Archive for the ‘Develop’ Category
I had the pleasure of writing an article for Photoshop User magazine’s July/August 2010 issue. The topic is the new noise reduction technology in Lightroom 3. If you aren’t familiar with Photoshop User magazine, it is published by the National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP) and is sent to all members. The magazine is also available at major book stores. Click here for a PDF of the article and enjoy!
If you haven’t yet investigated the benefits of becoming a NAPP member you should! At only $99 a year it’s a real bargain. Besides the subscription to the magazine you have access to hundreds of video tutorials, tips, tricks, and other things to enhance your Photoshop and Lightroom skills. NAPP also offers an extensive array of discounts. I haven’t really paid for my membership in years. I wind up save more than the annual dues using these discounts! Take a look at NAPP and join today!
Aside from Halloween shots those glowing red eyes in images don’t belong. Of course, the best way to deal with red-eye is to avoid it altogether. So how does it happen?
When the light from your flash enters your subject’s eyes it bounces back from the retina. The retina is rich with blood vessels and colors the returning light red. If your flash is close to the lens (as are many on camera flashes) that light bounces right back into the lens and the eyes appear red. The farther away from the lens you move your flash the more you decrease the chance of red-eye. So the best way to fix red-eye is to get your flash off of your camera. I think more people are beginning to realize this.
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Tucked away in the tool strip of the Develop module is the graduated filter tool. The graduated filter tool is another non-destructive local adjustment tool that made its debut with Lightroom 2.0 and contributes to Lightroom’s power and flexibility.
The most obvious use of the graduated filter tool is to recreate the effect of an on lens graduated neutral density filter. The purpose of this type of filter is to allow the photographer to compensate for the tonal differences in different areas of a scene. For example, when shooting a landscape you may be faced with deciding to expose for the bright sky, thereby under-exposing the foreground detail. Or, you can expose for the foreground and wind up blowing out the sky detail. A graduated neutral density will block more light on one part of the filter and gradually let more light through as you progress across the filter. This allows you to expose the scene without blowing out the sky.
To access the graduated filter tool switch to the Develop module and click the icon in the tool strip on the right (just under the histogram) or press the letter M.
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Sharpening your images is another step from capture to output. Just like exposure, clarity, cropping, and other adjustments, sharpening plays an important role in the creative process. But when should you apply sharpening? How much should you sharpen? What does sharpening do? Let’s take a look at sharpening and how Lightroom handles the process.
Even if you have the best glass and your focusing system is top of the line you cannot avoid the introduction of some softness during the digital imaging process. To start, the sensor converts analog light to digital information when you press the shutter release. That conversion introduces a degree of softness to the RAW file. You won’t see this in a JPEG since the camera will sharpen the image while cooking the JPEG. More softness will get introduced when printing the image. Even though modern ink jet printers have very high resolutions, we are still spraying ink onto some medium. So there are several parts of the process that impact the sharpness of the image.
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Lightroom is rich with presets. There are metadata presets. Keywords sets. Web templates. Print layouts. The list goes on and on. However, one of the features of Lightroom that gives it such power and makes your workflow much more efficient is the ability to create, save, and reuse Develop Presets.
To start on your Develop Preset adventure you need to go to, you guessed it, the Develop module. In the left panel, below the navigator, you will find the Presets section.
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Classic Black & White Infrared photography used film that was sensitive to wavelengths in the 700 to 900 nm range. These wavelengths are not normally visible to human eyes. This is part of what creates a fascination with the eerie beauty of infrared photography.
Modern digital cameras have filters over the sensor to block infrared wavelengths. This is a good thing when taking photographs in the normal light spectrum. Infrared wavelengths increase the chances of blowing out the red channel. There are cameras available without these filters. Additionally you can have your existing camera altered to capture these wavelengths.
If you don’t want to spend extra money on specialized cameras or alterations, you can simulate some of the effects of infrared capture in Lightroom. While there are many styles of infrared photography one of my favorites has the following three characteristics:
- The blues of the sky and water approach black
- Green foliage is snowy white
- The snowy white foliage has a ghostly glow
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There is an interesting, but sometimes confusing, issue when you create a virtual copy while you are working in the Develop module. Here’s the scenario: You are working on an image and before you travel down an alternate creative path you decide to make a virtual copy before proceeding. So you use the menu command or the keyboard shortcut and… poof …a different image is sitting there instead of your virtual copy! You go back to the Library module or look in the filmstrip and notice your virtual copy did get created. You’ve done this before and it worked. So what’s going on?
When you create a virtual copy in the Develop module Lightroom (1) creates the virtual copy, (2) deselects the original, and (3) selects the virtual copy. So you are left with your virtual copy waiting to be processed. That works so long as your original image is the ONLY one selected when you start the process.
If you select multiple images either in the Library module before you enter the Develop module, or you select multiple images in the filmstrip then Lightroom gets caught by a conflict. When you create that virtual copy and Lightroom deselects the original image it immediately selects another image in your selection set. So it never gets to step 3 and your virtual copy doesn’t get selected as usual.
So if you like to create virtual copies while in the Develop module remember to only select one image at a time. Remember that Lightroom keeps the filmstrip at the bottom of each module so you can access your images easily without going back to the Library module.
The introduction of localized adjustments via the Adjustment Brush in Lightroom 2 is just beginning to reveal many creative uses. One possibility that may not be readily apparent is the ability to colorize or hand paint old black and white photos. We’ve all seen many Photoshop tutorials on how to apply this classic and nostalgic technique. But now, it’s possible to do directly in Lightroom.
Let’s start with an old photo. The young lad on the right happens to be my father-in-law who recently turned 90!
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If you are trying to crop a series of images to the same ratio press the S key instead of the R key to activate the Crop tool. That will open the tool with the last crop ratio you used. You can press the S key even after the Crop tool is active to restore the last ratio.
