that you like. One thing to remember is that the moon itself produces no light. It’s just a ball of rock falling through the sky. The light you see is sunlight reflecting off the surface, which is why some people prefer to use a white balance suited for sunlight. The choice is yours, though, and you can set the white balance however you want.
Another option is to combine the best of both worlds. Click the eyedropper tool on the moon, but then use the Brush tool to change the white balance of the moon. This will give you rich, deep blues for the sky but a yellow tint for the moon. However, this can be a little tricky. If not done right, you will see a weird color halo around the moon. So just make sure to use the Brush tool as precisely as possible.
You can use the Brush tool to change the white balance of the moon, but not the rest of the image if you choose.
Exposure adjustments
Nailing the exposure when shooting the moon is tricky. It’s a giant bright ball against a dark sky, which means a lot of the conventional rules don’t apply. I usually prefer to under-expose the moon and then adjust it in Lightroom. That way you preserve your highlights, but even if your picture is a little overexposed you can still salvage it if you shoot in RAW.
In this example, my shot is overexposed by about one stop. To fix it, I entered a -0.75 value in the Exposure slider in the Basic panel. This darkens everything: the moon and the sky. If you want the sky to stay the same level of brightness but just adjust the moon, use the Highlights slider. Drag it left to lower the exposure of the brightest portions of your image – in this case, the moon.
Raise or lowering the exposure in Lightroom to get just the right appearance.
Adjusting the exposure isn’t one of the most mind-blowing moon editing tips, but it’s an essential step in the process of getting your final shot to look good.
Texture and Sharpening
When you take a picture of the moon, you have to contend with all sorts of variables that can lead to a soft or fuzzy appearance. From earth, we see the moon through miles of atmosphere, which often contains dust and other particles. Your lens might not be tack-sharp either, especially if you got your zoom lens as part of a camera kit. Lightroom can help fix these issues with a few simple sliders.
Normally, I would recommend starting with the Sharpening slider, but not when shooting the moon. In this case, you want to bring out the moon’s texture and surface details, so the texture slider is a great place to start. You can find it at the bottom of the Basic panel. Alternatively, you can use the Brush tool to adjust the texture if you want a little more precision in your editing.
Raising the texture slider makes the surface look clear and crisp. I used a value of +80 which is a bit extreme, but I wanted to illustrate the impact of the Texture slider.
The Sharpening slider is great for fine-tuning your image after adjusting the texture. However, I do not recommend using the Clarity slider. That will result in a false, unnatural look with moon shots and can show some unwanted noise in the sky as well.
Final touches
At this point, you have several options to polish your image. While you can use any number of editing tools, some that I recommend trying are:
Adding a vignette
Use the Brush tool to reduce noise in the sky
Adjust the tone curve to have a very slight S-shape
Raise and lower the blue saturation
Convert your picture to Black and White. Click “Black and White” in the top-right corner of the Basic panel
Final moon shot. I added a vignette and brushed some noise reduction in the sky.
When it comes to moon editing tips, the sky is quite literally the limit. These should be enough to get you started, but I recommend spending time just experimenting with some of the sliders in Lightroom to see what you can do.
Nikon D7100, 200mm, f/8, 1/180 second, ISO 640. I used the editing tips in this article to process this shot.
What about you? DO you have any other moon editing tips you’d like to share? Do you have any favorite shots of the moon? Share your favorites in the comments below!
The post Lightroom Moon Editing Tips for Awesome Moon Photos appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Simon Ringsmuth.
The post How to Edit RAW Portraits in Lightroom appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Kevin Landwer-Johan.
What’s the best way to edit RAW portraits in Lightroom? Is there one correct way to do this?
As with many aspects of photography, there is no right or wrong way. What is most important is being intentional with the edits you do make. Start with a clear idea of what you want the completed photo to look like.
You want to feel satisfied when you’re done. You’ll also want your subject to appreciate the portraits you’ve taken of them.
In this article, I’ll walk you through some Lightroom techniques to help you create well post-processed portraits from your RAW files.
Whenever you start to edit RAW portraits you must decide first the style of photo you want to end up with. RAW files from modern cameras contain a huge amount of data. This data can be manipulated extensively in Lightroom to alter the appearance of the photo.
It’s up to you how you edit. You can aim to work on the RAW file to get the photo looking as realistic as possible. Or you can alter it in such a way it’s transformed into a very different-looking image from the unedited RAW file.
Your intention will guide you to achieve the look you want. If you’re not sure how you want the finished photo to look, you can waste a lot of time messing around.
Keeping in the style of how you lit and composed the portrait is the easiest approach to take.
To edit RAW portraits created with soft light and a warm feeling, you’ll often want to retain the feeling of the photo when you make your adjustments. It would the same for a portrait lit with hard lighting with a more dramatic look.
Editing in Lightroom, you have the opportunity to alter the image to achieve the look you want. Knowing what you want is a good first step – even before you open Lightroom.
To illustrate the process I use, I will aim to produce a natural-looking edit of this portrait.
White balance for correct skin tone
Most of the time, I have my camera’s white balance set to Auto. I find this setting produces photos with correct colors most of the time.
With RAW files, it’s easy to correct the white balance when it’s a little off. I will start with the eyedropper tool and click it in a neutral area. If there’s not suitable white in the photo, I’ll pick a grey area.
In this photo, I needed to adjust the Temp slider towards the left because the eyedropper overcompensated for the slightly cool tone of the original. I have made the adjustment so her skin tone looks as natural as possible.
Crop and straighten
Next, I crop and straighten the photo. I prefer to crop my portraits early in the editing process, so I only see what I want.
This portrait needed very little cropping. There was a bright area on the left that was distracting. I have cropped this out and, in doing so, the model’s right eye is closer to the one-third guideline on the right of the image.
When I crop, I am looking to eliminate parts of the photo that don’t add to it. I also look to improve the shape of the composition.
Correct highlights and shadows
Portraits taken outdoors in the shade, as this one is, often have a limited tone range. They do not contain much difference in tone value between the brightest and darkest areas. This makes them easier to work with than portraits made in hard light.
My model’s hair is very black, but it looks dull. Moving the black slider to the left darkens her hair a little too much. I then use the Shadows adjustment slider and move it to the right. This brings back some of the detail while retaining the blacks.
When you edit RAW portraits, you must consider how the brightest areas of the photo look as well. In this picture, I am happy with the look of the highlights, so I have not made any adjustments to them.
Highlights can be challenging to adjust and keep them looking clean. If you have very overexposed highlights and attempt to adjust them with the Highlights and/or Whites sliders, take care they do not end up looking grey. It’s best only to make adjustments when there is actually detail in those areas.
Removing spots and blemishes
This young woman has beautiful skin and applies her make up very well. There’s not much post-processing required. Often this is not the case. People will often have small blemishes on their skin. Removing them will not change the feel of the portrait, but it will help your subject feel better about themselves.
When I edit RAW portraits in Lightroom, I use the Spot Removal tool and zoom into my photo to the area I want to work on. Adjust the size of the tool so it’s a little larger than the spot you want to remove. Simply click on the spot and Lightroom removes it.
Check to see the area you edit blends well. On smooth skin, Lightroom usually does a great job of this. Sometimes there will be some noticeable contrast in the area you apply the brush too. If it’s too obvious, undo that step, adjust the brush size a little, and try again.
Fine-tune with the adjustment brush
The Adjustment Brush is a powerful tool to use when you edit RAW portraits. You can use it to diminish or remove wrinkles, enhance eyes, whiten teeth and a whole lot more. Here I’ll show you how I use it in some of these ways.
Soften dark bags under eyes
As I begin to paint with the Adjustment Brush, I push the Exposure slider to the far left or right. This allows me to see clearly the area that I am painting over.
Once I have the part of the image painted that I want to work on, it looks pretty terrible, as in this example.
Now, I’ll work with the various sliders to bring up the dark parts I’ve painted over so there’s not so much contrast. Doing this, be careful not to overcompensate and make these shadows look unnaturally light.
Whitening teeth
Paint over the teeth with the adjustment brush. Be as precise as possible and not cover any of the lips or gums.
To make the teeth look clean and white, I use a combination of sliders. I start with the Exposure Slider as it will often make the teeth look good. You can also make use of the Dehaze and Temp sliders. Dehaze will lighten and soften dark areas. Moving the Temp slider to the left will reduce yellowing.
Brightening eyes
It’s important to edit RAW portraits so your subject’s eyes look right. Too much editing, or not being careful enough when you do edit eyes, can ruin a portrait.
In my example portrait, I have made minimal changes. There are so many tutorials available about editing eyes that I will not go into detail for this article.
All I have done on this portrait is to brighten the whites of her eyes using the Adjustment Brush. I have painted the whites of her eyes and boosted the exposure slightly. This was enough.
Dark-colored eyes are more challenging to manipulate than lighter colored eyes. With light eyes, you can alter the color of the iris and control the way the eyes look more than with dark eyes.
Conclusion
The possibilities when you edit RAW portraits are almost limitless. Knowing the look you want helps you keep on track and saves you time.
Duplicating a file in Lightroom allows you to make copies to experiment with. Right-click the photo and choose Create Virtual Copy. Now you’re free to experiment with a completely different look and feel for your photo.
Being intentional as you edit and not pushing any slider to it’s extreme will help you create better-looking portraits in Lightroom.
Do you have any other tips for editing RAW portraits in Lightroom that you’d like to share? Perhaps you’d like to share your resulting images with us? Please do so in the comments!
The post How to Edit RAW Portraits in Lightroom appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Kevin Landwer-Johan.
I’ve always loved hand-colored photos. They have such a great look, very unique, very interesting. For those who don’t know, “hand coloring” refers to any process where a photographer uses pigment, dye or paint of some sort to manually add color to a black and white photo. Historically this was done in the 1800s by photographers using pigment and gum arabic on daguerreotypes! The technique persisted in one form or another throughout the years until it was supplanted by actual color photography. Of course, just because it is no longer necessary to get color in such a way doesn’t mean it can’t be used for asthetic effect.
I shoot a lot of black and white film, which I generally scan and process in lightroom rather than wet printing. Now if you’ve used lightroom, you are probably familiar with the brush tools for things like exposure, clarity or even skin smoothing. However, the oft overlooked “tint” option can be used to easily paint in color to a black and white image for a “hand colored” effect.
let’s take this image.
This was shot on film (with a holga!) during a vintage pin-up shoot. In other words, there is no actual color information in the file etc…
Now I’m going to hand color it to approximate the actual colors of the scene. First we start by going into the lightroom brush tools. Make sure all the adjustment sliders are set to zero (we are just painting on color here, not adjusting the photo itself) Click on the tint box at the bottom right to bring up the color picker.
A little trick with the color picker is that if you hold the mouse button down you can drag the eyedropper out of the little selection window and sample color from *anything* on screen. One useful trick with this is to have a “reference photo” open separately and sample your colors for hand coloring from that.
Since the couch in this shot was a green color, I grab a nice rich green and begin painting my mask. I find it more accurate to paint with the red overlay on (click “O” to toggle the overlay on or off). You’ll want to use a separate mask for each area of color. Here’s the green mask for the couch all done.
yeah, it’s not perfect, but close enough
I then do separate masks for her shirt (pink) and her skin. With hand coloring, I like to leave a portion of the image uncolored which gives it it’s signature b/w+color look, different from “selective coloring”
and the final result:
Now this may be kind of a “niche” technique, and certainly not suited for all photos but it’s quick and easy and yields a very unique effect. Overall it’s a nice trick to have in one’s toolbox.
The post 8 Core Lightroom Retouching Techniques to Enhance Your Photos appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Darina Kopcok.
Adobe Lightroom is the preferred RAW editor for many photographers. It’s user friendly, yet has many powerful features to help you get the most out of your photos. Here are the core Lightroom retouching techniques to get more out of your photographs.
1. Start with your histogram
The histogram is the first step in retouching using Lightroom. It mathematically represents the tonal range of a given photograph. The tonal range considers all the tones between the darkest part and the lightest part of your image.
The histogram maps out the brightness area in the photo in grayscale. Black is situated on the left side of the histogram, while white is on the right. You can find all the shades of grey in between. Every shade has a scale of brightness values. For a standard JPG image, there are 256 different recorded values of brightness, “0” being pure black and “255” pure white.
Learning how to read your histogram is important because it will tell you whether your photo is properly exposed or not. If you have pixels touching the very ends of your histogram, your photo is either underexposed or overexposed
Unfortunately, you can’t recover these missing details with Lightroom retouching techniques.
2. Choose the correct Color Profile
Before you start the retouching process, you should decide on a color profile, as it will make a significant difference in the color and contrast in your photo.
You can find the Color Profiles in the Basic panel. You can choose from Adobe profiles or from color profiles from your camera.
3. Get a base with the Tone Curve
Before making exposure adjustments in the Basic panel, it’s a good idea to get a base with the Tone Curve.
The Tone Curve is a graphical representation of the tones found throughout your image. By making tweaks to the curve, you can influence the look of the shadows and highlights.
I recommend starting by lifting the curve at the midpoint when in the Point Curve. This will boost the midtones and contrast, which looks attractive in most images.
Pull the curve down in the bottom quarter of the curve to deepen the shadows. These simple tweaks can make your image immediately look more dynamic.
Mid-tone lift in Tone Curve.
If you’re new to the Tone Curve, you might be more comfortable starting with the sliders in the Region Curve. This won’t give you as much control as the Point Curve but will help you make significant changes to the aesthetic of your image.
Once you’ve made other edits to your image, you can come back to the Tone Curve for further tweaks.
Retouching is a process of building and assessing, so you’ll most likely have to jump around from one panel in Lightroom to another until you get a look that you’re satisfied with.
Tone Curve for apricots image.
4. Tweak the Basic Panel
the Basic panel
The next step is to correct your White Balance.
Keep in mind that White Balance can be set in-camera to be 100% accurate, or can be used creatively if you’re not striving for a correct white. For example, if your style is warmer in tone, you can push your white balance above 6000+ to give it a golden look.
I kept my image on the cooler side because I wanted to bring out the blue and emphasize the complementary color choice to make my apricots pop.
Once you’ve made the best white balance, make any necessary edits to the Highlights, Shadows, and Whites and Blacks in the Basic Panel.
If your image doesn’t look correctly exposed in these areas, you can then adjust the exposure. However, I don’t recommend starting there. It’ll boost the exposure in all those areas, which may not be what the image needs.
5. Layer Contrast and add Vibrance in the Presence Panel
When retouching in Lightroom, I recommend using the Vibrance slider instead of Saturation.
Vibrance lifts the mid-tones. Saturation boosts all the color in the image, which can make it look unnatural and clownish. If you do choose to use the Saturation slider, watch how it affects your picture as you move the slider. A maximum of +10 is usually more than enough.
Be sure to add a bit of Clarity, which will boost the contrast in the image. The best retouching is often the result of layering various effects at low numbers, rather than adding a high amount of any one tool, such as Contrast.
To create contrast, you can use a combination of Contrast, Clarity, Texture, and the Tone Curve. Even a touch of Dehaze works great for a lot of images.
6. Adjust color in the HSL Panel
Color has a huge impact on your image. Color is an aspect of composition and crucial to the aesthetic of your photography. The HSL panel in Lightroom is where you will do the most color treatment.
Unless your aesthetic is quite warm, you might want to bring the orange saturation down a bit in your photos. It tends to look too strong. Also, pay attention to the Luminance sliders and use them instead of Saturation to control brightness, as they control the brightness of individual colors.
Before and After Lightroom Retouching – Shot at F9 on 50mm at 1/200 1SO 100
7. Try Split Toning in the highlights and shadows
Split Toning is a Lightroom tool that you can use to great effect when it comes to Lightroom retouching techniques. Split Toning adds color toning to the highlights and shadows individually, based on luminance.
However, note that a little goes a long way.
To add split toning, hold down the Alt/Option key while you move the sliders for Highlights and Shadows. This will allow you to see the variations for each color and pre-visualize how it will look applied to the image.
Dial-in as much saturation as you feel appropriate for the image. This is usually a low number. A small amount is often all you need to make your images more dynamic.
Split-toning is sometimes overlooked or used with too heavy of a hand, but with a subtle approach, it’s a very effective Lightroom retouching technique.
8. Enhance with local adjustments
Local adjustments are applied to a localized area in an image rather than globally. They only affect the part of the image selected. This allows you to fine tune your photo and have more control over your final result. You can use them to correct problem areas or to create a certain effect.
The local adjustment tools are:
the Graduated Filter
The Graduated Filter is for filtered effects and creating evenness throughout the image.
the Radial Filter
The Radial Filter helps you easily isolate subjects for retouching.
the Adjustment Brush
Layer your local adjustments to create targeted and powerful results.
The Adjustment Brush helps you create masks for localized retouching by brushing them on.
the Spot Removal tool
The Spot Removal tool gets rid of blemishes or small objects in the image. The Adjustment Brush is for creating free-form masks, while the Radial Filter is used to isolate subjects.
Range masks have been added to three of the local adjustment tools to allow you to target color and luminance.
The key to enhancing your images with local adjustments is to use a combination of the tools for subtle adjustments, as well as adjusting the opacity or feathering of the tool to create subtle transitions.
Using local adjustments is one of the most powerful Lightroom retouching techniques.
Conclusion
You’ll get the best result in Lightroom by layering the different tools. For example, don’t just use the Contrast slider to add contrast and call it a day. Layer the contrast with small adjustments to the Tone Curve, Dehaze, and Clarity for a subtle and effective look.
Every photographer develops a workflow that works effectively for them. Hopefully, these core Lightroom retouching techniques will help you fine-tune your editing process.
If you have any other Lightroom retouching techniques you’d like to share, please do so in the comments section.
The post 8 Core Lightroom Retouching Techniques to Enhance Your Photos appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Darina Kopcok.
Adobe has started up a new video series on its Adobe Photoshop Lightroom YouTube channel called In a Lightroom Minute that condenses helpful Lightroom CC and Lightroom Mobile tips into tutorials that are roughly 60 seconds in length.
Similar to its previous Lightroom Coffee Break and Photoshop Magic Minute series, In a Lightroom Minute covers a variety of small tips and tricks, from How to Save Edits as Presets in Lightroom to How to Leverage Interactive Edits in Lightroom.
Currently, there are ten videos in the series, but it’s likely we’ll see more added in the near future. Below are just three you can start with:
How to Create a Preset in Lightroom
How to Get Contextual Help While Using Lightroom
How to Discover Guided Tutorials in Lightroom
You can view the full playlist and subscribe to the Adobe Photoshop Lightroom channel on YouTube.
The post Ways to Use Lightroom to Find Photos Worth Revisiting appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Rick Ohnsman.
I don’t have to tell you these are abnormal times. Like many others in every profession, photographers are experiencing a huge decrease in business due to stay-at-home and social distancing restrictions. While we hobbyist photographers may not rely on photography for our income, we just aren’t getting out as much to take pictures. So, maybe this is the time to go “back to the mine” (your photo archives), to see if you’ve overlooked some diamonds in the rough worth revisiting. Let’s take a look at how to use Adobe Lightroom to find photos you might have passed over. Also, how to use it to do some cleanup you just never got around to before.
I’d passed this shot by after an edit session I did years ago following a trip to Trillium Lake in Oregon. Now, using Lightroom to find photos I’d passed over, I found it was a diamond in the rough, simply needing some polishing.
See if this describes you
You’re a photographer and make photos pretty routinely on trips, photoshoots, studio sessions, weddings, portrait work, or whatever genre of photography you do.
You make dozens, if not hundreds of images, during just a single shoot.
Then, you want to quickly edit and get the best shots to your client, perhaps print some, or post the best to social media. When done, you’ve cherry-picked the best shots, edited them, wrapped up and moved on.
Left behind on your drive are perhaps the other 95-percent of shots that didn’t jump out at the time. There are quite possibly some good images still there that might only take a little extra editing to polish up, diamonds in the rough as it were.
Perhaps the shots were taken years ago, maybe even with lesser cameras, but now with more editing experience, you have skills to bring them to life.
There are also photos you’ll never use. Trash that just never got taken out. Images just taking up room on your hard drive.
Let’s cover how to use Lightroom to find photos, flag them for a second look or clean them out.
Get a DAM
Lightroom is a very capable photo editor, but there’s little dispute that Photoshop is the more powerful program for really serious photo editing.
Other programs have also risen to the forefront; Skylum Luminar, Phase One Capture One Pro, Corel Paintshop Pro, DXO Photolab, and ACDSee Ultimate. The list is growing and joined by many free and quite capable photo editing programs.
Using the Flags, Star-Ratings, and Color Codes in Lightroom is a great way to better manage your photo library.
One of the greatest strengths of Adobe Lightroom, however, is as a Digital Asset Management (DAM) tool.
In layman’s terms, that means it does a great job of organizing your photos, helping you search for images using keywords, ratings, color-codes, flags, collections, filters, and other means of organizing, sorting, and searching. At its core, Lightroom is a database program.
Many photographers who have spent years learning Photoshop still use that tool for most of their editing but are now looking to Lightroom as a partner program for organizing their photo libraries. What they had previously done with Adobe Camera Raw and Bridge can be done with Lightroom, which if desired, can simply send images out to Photoshop for editing or be used as an editor and more.
A jealous secretary
A concept many new Lightroom users find hard to grasp is that the photos you work with while using it are not “in” Lightroom. Lightroom is strictly a note-taker, a “secretary” to use that term, that records everything about an image; where it is, the metadata, how you’ve rated, flagged, color-coded, keyworded, and otherwise tagged it.
When you edit a photo in Lightroom, each and every step of that edit, text data, is stored in what is called the “catalog.” Your images are never altered, Lightroom just appends “notes” to them.
I tell you that to tell you this – Lightroom is a “jealous secretary.” She will keep meticulous notes about everything you do with your images, so long as you use “her” to do the work.
If you work with your images outside of Lightroom, say using the File Explorer in Windows or the Finder on a Mac, you are essentially working “behind Lightroom’s back.” She will let you know it too, losing track of where your images are and what you’ve done to them.
Ever see a “?” mark on your Lightroom photo or folder? That’s your secretary scolding you. There are ways to recover from this, but my recommendation is if you are going to use Lightroom as your DAM program, keep your jealous secretary happy and do all your image management with her exclusively.
Question marks on folders of photos in Lightroom means the program can’t locate the item. This will happen when you use tools outside of Lightroom to move or change your image.
A culling session
If culling is not a term familiar to you, here’s a dictionary definition: “A selection of things you intend to reject.”
In Lightroom, one of the first things you need to do to work with images is to “import” them. This is sometimes where people become confused. An “import” in Lightroom is simply a means of telling the program where your images are.
Let’s use two examples of how this might work.
Returning from a shoot, I have my images on my camera card. I pull the card from the camera, put it in a card reader, open Lightroom and using the Import process. Here, I copy the files from the card to a location on a computer hard drive, be it an internal or external drive. Lightroom copies the images to that location, builds thumbnails for them, and stores the information in its catalog.
I already have the photos somewhere on one of my computer drives. I use the Import function of Lightroom to Add the photos to the LR catalog. Lightroom does not move or copy anything, it simply now has information about those images and where they are.
If you are importing images from a camera card into Lightroom and want it to copy them to a location on your hard drive, the “Copy” method is what you want.
In both scenarios, the photo files are not “in” Lightroom, and not in a subfolder of that program. They are wherever you chose to store them. However, now your “LR secretary” is keeping track of them.
If your images are already on one of your computer drives and you simply want to be able to work with them in Lightroom use the Import “Add” function, not the “Copy” function.
Once visible in Lightroom, the temptation is to look through them and start editing the ones that jump out at you. I’ve done that many times, in a hurry to get to the obvious “nuggets” and start editing them.
Instead, I’d like to introduce you to a way to more formally, and with greater organization, go through a folder of images.
The proper way to do this is when you first start working with that new folder of images. But, if you are like me, you might not have known to, were lazy and impatient, or for whatever reason just didn’t do this. No worries, it’s not too late for a proper culling session.
Here are the steps:
Go to the folder where you have the images. You should be in the Library module of Lightroom and in the grid view (Hit “G” on your keyboard) so you can see all of your images.
Do some folder-level keywording. If all of the images in the folder were, for example, taken at the beach, you might want all of them to have that keyword to aid in searching later. Hit Ctrl (Cmd on Mac) A to select all of the images. Then click in the Keywords section at the right and type in the keywords you want. If you want more than one to apply to just certain selected images, pick those first and then use a comma between them. i.e., Fireworks, Still-Life, Sparklers.
This entire folder of images were shots of fireworks, so I selected all images in the folder and added the keyword “Fireworks.”Selecting several images within the folder, I added additional keywords – Still-Life, and Sparklers. You can have multiple keywords for an image if you separate them with a comma.
Time to quickly go through your images one-by-one. To move faster through the images, first, turn on Auto-Advance. You can either turn this on by going to Photo in the top pulldown menu and selecting Auto Advance or simply by holding down the Shift key while you work. Now bring up just the first image in Loupe View (Hit the Enter key).
For this first pass, you want to flag the images you want to keep and cull out the ones you know you’ll never use. Viewing each image, hit either the “P” key to flag the image as a Pick or “X” key to reject it.
If you just can’t decide, the right arrow key “>” to move on.
To quickly cull your images in Lightroom, turn on Auto Advance and then use the “P” key to flag an image as a Pick, the “X” key to mark it as a Reject, or just use the Right Arrow Key to move to the next image with no flagging. Note the white flags are picks, the black flags with an X are rejects.
Try to be selective here. This does not immediately throw out any images and you can change your mind later. However, your objective ought to be to do some serious housekeeping, X-ing out the images you are unlikely to ever use, and Picking the ones you will probably want to edit later.
Everyone is different. Some people are tidy and have no problem tossing things out they don’t expect to use. Then there are folks like me, packrats for whom this is a tougher task.
Time to be brave. You can check to see which images you flagged with an “X” as rejects if you like. Hit “G” to go back to the Grid view. Now using the Library Filter (top of the grid), click the word “Attribute” and then click the Black flag. This will show the images you flagged as Rejects with the “X.” You can take another look at these if you have to and if you decide it is not one you want to be rejected, hit the “P” key to change it back to a Pick.
Taking out the trash
So let’s get rid of the rejects. To see what you flagged with an “X” as a reject, hit Ctrl- Backspace (Cmd on Mac). You will see two options:
Delete from Disk – This will permanently delete the images from your hard drive. You might still find them in your recycle bin if you accidentally pick this, but consider this the trash for the most part.
Remove from Lightroom – The files will remain on your drive, but you will no longer see them in Lightroom. This is the safer option if you are unsure, but it’s also like just putting your garbage in the hall closet. If you plan to clean the house, do it and don’t look back.
Decision time. After you’ve using the culling step to flag your Picks and Reject images, hit Ctrl-Backspace. This question will appear. You can delete your rejected images entirely or, simply remove them from showing up in Lightroom but retain them on your drive. Choose wisely.
Colors and flags and stars, oh my!
If you were disciplined, using the Pick and Reject options helped you separate the wheat from the chaff, getting rid of things you’ll never use and perhaps freeing up all kinds of space on your hard drives. So now let’s use some tools to go a little deeper, helping you to organize and find images warranting further work.
Lightroom lets you tag photos with several different things to add in organizing, sorting, filtering, and finding them. Let’s look at the options.
Sorting – There are many different ways to sort your images in the Library view of Lightroom. This doesn’t change anything but simply allows you to see them in whatever sort order you like. Some are obvious, like sorting by Capture time so you can see the images in the order you took them. Others, like sorting by aspect ratio, are less obvious but sometimes very useful. Say you need an image for a magazine cover and want a portrait-orientation image. Sorting by aspect ratio is the ticket. Explore what this very simple option can do for you.
Using the Sort by Aspect Ratio option can be handy if you want to group your portrait and landscape orientation images together.
Color – You can flag your photos with any of five different colors (Red, Yellow, Green, Blue or Purple). What each color signifies is strictly up to you. Maybe you want to flag all of your very best images with Red, your Landscapes with Green, your images you want to edit with Yellow – whatever you like. To flag an image, click on the image(s) you want that color applied to, then click on the color patch you want to apply that color tag to. You can also use the keyboard shortcuts – 6-Red, 7-Yellow, 8-Green, 9-Blue. There is no number shortcut for Purple.
If you’ve used color codes to identify different photo types, sorting by color can be useful.
Star Rating – How to apply a star rating is easy. When on an image, just click the number key for the rating you want to assign or use the star symbol on the toolbar at the bottom. What a certain rating means…that’s your call. Is a 5-star image your best ever? Is a 1-star image one that barely escaped deletion? What does a 3-Star rating mean? Whatever you come up with, be consistent and the rating system will be more useful.
Come up with your own scheme of using the star-rating in Lightroom and then sort by rating.
Flags – We already discussed flags earlier. Basically, they are a way to mark an image as a pick or a reject. Use several or none. You can use these tagging tools singularly or in combination, depending on how you choose to mark up your images. For example, a really great landscape photo might be a green, 4-star, flagged as a Pick image. The power comes in how once marked up, you can filter and sort your images.
Finding, filtering, and sorting
So you’ve cleaned up your folders, eliminated the rejects, and flagged your images with color codes, star ratings, and perhaps added some keywords. (We didn’t get into keywording much as that can be an art unto itself. I refer you to this article to learn more about the power of this tool).
Now we want to use this organization to help us find all our best lighthouse images taken in the past three years, for example. If we were good about marking up our images, we might have put the keyword “lighthouse” on them, flagged them with red (which we decided were our best photos), or maybe just made our top images 5-star.
How do we use the markups to find what we seek?
Creative use of the Library filter in Lightroom can bring up just the image you’re looking for if you’ve properly labeled your images with star ratings, pick flags, color codes and keywords. Here, I was looking for all my photos that had the keyword Lighthouse, were 4-star images, and color-coded red.
The better you are at marking-up your images, the greater the degree of precision you will have in finding that needle in a haystack when it comes time for that. I personally have over 100,000 images in my Lightroom catalog. (That’s a big haystack!) So, to use Lightroom to find photos requires some creativity with the Library filtering tool.
You will be able to search through basic things you may have added; keywords, file names, folder names or anyplace else where text might be. You can search your Attributes, the star ratings, color codes, flags.
Another very powerful Attribute is being able to search for unedited photos. Note the filter selection in the image below. Using that icon, I can have Lightroom show all photos for which Lightroom has no edit history.
If I bring up a folder with images that were edited elsewhere before coming into Lightroom, they will also show up as unedited. But, assuming this is a folder with images that have been brought in directly off your camera card and never been touched with anything other than Lightroom, this is a fantastic way to show those “passed over nuggets” we might want to revisit.
Using the Library filter, I’m able to see all the images for a particular year shot with my Canon 6D that are unedited by Lightroom. Creative use of the Text, Attribute, and Metadata filter in the Library Filter function of Lightroom can tell you much about your images and help you find that missing needle in the haystack.
Searching through metadata can also be a powerful way to find photos. Without you even having to enter any information, your camera captures a wealth of data about each image it takes. (Have a look at my article on Irfanview which gets into metadata.)
So, say you’re still looking for those lighthouse photos, but you never put keywords on them. Searching for “lighthouse” isn’t going to help. But say you do know you took the photos on a trip in September of 2017 and shot them with your Canon 6D. Putting just that information into the search filter in the Library module should greatly reduce the size of the “haystack.”
The more precise you can be with your search parameters, the more precise your search will be. Explore all the search options in the Text, Attribute, and Metadata areas and how using them in combination can greatly help you find what you seek.
Become a Collector
Using the Library filter is a great way to search through your photos when you’re looking for something, particularly an ad hoc search for something you don’t need to find often. When you really want to tap the power of the database that is Lightroom, Smart Collections are really cool. First, let’s describe what a Lightroom collection is.
Say you like to take pictures of flowers. Even when you’re out on some other kind of shoot, when you see a nice flower, you take a shot. Thus, you have flower pictures scattered throughout your folders. Now, how would it be to see all of those in one place, without having to move, copy, or duplicate anything? That’s what a Lightroom collection can be, a “pointer” to images that groups them all into one “folder” without moving anything.
There are two kinds of collections in Lightroom.
The first is a regular collection. You can add the photos manually. You can drag them from their folder location to a collection you have set up. Alternatively, if you designate a collection as the “Target collection,” while viewing that image in the Library module, you can just hit the “B” key on your keyboard to add the image to the target collection. You can also select multiple images in the Library module, hit the “B” key to add them all to the target collection.
Remember that nothing really moves, no duplicates get made, no additional drive space is needed. Collections are virtual – only pointers to the original files.
Collections can be very handy. When I’m gathering photos for an article, I will often create a Lightroom collection with the title of the article, make it the target collection, and then as I prowl through my library looking for photos I might want to use, I hit the “B” key on the keyboard and they are added to the collection. Fantastic!
Be a Smarter Collector
Collections are a great tool, but we can go a step further.
Let’s go back to our flower photos example. If I took some flower shots every time I did a shoot, I want them to automatically show up in my Best Flowers collection without any additional work on my part? A smart collection uses filters and conditions like the Library filter but runs continuously in the background.
To set up a new Smart Collection, go to the Collections tab in the panel on the left side of Lightroom. Click the + symbol. Select Create a Smart Collection. Then use the controls in that menu to set up the parameters defining what will be selected.
So, if I set up a smart collection, name it “Best Flowers” and use the parameters where, for example, keywords contained “flowers” and the rating was 3-stars or above, any photo added meeting those conditions automatically appear in that smart collection without any additional work by me. Once built, your smart collections just work silently in the background of Lightroom. (I would just have to remember to be diligent about rating and keywording my flower photos each time I had some new ones brought in.)
Once you set up the parameters for a Smart Filter in Lightroom, it will watch for any images that meet those qualifications and add them to the collection. Here, I have a filter that looks for photos with the keyword “Flowers” that are rated 4-stars or higher. Now, if I’m good about rating and keywording my flowers photos as I take them and import them into Lightroom, they will automatically be added to this collection
Another great use for a smart collection – make one to show all your unedited photos, wherever they might be in your library.
Set your smart collection parameters to something like my example below. It has the Has edits set to False, the camera as the one I’m interested in, my Canon EOS 6D, the File Type Raw, and the Pick Flag is on.
Now, unedited images I’ve flagged as Picks will immediately show up here as soon as I imported them in Lightroom. As I edit them, they will fall off this list. Think of this kind of Smart collection as your “In Box” of photos for editing.
I can also use the other tools and filters we’ve discussed to determine if I will keep them at all. I can do additional culling here if I decide I won’t edit them and perhaps delete them.
Use a Lightroom Smart Collection to act as your “In Box” telling you which photos need editing. I’ve set this Smart filter to add photos that are not edited (Has Edits is False), where the file type is Raw, I’ve flagged the photo as a Pick, and the photos were taken with my Canon 6D. Smart Collections can be very powerful and the beauty is, as collections are strictly virtual, there’s no need for additional copies, folders, or duplicates that would take up more drive space.
Also, remember images in a collection are just pointers to the original files. So if you click on an image in a collection and open it in the Edit module to make changes, you are also editing the photo in the folder where it really lives.
Polishing up the diamonds
When you can’t be out taking more photos, a good use of your time might be to use Lightroom to find photos worth revisiting.
I’m betting that you’ve passed over many diamonds in the rough, and a trip back through the mine that is your photo library will yield some yet undiscovered treasures. Happy prospecting. For now, stay home, be well, and “Live long and prosper.”
The post Ways to Use Lightroom to Find Photos Worth Revisiting appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Rick Ohnsman.
One of the new features in Lightroom CC for macOS, Windows, iOS and Android is ‘Versions,’ which lets you make multiple edits of the same image without having to duplicate the file.
let’s take this image.
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