Photos « 360Photography

RSS

Posts Tagged ‘Photos’

How to Use the Orton Effect in Photoshop to Save Blurry Photos

04 Jun

The post How to Use the Orton Effect in Photoshop to Save Blurry Photos appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Ana Mireles.

orton effect in photoshop featured image

Is your photo a little bit blurry? Don’t throw it out just yet. In most cases, you wouldn’t want soft-focus in your image, but you can rehash-it with a different purpose. One thing you can do is apply an Orton effect in Photoshop to give it new life, especially if it’s a landscape.

Some times when you see your photographs in the camera without zooming in, they look sharp when they are not. Maybe your shutter speed was too slow, or you were using the wrong focus mode.

There are many reasons this can happen. Often you find out too late – when you’re already back home on your computer.

If it’s possible just go back and shoot again, you can find some useful tips in this article so that you can get the best results. If this is not an option, soft-focus and blurry images are completely acceptable if done in a creative way. This is where the Orton effect in Photoshop comes in.

What is the Orton Effect?

The photographer Michael Orton invented this technique, hence the name. It was created in the 80s, which means that it was done with film photography. He overlapped different versions from the same scene with different exposures and a different focus. As a result, the image gained a surreal atmosphere.

His images look like paintings thanks to the experimentation he does with light, color, and motion. On his website, he says that “The vast color combinations and unique variations of light found in the natural landscape, used with the wide variety of choices in compound camera motion provide an exciting challenge.”

You can go there to see his work and understand more of the technique before getting into it.

The Orton Effect in Photoshop

Because this technique was done by stacking images, it can be perfectly recreated in Photoshop because you can work with Layers. Since this is technically easy to do, many photographers have tried it.

Get yourself acquainted with what is out there so you can find your own style. Try using hashtags like #orton or #ortoneffects on Instagram and Pinterest.

Choose your image

Although technically speaking, you can apply this technique to any photo, it doesn’t necessarily look good on all of them. This is mostly done on landscapes because of the dream-like glow that will result from it.

Orthon effect in photoshop tutorial — This image is slightly blurry, it’s mostly a landscape and the man in the bear custom works well with a surreal atmosphere.

Another thing to consider is that it’s not a magical way to save an image that’s completely out of focus. Because it mixes areas with different amounts of detail in them, the soft-focus won’t be distracting. But you do need a certain degree of sharpness in it.

Step by step

In the same way that Michael Orton stacked slides, you’re going to be stacking layers. There are many ways to achieve this technique, it’s a matter of experimenting and finding your own. The basic principle is the same, though; blend different exposures and focus. Here’s my way of doing it to get you started.

Different exposures

When you open your image in Photoshop, it will be a Background layer that is locked. Click and drag it into the Duplicate Layer button at the bottom of the panel to create a copy of it.

Now, change the Blending Mode to Screen. You can do this by opening the menu that you’ll find at the top of the Layers Panel.

The Screen blending mode is one of the different options that allow you to lighten your image. When this layer blends with the one underneath, the pure blacks – if any – will be covered. The pure whites will stay the same and the greyscale will become brighter.

Next, duplicate the original background layer again and drag this copy to the top.

Then, change the blending mode to Multiply. This one does the exact opposite of the Screen blending mode. As the name indicates, it multiplies the base color by the blend color resulting in a darker one.

Different focus

Now that you have different exposures, you need to add the different sharpness.

For this, you’ll need to add a filter.

Whenever you do this, it’s a good idea to make it a Smart Filter so that you can always come back to change it. The first thing to do is to right-click on the layer and choose Convert to Smart Object.

With this change, you’ll be working non-destructively. So, go to Menu>Filters>Blur>Gaussian Blur. In the pop-up window, you can adjust the right amount of blur for your image. Keep the preview option checked so that you can see what you’re doing.

It’s easy to overdo it, so I recommend that you always come back to your work and check with fresh eyes. Because you made it a smart filter, you can just double-click on it and the Gaussian Blur window will pop-up again so you can make any adjustments you want.

Finishing touches

Because the filter will be on a mask, you can paint black any area that you may want to keep without the blur. This can help to create a different effect or direct attention to a specific subject.

You can then crop or add any adjustment layers to finish it off.

There you go, an easy and fun technique that can turn your not-so-great photo into an artistic project to save the day. Try it and share the results in the comment section.

The post How to Use the Orton Effect in Photoshop to Save Blurry Photos appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Ana Mireles.

Digital Photography School

Comments Off

Posted in Photography

8 Core Lightroom Retouching Techniques to Enhance Your Photos

31 May

The post 8 Core Lightroom Retouching Techniques to Enhance Your Photos appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Darina Kopcok.

dps-core-lightroom-retouching-techniques

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.

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.

4. Tweak 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.

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

8 Core Lightroom Retouching Techniques to Enhance Your Photos

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

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.

Digital Photography School

Comments Off

Posted in Photography

Ways to Use Lightroom to Find Photos Worth Revisiting

27 May

The post Ways to Use Lightroom to Find Photos Worth Revisiting appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Rick Ohnsman.

ways to easily use lightroom yo find photos worth revisiting

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.

Use Lightroom to find photos you might have passed over. You could discover you have some diamonds in the rough just needing polishing. — 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.

Lightroom flagging, rating, and color-coding tools — 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.

Lost folders or photos in Lightroom. — 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.

Using the Lightroom Copy method of Importing — 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.

Using the Import Add method of bringing images into Lightroom — 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.

Keywording an entire folder of images in Lightroom — This entire folder of images were shots of fireworks, so I selected all images in the folder and added the keyword “Fireworks.”

Multiple Keywords in Lightroom for Selected Images — 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.

Flagging images as Picks or Rejects in Lightroom and using Auto Advance to move through them. — 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.

The warning message will pop up when you are about to delete your rejected photos. — 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.

Finding photos with Lightroom - sorting by aspect ratio — 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.

Finding photos with Lightroom - Sort by Color — 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.

Finding photos with Lightroom — 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?

Use Lightroom to find photos with ratings, color codes, and keywords. — 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.

Use Lightroom to find photos. Need to see all the images in your Library you've not edited? Easy with the Lightroom Library filter. — 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.)

Ways to Use Lightroom to Find Photos Worth Revisiting — 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.

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.

Digital Photography School

Comments Off

Posted in Photography

Interview: Dirk Dallas of ‘From Where I Drone’ shares what it takes to create excellent photos

27 May

Interview: Dirk Dallas of From Where I Drone shares what it takes to create excellent photographs

Anyone can curate photos, but not many have built a successful brand out of it. Dirk Dallas has dedicated thousands of hours to From Where I Drone (FWID), a website and online community that aggregates aerial images from all over the world. FWID has made such a profound impact, with its 266,000 active followers and counting, that Dallas was approached by an established publisher to create a book.

He is also a professor, photographer and ambassador for top brands including PolarPro, an instructor for Adorama TV and a judge for competitions including the Paris Aerial Photography Awards. Dallas credits DPReview for guidance at the start of his journey, saying:

‘DPReview was of the sites I remember always checking when I was going to look up my first camera. I would read all the reviews, there were hi-res photos and I would zoom in to examine more details. You were one of the first sites to feature photos where I could do that and actually see the product clearly.’

We got a chance to catch up and learn more about the steps he took to build a robust online community, his thoughts on what makes a photo stand out in a sea of millions and his new book Eyes Over the World: The Most Spectacular Drone Photography — featuring 20 of his images plus 170 more from 125 aerial photographers seen on FWID. Anyone looking to improve their skills, or simply be inspired, is encouraged to read on.

All slideshow images appear in the book and are shared with permission from Dallas and the publisher.

Tell us a bit more about your background. How did you get started in photography?

Right before I went to college, I was really into video. I wasn’t a great skateboarder but my buddies were. I remember my grandpa had a Hi8 camera and I asked him if I could borrow it to make skate videos. I was using Windows Movie Maker in the process and I loved it.

I never thought of it as a career, though. My parents are all teachers so I thought ‘I’m just going to be a teacher, it’s a safe job. I’ll never have to worry about getting fired, teachers will always be around.’ At the time my girlfriend, who is now my wife, knew I wasn’t really into what I was studying in school. She told me ‘I’d rather have you do something that you love than have a super-safe job that you hate.’

That was a big moment of freedom for me. I didn’t know what my career was going to look like but I knew I was interested in video. I changed schools and started taking an editing class. They handed us cameras, I think I got a Canon XL and started in with that.

Fast-forward to 2007, I got the iPhone when it came out. I remember thinking ‘this thing’s pretty impressive for a camera phone.’ I decided to start taking a picture every day and practice my eye for composition. This was purely for video reasons, not for photography.

A screenshot of the iPhone photography group Dallas was a part of on Flickr.

Then I started getting into photography and I uploaded my work to Flickr. That is where I found a community for iPhone Photography which, at the time, was really weird to outsiders. I would share my iPhone shots to other groups and people would tell me ‘that’s not real photography. You’re not using a real camera.’ Our group was definitely niche and we felt like a band of rebels that were trying to push the camera as far as we could.

What’s interesting about that is now it’s not weird at all to take a good photo with your phone. You even see Apple put ‘Shot on iPhone’ on their billboards. But I remember getting made fun of for that on Flickr at first. I got really into photography and that same iPhone Photography community introduced me to Instagram when it first came out. I was one of the first 5,000 users and the community there is what inspired me to keep pursuing photography.

What inspired you to move into aerial photography, particularly drones?

To be honest with you, in 2014 I was getting tired of my photography. I could go to the beach and take a picture of a pier which I’d already done a thousand times. I was getting burned out, losing the spark. The fun disappeared. I knew I needed to mix things up. I remember seeing someone fly a Phantom drone with a GoPro attached to it and was instantly intrigued.

In the 2000s, I was into flying electric helicopters and airplanes. They’re so hard to fly, I’d always crash and barely be able to get any flight time. I’d spend a bunch of time and money fixing them. The drone looked like it was pretty stable and it had a camera on it – two things I enjoy. So I got a Phantom and stuck a GoPro on it. I could now shoot all the spots that I go to and was tired of, like the pier, from a new perspective.

It was a new challenge, especially since the early days of drone photography were so hard. I would set the GoPro on timelapse mode and then guess. I would fly over something and count in my head, because the intervals were 5 seconds and then think ‘all right, I got the shot.’ But I wouldn’t know until I got home and watched the footage from the memory card.

The challenge of something new, combining my two loves, is how I got into aerial photography.

What’s the craziest thing that’s ever happened to you while flying?

In Chicago, I was flying at a park and I remember drones weren’t really common yet. You didn’t really them often. Someone approached me while I was flying and started asking me questions. I’m answering them and in the meantime, they also have a dog that’s running circles around us. I completely lost track of the time and realized that while I’m talking to this guy, my drone’s in the air and about to land any minute.

I start looking for it because it drifted away during the flight. I located it as it’s losing power and going straight into these trees. It gets stuck in one about 30 feet up. I could see it but couldn’t climb the tree to get it. What made the situation even more difficult is that my flight to California was leaving in 4 hours. I’m was quickly running out of time.

I found these guys playing football. I approached them and said ‘guys, I will give you $ 100 if you can help me get my drone down. Maybe we could throw the football at it and knock it out of the tree.’ They looked at me as though I was crazy and one of the guys threw his football at it and misses. They tried for 30 minutes and finally knocked it down. It smashed to the ground but everything ended up still working.

Why did you launch FWID?

In 2014, I started to share my work on Instagram and people were asking how I got these unique (at the time) angles. I would tell them it was from a drone and then they’d ask how they could get one, and so on. I would be helping everyone through messaging and emails. I realized, early on, that the same questions were being asked so maybe I should just start a website. I could send everyone seeking answers to the same questions there.

I couldn’t find anything else like it. No one was really helping people. There were some super-techie questions in there but I’m more creative. Still, I shared tips, and what I was learning along the way with the goal to help people. Then I started sharing stuff from the community.

Before FWID was a website, it was a hashtag – and it was a joke.

Before FWID was a website, it was a hashtag – and it was a joke. There’s that popular hashtag ‘#fromwhereistand,’ and I thought of that except I was taking a photo with a drone. So I tagged it and people immediately got the joke. One day I clicked on it and there were a bunch of photos from people with drones. I realized back then that more people had a drone than I was aware of.

None of my immediate friends were flying drones so it was great for me to see all these people using them and capturing places in ways I’d never seen before. I started an Instagram account for it, just to share photos. That’s where I got all the messages at first and then started the website to point people to for answers.

You’ve created a substantial online presence. Do you have any tips for community building?

Community building is really important to me, in general. I’m also a professor teaching photography, motion design, and graphic design. I spend a lot of time during my semesters building those communities because I’ve seen the value of how it pushes us, functions as a support system, and keeps us accountable.

In some ways that’s translated online. Everybody matters, in my opinion. In the early days, it was so easy to give comments to people, check out feeds, message people, and reply. It would take forever but it mattered to me because there was someone out there reaching out and I would reach back. I think those small gestures went a long way.

One of the things going for FWID is consistency (Dirk took a brief hiatus from posting late last year). I showed up everyday for 2 posts, or a minimum of 1 post, at least, for 4 years. Everybody’s striving for perfection, but it’s not obtainable. I would encourage people to strive for consistency. How are you improving every day?

The fact that FWID showed up almost every single day with something new in the feed made it top-of-mind for a steadily growing audience. Once you know you’ll see it, you come to expect it. People ask me why I post at 9:00 PM every night (PST). I would get my kids to bed, finish our routine. The night was done so then I could post. That’s my habit, that’s my routine.

I spend a lot of time finding photos. My book hadn’t come out yet as I’m telling you this but someone, when they discovered all the photos in there weren’t mine, emailed me and said ‘these aren’t all your photos? Anyone can curate a photo book.’ I had to laugh because I spend so much time seeking out an epic image, something inspiring or unique, something you’ve never seen before. The point is, I put a lot of work into it and don’t post anything random.

There needs to be something of value or people are going to stop showing up. For people reading this, ask yourself ‘what is the value I’m giving people?’ For me, for FWID, the value is inspiration. As soon as that’s lost, FWID will go down. There’s a lot of pressure with that realization.

For example, with Nike, when we think of that logo, it’s actually kind of lame. What makes it so cool is you associate it with Michael Jordan. You associate it with Kobe Bryant. Because those people do amazing things, that’s what makes the brand recognizable. Because the people in the FWID community are incredible, I’m able to share their work and grow.

I’m great at promoting other people’s stuff, by not my own if I’m being honest. It’s not natural to me. Sometimes I feel late to the game or that I should be doing some stuff sooner. This is because I want to help others, that’s my goal. Not everyone’s going to make it onto the feed. And I feel bad because I don’t want to leave anyone out. This is what’s great about Stories. If you tag me with something that’s great, I’ll feature you there and you’ll get tons of views on your work that way.

You have well over 1 million photos to choose from in the FWID community. What is it about a photo that stands out to you enough to make worth featuring?

One of the things I try to do is look for a clear subject. There’s got to be a point, what am I looking at? For example, in the photo below, there’s a person standing next tot the boat and I’m thinking ‘wow, they’re in the middle of nowhere. How did they get there, they’re all alone, and where are they going?’ There’s all these questions that start to pop up.

What they also did is introduce scale. What I’m looking for is some basic photography principles. Scale is one of the biggest things that draws me in. This one (below) interests me because when do you ever see a stadium in the shape of a circle? I’ve never seen one. I always gravitate toward something unique. The lightest part is the tennis court and it’s in the center, so the composition is very focused. The crop is tight.

Pops of color are always a winner. Contrast is always something I look for too. If I click on the #fromwhereidrone hashtag, images that have a color scheme that isn’t blues or greens, something really typical, tend to stand out. Now I want to check it out and see if the image is sharp and crisp. If so, I’ll bookmark it.

I never really see warm, orange-hued photos. These are rare. Everything I see is typically blue, green, and brown. One things a lot of drone pilots forget about is the photography principles. They get so caught up in taking the drone up high that those are an afterthought. The people who get featured and do well, in general, take everything we know about photography on the ground and apply it in the air.

Those are the strongest images to me. A great edit. Light is important for creating atmosphere. If you shot this image (below) 2 hours before, it wouldn’t be interesting. How is this unique? Is there a little bit of fog or does the light come in at the right time? Being mindful of the time of day makes all the difference. The people who will wait for hours until the lighting is just right, who make that extra effort, are striving for excellence.

The top photographers will make more of an effort, most people don’t. It’s your commitment to striving for excellence that separates you from the rest.

You have a new coffee table book out. Tell us more about it.

I’ll start by saying that being able to connect digitally is awesome. I now have friends through FWID from around the world that I wouldn’t have otherwise known. That said, we’ve lost this sense of touch and tangibility. What I set out to do is put together some of the best photos at the time of when this book started, back in Summer of 2018, put it in your hands, and inspire you.

I’ve seen these photos on the feeds, I’ve looked at them on my computer, in InDesign, and in drafts and proofs. Once I actually touched and held the book, it was magical. What this book does, I believe, is inspire. Right now we’re in lockdown so it feels like a little vacation, a little trip around the world. It’s a bucket list that makes you think ‘I want to go there when this pandemic is done. I want to shoot that place.’

Once I actually touched and held the book, it was magical. What this book does, I believe, is inspire.

The beautiful thing about FWID is the community. I would have never met or known about all these amazing photographers if it wasn’t for an app (Instagram).

The beautiful thing about FWID is the community. I would have never met or known about all these amazing photographers if it wasn’t for an app (Instagram). What this book represents is a community, people with a shared vision. Now the FWID community has something tangible and lasting. I could delete a photo, close the account, go dark, but the book is out. It will live on, it’s an artifact that will be in the world forever.

When I’m on Instagram or anywhere else online, I may like a photo, but I’ll take it in for half a second. As an author and a curator, I’ve had to pause with these photos and really take them in, ponder in that moment. Those are some feelings I didn’t expect, to be honest.

There have already been quite a few drone and aerial photography books released — What makes yours stand out?

For me, it represents the community. I looked at thousands and thousands of photos that I curated over the years and painstakingly whittled it down to what I thought were the best, most unique images. There are some books that put an image in simply because it’s a drone shot. With this book, I considered the question of ‘why does this shot deserve to be included?’

The book is broken down into 5 categories (Water, Arid, Lush, Urban, and Ice). At the beginning of each category, I wrote photography tips – it’s called ‘Photography Insights.’ For Arid, for example, ‘with extreme temperatures, blowing sand, and broad expanses of land and sky, these landscapes provide challenges to photographers. The drone pilot should be prepared to protect their gear from the elements while being persistently observant. These environments are often devoid of life. It’s crucial to scan the area for compelling subjects to tell a story and give context to a location.’

I give some examples of what you should look for, how to think of capturing lines and curves. I also give some insights on shooting in different climates but I want to make it clear that this is not the focus of the book. Another thing, and I think this makes the book unique, but I’m not entirely sure, is that all 7 continents are represented – including Antarctica.

Were you approached by a publisher or did you pitch this book?

I had been asked 2 times in the past to do a book but I either didn’t know the publisher or it seemed like they were trying to make a buck. Then I got approached by Rizzoli and it just so happened that 3 weeks after I got an email from them, I was going to be in New York where they have an office. I asked if I could meet with them.

My whole motivation for FWID is not to get rich but if I’m going to do something, it has to be done well. I really want it to be something that I can be proud of and can put my name on. COVID has caused some delays. I got my first copy of the book a few weeks ago, even though it was completed in February. That’s not normal. I should have gotten it back then, when it was printed.

I couldn’t start promoting a book until I saw it and held it. It needs to be good. If it’s not, I won’t promote it. I looked at Rizzoli’s work, they produce beautiful books and my editor was really awesome. The collaboration started through an email from them and we decided to collaborate from there.

What photography and drone gear to you use the most?

Drone-wise, I’m shooting a ton with my (DJI) Mavic 2 Pro. I love how small it is, how quick it boots up. That’s a huge thing, it boots up so fast. I also love how quiet it is, that’s a bonus. My next drone that I use is my Phantom 4, but that’s only when I don’t have my phone charged. I hate that I have to use my phone. I know DJI has a Smart Controller but it’s $ 800. I don’t know how I can justify purchasing one.

I use my phone and I hate it on the Mavic so if the phone’s not juiced, I bring my Phantom 4 with a tablet. Also, if I’m shooting during the day, a larger screen is better. For regular photography, I shoot with a Canon 5D Mark IV.

Who are the artists that inspire you the most?

I’m blown away by the work of Costas Spathis. He finds the most unique places, and I ask myself ‘where does this even exist on Earth and how does he find it?’ Another is George Steinmetz. I remember seeing his camel photos for the first time, and I was blown away. The subject wasn’t the camels, it was their shadows and that’s what made me realize what was possible with aerial photography.

Chris Burkard, who did the forward for this book, inspired me years ago when I saw his photos of surfers in the snow. I had never seen anything like that in my life. He challenged me to go for those unexpected moments like people surfing in frigid temperatures around Iceland.

Those are the photographers who have shown me to look at the world in a different way, and to think differently. On a non-photography level, I’m really inspired by Van Gogh. As I continue to learn about his use of symbolism, it becomes clear that for him it’s more than just a painting. Everything had meaning, and you can tell he put so much thought into every decision he made when creating. It makes me want to do things with purpose and excellence.

What tips do you have for people starting out in photography or are looking to improve their skills?

My biggest recommendation is consistency and discipline. So many people think FWID just happened or a print that wins an award or gets featured somewhere big just automatically happens instead of being the result of a lot of work, time, and effort. It takes a lot of failures before you get to a certain level.

One of the things I miss about being a newbie is not caring. I would create something and put it out there. I wouldn’t care because I didn’t know any better. Now that’s disappeared a little bit. I’m cautious, and I ask myself if something is worth sharing or not. It’s good in some ways, bad in others.

If people want to get better, but you don’t have a plan, how are you going to accomplish that? You’re going to be like all those people who make New Year’s resolutions and then a week later, nothing comes out of it.

The point is, when I started taking pictures with my phone, I didn’t care if it was a good photo. I was practicing. I was showing up every day in a discipline, I was in a habit. I made the thing I wanted to get good at a habit. If people want to get better, but you don’t have a plan, how are you going to accomplish that? You’re going to be like all those people who make New Year’s resolutions and then a week later, nothing comes out of it.

You have to be disciplined. You have to have habits. For me, consistency is the biggest factor. Show up, even on the days when you don’t want to, even when you’re tired. Figure out a discipline. For me, that was a photo every day. I don’t know what that means for someone else. The point is, I had a plan and I saw it through.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

Comments Off

Posted in Uncategorized

Dutch court rules grandmother must remove photos of grandchildren from social media under GDPR

22 May

A Dutch court has ruled a grandmother must delete photographs of her grandchildren she shared on social media without consent from the children’s parents or pay a daily fine.

The BBC reports the legal battle ended up in The Court of First Instance of Gelderland after the grandmother refused to remove the images from Facebook and Pinterest, despite requests from the children’s’ mother to do so. According to the judge’s ruling, the images violate the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and, more specifically, the Dutch GDPR Implementation Act (UAVG), which states that posting photos of minors under 16 years old requires their legal representative(s)’ consent.

The judge ruled that because the images were shared on social media, where a wider audience could view and potentially save the photographs, the photographs did not meet the ‘purely personal or household activity’ exemption found within Article 2(2)(c) of the GDPR. Lawyer Neil Brown chimed in with the following tweet to note that had the grandmother put restrictions in place in terms of who could see the images, she might’ve been clear under the ‘domestic purposes’ exemption, but because the courts could not determine how the images were protected, it ruled as it did.

The court did not have information about how the grandmother restricted viewing of her account (from other people, as well as search engines), or what controls there were on re-distribution.

If restrictions were in placing, it might have met the test for “domestic purposes”. pic.twitter.com/bakg26Tq0y

— Neil Brown (@neil_neilzone) May 21, 2020

If the grandmother doesn’t remove the image from social media, she will be required to pay a penalty of €50 for each day the images are still up, up to a maximum of €1,000. The ruling also prohibits the grandmother ‘from posting, displaying or otherwise distributing photographs of [the plaintiff’s] minor children on social media,’ with the same €50 penalty being applied up to €1,000 for each additional image shared.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

Comments Off

Posted in Uncategorized

US students failing AP exams due to iPhone photos not being supported by the testing portal

21 May

According to a report from The Verge, high school students across the United States are failing their Advanced Placement (AP) exams due to the College Board’s online testing portal not accepting photos captured in the default HEIC image format.

Back in March, the College Board, the entity that creates the curricula and exams for AP courses, announced exams would be online rather than in-person since schools across the U.S. were being closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. While this proved beneficial in many ways – most notably the online exam is only 45-minutes while the in-person exams run three hours – it seems the rollout is not without a few hiccups.

AP exams require long-form answers. With in-person testing, these answers are completed and turned in on paper. Online though, the College Board allows students to either type up and submit their responses or write them by hand and submit an image of the handwritten work as a JPG, JPEG or PNG file.

A notification on the AP exam page of the College Board’s website that links to an explainer on how to properly submit images of written responses.

The problem is, iOS devices and a few newer Samsung phones are set to capture the more storage-friendly HEIC files by default, not JPEGs. As a result, students are seeing a perpetual loading screen, which stays up until the 45-minute time limit of the exam is up. Once the time is up, a screen reading ‘We Did Not Receive Your Response’ pops up, confirming nothing was submitted.

A graphic created and shared by the College Board showing students how to change the default image file format on their iOS devices.

The Verge reports enough students at one Los Angeles high school encountered the issue that the school forwarded a message sent to it from the College Board explaining how to troubleshoot the issue to prevent image submissions from being denied. But that message, as well as the below tweet from the College Board explaining how to change the default capture image format on iOS devices, doesn’t help the students who have already taken their exams and were unable to submit their work to no fault of their own and, as a result, are being forced to re-study for a make-up exam.

If you want to submit a photo of a handwritten AP Exam answer from an iPhone or iPad, make sure to change your camera settings so your photos are saved as JPEGs, not HEICs. Go to Settings > Camera > Formats > Select “Most Compatible.”

More details: https://t.co/Hqg0CKbB4A. pic.twitter.com/DZ0lLttDgm

— The College Board (@CollegeBoard) May 12, 2020

In a statement to The Verge, the College Board says ‘less than 1 percent [of students were] unable to submit their responses,’ and notes ‘[It shares] the deep disappointment of students who were unable to submit responses.’

In addition to the explainer on how to change the default file format on iOS devices, the College Board has also opened up a backup email submission process that requires students who encounter the HEIC error to send their responses via a unique email address ‘immediately’ following the exam. This option isn’t retroactively available for the students who were unable to submit their responses the first time and have had to reschedule a makeup exam.

The Verge’s coverage details a number of anecdotes from high school students who have encountered this file format compatibility issue, so head on over for more information.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

Comments Off

Posted in Uncategorized

Tips For Editing the Colors in Landscape Photos Using Lightroom (video)

16 May

The post Tips For Editing the Colors in Landscape Photos Using Lightroom (video) appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Caz Nowaczyk.

In this video from Nigel Danson, you’ll gain some invaluable tips for editing the colors in landscape photos using Lightroom.

While Nigel uses Lightroom Mobile to show you his editing tips, these tips also apply to Lightroom classic.

The features that Nigel discusses to improve the colors in your landscape photos include the:

Temperature slider
Contrast Slider
HSL Panel
Split Toning Panel
Curves Panel
Gradient Adjustments
Calibration panel

So try out some of these tips for editing the colors in landscape photos using Lightroom and share your results with us in the comments section! Furthermore, if you have some tips for editing colors in landscape photos, please share those with us too.

1. Increase the contrast and saturation for more powerful photos

This effect is extremely easy, and yet sometimes easy is best:

Boost the contrast.

And then boost the saturation.

Because here’s the thing:

Most photos suffer from a lack of tonal contrast and a lack of color richness. This makes the photos look flat. They look uninteresting. They’re, well, boring.

But they can be quickly and easily spiced up…

…by doing a little work with the contrast and saturation sliders.

palm tree saturation and contrast adjustment — This image required a bit of a saturation and contrast boost before it really popped.

Note that pretty much every photo editing program offers both of these options in a basic form, though, you can choose to selectively edit tones and colors, as well. And while there’s definitely value in doing more careful tonal editing (via a curves adjustment, for instance), I like to start with the basic contrast slider. It gives me a sense of what the contrast will do to my image, and it’s a great starting point.

The same is true of the saturation slider. Sure, it’s possible to do more advanced adjustments by selecting individual colors. But it’s not necessary for this editing step. Instead, just push up the saturation slider a tad, and see how it looks.

Now, when working with the saturation slider, you do have an alternative:

Vibrance.

Vibrance is a smart saturation. It enhances colors by selectively saturating colors that are less saturated, while also leaving skin tones alone. So if you’re hoping for a more subtle look, the vibrance slider may be the way to go.

(In fact, feel free to try both. There’s no reason not to experiment!)

At the end of the day, it pays to start with basic edits (such as contrast and saturation). Just a little bit of editing can go a long way!

2. Pull up the darker tones for a nice cinematic fade

This is one of my favorite editing effects, however, it’s very easy to overdo (so be careful).

It’ll give you a faded, cinematic look, like this:

Start by accessing your tone curve, and placing points at the center and toward the bottom left:

Then carefully drag up the end point, watching the darkest areas of your photo as you do.

When you do this right, the deepest blacks in your photos will lighten, giving you a beautiful fade.

You can also experiment with the amount you actually pull up the tone curve (the more you pull, the stronger the effect). And you can try pulling down the tone curve just before the leftmost edge, to create a more contrast-heavy look:

The key is to experiment and see what you can come up with. No look is necessarily better than the others, just different. So test out many possibilities; you can even create presets out of your favorites.

3. Split tone with blues in the shadows and gold in the highlights

Split toning is all the rage in photography these days, especially with more fashion and portrait-focused photography (though you can definitely use split toning in landscape, street, and most other forms of photography). The idea is that you add different colors into the highlights and the shadows, giving a more creative feel to the image.

Here’s the split-toned look:

split toned flower example - post-processing effects

Do you see how the shadows are slightly bluer, and the highlights are slightly gold? While this is a look that is often overused, it can be a great addition to your photos when used with restraint.

In fact, I recommend you use the split tone I’ve previewed above as a starting point:

Blue shadows, gold highlights.

From there, you can start experimenting with other split tone options: yellow shadows, green highlights, orange shadows, teal highlights, even pink highlights, blue shadows (and so much more!).

Many of the best split tones use complementary colors (colors that sit opposite one another on the color wheel). Complementary colors contrast heavily with one another, which adds impact and depth to your photos, hence the popularity of those split-tone combinations. But bear in mind that you can also use analogous colors, which sit next to one another on the color wheel and bring a sense of harmony to your photos (blue and green are a great example).

In fact, the key to split toning is to think about the mood you want to evoke, and then choose color combinations that convey that mood!

Note that split toning is offered by most editing programs, but it may be a bit difficult to find. For instance, Lightroom puts its split toning panel just above the Detail module:

Once you’ve found it, have fun experimenting!

4. Selectively saturate the blues and greens for added impact

I’m a huge fan of selective color editing.

Why?

Because it allows you to both simplify and enhance the composition, which results in better, more powerful compositions overall.

Plus, it can just look plain cool.

Generally speaking, it can pay to selectively saturate the colors of your subject, especially if your subject is struggling to stand out against a colorful backdrop.

(Note that you can also desaturate the background colors, or even do both at once for an enhanced effect.)

But for a really neat effect, I recommend you focus on two specific colors:

Blues and greens.

That’s what I did for the image below:

You see, blues and greens tend to look really, really good when saturated more deeply. They’re not close to skin tones, so you don’t have to worry about messing up portrait shots. And they’re mostly in the background, so they just add a bit of pizzazz to your photos.

Of course, saturating blues and greens won’t always look good. There are situations where it just won’t work.

But generally speaking, richer blues and greens will serve to enhance your photos.

Now, to do selective color adjustments, you’ll need to work with individual colors. In Lightroom, this requires using the HSL sliders in the Develop module.

Just remember:

Don’t saturate just to saturate. Instead, do it if it improves your photos. Saturated blues and greens are nice, but only to a point. As with any good post-processing effect, don’t get carried away!

5. Use exposure gradients to add depth to your photos

Exposure gradients aren’t difficult to pull off, but many photographers never bother to learn how to create them.

Which is absolutely a mistake, because exposure gradients can take your photo from boring to life-like in two seconds flat.

flower image with gradient applied - post-processing effects

First things first:

An exposure gradient simply lightens or darkkens a part of your photo in gradient fashion. So the effect gradually dissipates as it moves across your photo. Like this:

Now, this may seem like a silly effect, but think about what you could do if you put the gradient in the corner, just below where the sun sat in the sky. You’ll get an artistic, flare-like result.

Neat, right?

You can get even better results by warming up the gradient. That way, the light is slightly golden:

lightroom gradient example - post-processing effects

Flare-like effects are cool, but my favorite thing about gradients is how they add depth to images. The gradient gives an element of three-dimensionality that’s hard to produce otherwise, and for that reason alone, gradients are worth trying out.

Here’s the bottom line:

While you won’t always end up using the exposure gradient in your final image, it’s often worth a try. Because gradients can make a huge difference to your photos.

Plus, they’re very cool!

5 post-processing effects to instantly enhance your photos: Conclusion

Hopefully, you now feel like you can do a lot with post-processing, even if editing isn’t your strong suit.

And, as I said, these effects aren’t actually hard to use. Just give yourself a bit of time to learn how to produce the effects, then start practicing.

You’ll soon be processing gorgeous photos!

Do you have any other post-processing effects tips you’d like to share? If so, please share them with us in the comments. We’d also love to see your post-processing effects results, so feel free to share those too.

If you are interested in further post-processing tips, why not try out Jim Hamel’s Lightroom course.

The post 5 Post-Processing Effects to Instantly Enhance Your Photos appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Jaymes Dempsey.

Digital Photography School

Comments Off

Posted in Photography

Posts Tagged ‘Photos’

What is the Orton Effect?

The Orton Effect in Photoshop

Choose your image

Step by step

Different exposures

Different focus

Finishing touches

1. Start with your histogram

2. Choose the correct Color Profile

3. Get a base with the Tone Curve

4. Tweak the Basic Panel

5. Layer Contrast and add Vibrance in the Presence Panel

6. Adjust color in the HSL Panel

7. Try Split Toning in the highlights and shadows

8. Enhance with local adjustments

Conclusion

See if this describes you

Get a DAM

A jealous secretary

A culling session

Taking out the trash

Colors and flags and stars, oh my!

Finding, filtering, and sorting

Become a Collector

Be a Smarter Collector

Polishing up the diamonds

Interview: Dirk Dallas of From Where I Drone shares what it takes to create excellent photographs

Tell us a bit more about your background. How did you get started in photography?

What inspired you to move into aerial photography, particularly drones?

What’s the craziest thing that’s ever happened to you while flying?

Why did you launch FWID?

You’ve created a substantial online presence. Do you have any tips for community building?

You have well over 1 million photos to choose from in the FWID community. What is it about a photo that stands out to you enough to make worth featuring?

You have a new coffee table book out. Tell us more about it.

There have already been quite a few drone and aerial photography books released — What makes yours stand out?

Were you approached by a publisher or did you pitch this book?

What photography and drone gear to you use the most?

Who are the artists that inspire you the most?

What tips do you have for people starting out in photography or are looking to improve their skills?

You may also like:

1. Increase the contrast and saturation for more powerful photos

2. Pull up the darker tones for a nice cinematic fade

3. Split tone with blues in the shadows and gold in the highlights

4. Selectively saturate the blues and greens for added impact

5. Use exposure gradients to add depth to your photos

5 post-processing effects to instantly enhance your photos: Conclusion