Mastering Lightroom Book Two

MASTERING LIGHTROOM A PHOTOGRAPHER’S GUIDE TO LIGHTROOM 4 & 5 Book Two: The Develop Module

ANDREW S GIBSON

Contents Introduction Notes Advice for new Lightroom users Before you start A useful exercise Global adjustments Working with panels Lightroom workflow The Camera Calibration panel The Lens Corrections panel The Basic panel Basic panel: White balance Basic panel: Tonal controls A closer look at the Histogram The Presence sliders The Tone Curve panel The Effects panel The HSL / Color / B&W panel The Split Toning panel The Detail panel

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3 7 8 10 11 12 19 21 23 28 42 43 53 61 66 77 87 96 104 107

Local adjustments The Graduated Filter The Radial Filter The Adjustment Brush Portrait retouching The Crop Overlay The Spot Removal Tool

118 120 125 128 132 140 152

The left-hand panels The Navigator panel The Presets panel The Snapshots and History panels

158 159 160 173

More from the Develop module Using Virtual Copies in Lightroom Useful Develop module shortcuts Processing photo files Exporting photos

178 179 181 184 185

Conclusion Photography ebooks Craft & Vision

190 191 193

INTRODUC TION

In digital photography there are lots of ways of processing images; far more than there ever was back when everybody used film. With so many options, it’s not easy to figure out your personal approach. It’s a puzzle that all modern day photographers have to find an answer to. If you are a Lightroom user then the program should sit at the heart of your workflow. Post-processing starts, and often finishes, in Lightroom. This approach saves you both time and hard drive space. Therefore it makes sense to learn how to get the most out of Lightroom, to save you having to finish off your processing in other software unless you really want or need to. In this ebook I’ll explain how to use the tools in the Lightroom Develop module to process your Raw files. Along the way I’m going to show you some interesting techniques, and emphasise a couple of points that I feel are important, yet seem to be omitted from most books on this topic:

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1. Post-processing starts at the point you press the shutter button to take a photo. In fact, it starts before then, when you decide which aperture, shutter speed, ISO and focal length to use. In other words, you won’t see any tutorials about how to imitate the effect of using a wide aperture to blur the background here – instead, I expect you to select the appropriate aperture when you take the photo.

I’ve been studying the work of two portrait photographers I have a lot of admiration for: Tom Hoops and Eduardo Izquierdo. Both have portraits in their portfolios with very dark, and sometimes completely black, backgrounds. This led me to play with the idea of making the backgrounds in my own portraits even darker. After trying it, and thinking about the results, I realised that I had gone too far – the backgrounds needed to be lighter than I had made them. Luckily in Lightroom it’s easy to go back and make adjustments when this happens.

This is called visualisation – the ability to picture in your mind, when you take a photo, what the ultimate result will be after you have processed the image in Lightroom. This takes practice, and is skill that is refined with time and experience.

The point is my approach to processing was dictated by my intent. So was my assessment of the results. I judged them against the criteria of making the background go dark, and realised that I had gone too far for my personal taste.

2. Intent determines your approach. It is linked to your world view, and the way you want to express it in your photos.

That’s why I am going to encourage you to explore Lightroom’s processing tools for yourself, rather than tell you what you should do. In the above example, what if my intent was to create a light, airy portrait with a hazy, atmospheric background? First, I would have selected a different location to take the photos. But I would also have taken a different approach to processing the portraits. What works for one photo may be inappropriate for another, and it’s wrong to be dogmatic about technique.

Here’s an example. One of my favourite portrait techniques is to photograph the model against a dark background. The idea is to retain detail, but keep the background dark so that it complements the model and is not a distraction. As I know my intent, it is easy to use some of Lightroom’s tools to achieve this effect. This lets me process my images with purpose, rather than using those tools just for the sake of it.

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The photo on this page is one possible interpretation of a portrait. The model is learning against the entrance to a concrete bunker. The light comes from her left, and the dark area behind her is the interior of the bunker. It’s a nice portrait and I like it. The tonal contrast works well. On one side we have the light grey tones of the bunker wall, on the other the darkness of the interior. The light provides nice modelling on my model’s face, and the shadow on her right side adds form. However, I wanted to see how the portrait would look if the background (on the right hand side) was darker. You can see the result on the next page.

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This interpretation has a darker, moodier feel. The background is less distracting and the eye goes straight to the model. Which portrait do you prefer – the one on this page or the one on the previous page? Neither is ‘correct’ and I’m sure that opinion will be divided. Your preference is an indicator of the approach you would probably take if you had a similar portrait. The success of the postprocessing, from my point of view, is measured against my intent – to create a portrait with a dark background with the lightest tones being those of the model’s skin.

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Notes Screen shots are taken from a MacBook Pro using OS X. If you are a PC user your screen will look different. Most of the differences are minor, and down to the operating system not the program – on the whole Lightroom looks the same most of the time in both Windows and Mac OS X. I would also like to clarify the way shortcuts are used in this ebook: Right-clicking: On a PC you can right-click just about anywhere in Lightroom to bring up a contextual menu. If you’re a Mac user right-click may be disabled. You can access the contextual menu by holding the Control key down when you click. Or, you can enable right-clicking (System Preferences > Mouse) even with a single-button Apple mouse. An easy solution is to use a Windows mouse – Mac OS X recognises it and enables right-clicking. I find the right-click invaluable, and will mention it frequently in the ebook. So please don’t get confused if you also use a Mac and right-clicking doesn’t work. Option/Control keys: Keyboard shortcuts on the Mac often use the Option key, also known as the Command key. Windows keyboards use the Control key instead. I will list the Mac shortcut in the ebook with the PC shortcut in brackets, like this: Cmd-S (PC: Ctrl-S). Keyboard shortcuts: Although I will mention the most useful keyboard shortcuts, I won’t use them all. Most of the time I will guide you to the appropriate menu

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option (i.e Photo > Add to Target Collection). If a shortcut exists, it will be listed next to the relevant option in the menu (in this case, the shortcut is ‘B’). You can also bring up a list of keyboard shortcuts relevant to the module you’re in by pressing Cmd-/ (PC: Ctrl-/) at any time. Terminology: Photoshop comes in several versions: Photoshop Elements, Photoshop CS, Photoshop CC and Photoshop Lightroom. For the sake of simplicity, I will use the term Photoshop to refer interchangeably to Photoshop Elements, Photoshop CS and Photoshop CC, and Lightroom to refer to Photoshop Lightroom.

Left: Right-click on a PC or Ctrl-click on a Mac to bring up a contextual menu like this. Contextual menus act as a shortcut to commonly used functions in the Lightroom menus. The options presented are related to the part of the program you click on.

advice for new Lightroom users If you’re new to Lightroom’s Develop module, here is some advice that will help you get the most out of it. The idea is to set up good habits from the start; they will serve you well in the long run. Understand what you can’t do in the Develop module For example, you can’t use layers, you can’t use High Dynamic Range or exposure blending techniques, you can’t create composite images and you can’t add fancy borders. But you can use Lightroom in conjunction with other software (such as Photoshop or a plug-in). In this scenario you use Lightroom’s Library module to import and organise your images, process them as much as you can in the Develop module, and export them to Photoshop or a plug-in when there is something that you want to do that you can’t achieve in Lightroom.

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Do as much as you can in Lightroom’s Develop module

Use Virtual Copies

Even if you are preparing an image to export to Photoshop or a plug-in, it is a good idea to do as much as you can to the image in Lightroom’s Develop module first. Lightroom can quickly and easily take care of the more mundane tasks such as setting white balance, exposure and eliminating dust spots. It saves you time, especially if you use Develop Presets, copy & paste or the Sync button to automate some of the process (more on these tools later).

I will explain what Virtual Copies are in detail later. But for now, if they are new to you all you need to know is that they are an easy way to make multiple copies of an image that you can process in different ways. For example, if you want to make both a colour and a black and white version of an image.

The corollary of this is that you should also learn what you can do in Lightroom to avoid having to use another program. For example, the Soften Skin Adjustment Brush preset in Lightroom is more than good enough for most portrait retouching. You only need to use an alternative for high end retouching work. Lightroom doesn’t give you as many options as the plug-ins, but it may well be good enough for your purposes. Understanding exactly what you can do in the Develop module helps you understand when you need to use another application to get the effect you want.

Learn how to organise your images in the Library module The more organised you are in the Library module, the quicker and more effective you will become in the Develop module. Getting organised means having an effective folder structure for your Raw files, an efficient backup system, a way of selecting which images you are going to process (and which ones you aren’t) and a system for using Collections and Collection Sets which supports all this. Luckily, all this is explained in the first ebook in this series: Mastering Lightroom Part One: The Library Module.

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There is no ‘correct’ order in the Develop module That’s right – the Develop module is designed so that you can go into any of the Develop panels (the ones on the right-hand side) and adjust the settings any way you want. While it makes more sense to adjust some things before others, there is no set way to go about it, and your approach probably depends as much on the subject as it does on anything else. This can be daunting for newcomers – if it’s okay to start just about anywhere, then where exactly do you begin? I will guide you through the Develop module settings in a logical order. As you gain confidence in Lightroom you can make adjustments in any sequence you like. Treat the order I present things in as a guide, not a rule.

Before you start Part of figuring out your purpose is deciding what approach you will take to using the various tools in Lightroom’s Develop module. Here are some things for you to think about. Naturally, you may not yet be fully aware of what you can do in Lightroom’s Develop module. That’s okay – your appreciation and understanding of the various aspects of post-processing will grow as you work your way through this ebook.

Tonal contrast Tonal contrast is the difference between the lightest and darkest areas of a photo. For example, if you take a photo of a white flower against a dark backdrop there is a significant difference in brightness between the flower and the background. Tonal contrast is an important part of the composition. It’s also the basis of most successful black and white photography and much colour photography.

Strength of colour Do you want your colours to be strong, soft or subtle? This is a question you address when you take your photos as well as in post-processing. If you like strong, saturated colours then you may want to take photos on a brilliant sunny day, using a polarising filter to bring out their full depth and richness. On the other hand, if you prefer soft colours, you may take photos in the shade, or on a cloudy day, so that the colours are naturally softer. You can then think about how you want to emphasise the softness of the colour in the Develop module.

Colour or black and white Do you want to create colour images or work in black and white? I’ll cover black and white conversions in Lightroom in great detail in the next ebook in this series.

Light or dark The portraits I showed you earlier, the ones with the dark backgrounds, are exercises in tonal contrast. The light skin of the model provides a rich contrast against the dark backgrounds. Tonal contrast is an important part of my style, and in those photos I chose to emphasise it in post-processing.

Colour balance Do you want your image to have a warm colour cast, a cool one, or to have neutral colour? I cover this in detail in the section about white balance.

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Do you want your images to have a dark feel or a light feel? Again, the answer is mostly settled when you take the photo, and post-processing provides the emphasis.

A useful exercise The above questions are here to get you thinking about how you will use Lightroom’s Develop module. I appreciate that while visualisation is a useful tool, there will be times when you just take a photo of an interesting subject and decide how to process it later. Or something may occur to you at the processing stage that you didn’t see when you took the photo. That’s one of the interesting things about processing images – it can open up new possibilities. Then once you have mastered new tools or processing techniques, you can take photos with these in mind. You may be struggling to work out your approach to post-processing. That’s fine – it’s not always an easy process, especially if you are new to this way of thinking. It is useful to look at the work of some of your favourite photographers, and think about what aspects of their images appeal to you. These are pointers and will give you ideas that you can apply to your own work. Try this exercise. Choose ten of your favourite images from other photographers. It may be helpful if they are from a similar genre. For example, if you are interested in portraits, then choose ten photos of people. If the images are in colour, how did the photographer use colour? Are the colours predominantly warm or cool, or a mixture of the two? Are they saturated or are they soft? If the images are in black and white, how has the photographer used tonal contrast and texture? Does the monochrome approach appeal to you, or would

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you prefer to see the image in colour? Why do you think the photographer chose to work in black and white, rather than colour? How important is light in the composition of the image? Is the light hard or soft, natural or artificial? What is the relationship between the light and the use of colour and tonal contrast? How has the photographer used focus? Is the entire image sharp, or just part of it? How would it look if the photographer had used a wider or a narrower aperture? What focal length did the photographer use? You may not know the exact focal length, but you can probably tell from looking whether the photographer used a wide-angle lens, a normal lens or a telephoto. Why do you think the photographer used the focal length he did? How would the photo look if he had used a wider or a longer lens? What is the emotional content of the photo? How do the use of lighting, colour, tonal contrast and composition combine to make you feel? How has this been emphasised in post-processing? What type of post-processing style or techniques do the photographers appear to be using? Do the photos you like tend to look natural or heavily processed?

Global adjustments Lightroom’s Develop settings divide into two broad categories. Global adjustments are those applied to the entire image. Local adjustments are those that you apply to just part of the photo. It is sensible to make global adjustments first, so we will start with those. But before we do, let’s take a brief look at the right hand panels in the Develop module. This is where all the developing action takes place. As you learn to use the tools in these panels, your skills will grow and the quality of your images improve.

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Spot Removal (Q)

Radial Filter (Shift + M)

Crop Overlay (R)

Adjustment Brush (K)

Red Eye Correction

Graduated Filter (M)

The Histogram

The Tool Strip

This panel displays important information about the photo you are developing. You can see at a glance the camera settings used (ISO, focal length, aperture and shutter speed), the histogram (including clipped highlights or shadows, if any) and whether you are editing the Original Photo or a Smart Preview. The histogram shown in Lightroom is similar to, although usually not exactly the same as, the histogram displayed on the back of your camera.

The six buttons in the Tool Strip provide access to tools that you will use during the development process. The three on the right (Graduated Filter, Radial Filter and Adjustment Brush) are local adjustments. The next two, Spot Removal and Red Eye Correction, are there to help you remove dust spots or red eye caused by on-camera flash. The last tool, the Crop Overlay, helps you crop out unwanted distractions at the edge of the frame or change the aspect ratio of the image. Aspect ratio is a fascinating topic in itself that I will explore later.

We’ll come back to the Histogram panel shortly, and see how it relates to the Tone sliders in the Basic panel.

You can access each tool by clicking on the icon or using the keyboard shortcut (listed in brackets where available). Note: The Radial Filter is new to Lightroom 5, and not present in Lightroom 4.

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Basic panel

Tone Curve panel

The basic panel is where you carry out essential adjustments to the image such as setting the white balance, brightness and contrast. These are global adjustments. Later on you will learn how to use the Graduated Filter, Radial Filter and Adjustment Brush to apply the same adjustments to part of the image (local adjustments).

The tone curve will be instantly familiar to Photoshop users. It works in a similar fashion in Lightroom. Use it to adjust contrast or set new black and white points (you can do the same thing in the Basic panel, the Tone Curve gives you an alternative). There are three colour curves (red, green and blue) as well as an RGB curve. Develop presets designed to give a vintage effect often utilise the colour curves to create colour casts. I will show you how to do the same later.

HSL / Color / B&W panel These are three panels in one – Hue, Saturation and Luminance (HSL), Color and Black & White (B&W). The first two help you take control of the colours in your images. Black & White is for converting your images to monochrome.

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Split toning panel

Detail panel

Ostensibly for toning black and white images, you will also see it used to create effects for colour images. An interesting tool with plenty of creative possibilities.

This is where you can adjust the Sharpening and Noise Reduction settings. Some of you will be happy with Lightroom’s default settings and leave this panel alone. Others will want to fine tune the Noise Reduction and Sharpening settings. I will show you how later.

Lens Corrections panel This is where you can correct lens aberrations such as chromatic aberration, vignetting and barrel distortion. You can also straighten buildings suffering from the converging verticals effect. Lightroom contains built-in profiles for most lenses that let you implement lens corrections automatically.

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Effects panel

Camera Calibration panel

The Effects panel lets you apply a vignette to your images or, for those of you nostalgic for the look of film, add realistic looking grain.

This is where you set the algorithm that Lightroom uses to convert the Raw file into a colour image. You can also select a profile that imitates your camera’s Picture Style / Picture Control settings, or even create your own. These are not creative functions, but they lay the groundwork for the work you do in the other panels. For that reason it’s a good idea to set these first.

Working with panels Here are a couple of tips to make working with the right-hand panels easier:

1. Enable Solo mode In Solo mode, Lightroom opens just one panel (other than the Histogram panel) at a time (see right). This makes it much easier to find the option you are looking for when processing images, but is disabled by default. To enable Solo mode, rightclick anywhere in the right-hand panels to bring up a contextual menu:

There is a list of available panels at the top of the contextual menu. The ticks show they are enabled. You can disable any of these if you don’t use them.

When Solo Mode is enabled, Lightroom only opens one panel other than the Histogram at a time.

Use this option to hide or change the flourish underneath the panels.

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Left: With Solo mode enabled, Lightroom only opens one subpanel at a time other than the Histogram, making it easier to find your way through the subpanels.

2. Turn off panels Every right hand panel in the Develop module (apart from the Histogram and Basic panels) has a toggle switch to turn it off (marked right). You can use it as a before/ after switch that enables you to see the difference that the settings in that panel make to the image. It also gives you an easy way to disable a panel – it’s quicker to use the toggle than to reset all the sliders to their default.

These toggle switches are in the On position. The changes these settings make to the image are visible.

These toggle switches are in the Off position. The changes these settings make to the image are not visible.

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Lightroom workflow If you are new to Lightroom you are probably wondering what is the best workflow to use within the Develop module. The layout of the right hand panels means that you can move easily from one to another, but it’s not always clear what the best order to do so is. What follows is my personal recommendation. It’s the order that I use, it works for me and it will work for you as well. But don’t be afraid to go off in other directions as your confidence grows. You should consider this workflow as a suggestion, or a starting point, and develop your own working methods from there. You’ll notice that the order I move around the right hand panels is different to the order in which they are stacked in the Develop module. I’ve structured this ebook so it moves through the right hand panels in the same order that they appear in my suggested workflow. That makes it logical and easy for you to follow. • Start off in the Camera Calibration panel. It’s important to select the most appropriate Profile at the start as it determines the way that Lightroom interprets the colours in your Raw file. • Next, go to the Lens Corrections panel. I feel that it’s better for you to see the image with any Distortion corrected. For example, later on I’ll show you how to use the Angle tool to rotate an image so that the horizon is straight. But it’s hard to do so if the horizon is curved because you used a wide-angle lens with barrel distortion.

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Camera Calibration panel

Lens Corrections panel

Basic panel

Tone Curve panel

Effects panel

HSL / Color / B&W panel

Split Toning panel

Detail panel

Tool strip (local adjustments)

External plug-ins

• The Basic panel is next. The decisions you make here regarding white balance, exposure and contrast are the foundation underlying everything else you do. • Then comes the Tone Curve panel. But you may choose to visit the Tone Curve panel before the Basic panel to set the base contrast of the image. There are also times when you won’t need to use it at all. • The Effects panel lets you add a vignette to your images, or grain if you want to imitate film. • Then it’s just a matter of following the right hand panels in the order they appear. The HSL / Color / B&W panel is next. It’s useful for adjusting colour values, but like the Tone Curve panel you won’t need to use it for every photo.

• Next come local adjustments such as dust spot removal and using Graduated and Radial filters or the Adjustment Brush to make local adjustments to brightness, contrast or colour balance. The question of workflow becomes more subjective here. For example, there are times when it will make more sense to use local adjustments to dodge or burn while you are in the Basic panel. That’s why the local adjustment tools are located under the Histogram. • Finally, if you are using an external plug-in (such as Silver Efex Pro 2 to convert your image to black and white) or Photoshop to finish off the image this is the time to do it. Take the image as far as you can in Lightroom first. Don’t worry if this doesn’t make much sense to you yet. It will become clear as we look at what each of these panels is for.

• The Split Toning panel is more likely to be used for black and white work, although it does have some applications for colour photography too. Another panel you may skip sometimes. • The Detail panel is where you set sharpening and noise reduction. If you are happy with Lightroom’s default noise reduction and sharpening settings (which work well most of the time) you won’t even need to visit this panel.

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Tip: Don’t be afraid to move around between panels. If you adjust brightness and contrast in the Basic panel, for example, then go and use a Graduated filter to make the sky darker or the Effects panel to add a subtle vignette, then don’t be surprised if you need to return to the Basic panel to tweak tonal values. That’s just the way it goes in Lightroom. Learn to enjoy the freedom it gives you.

The Camera Calibration panel The Camera Calibration panel is important because the settings you select here form the basis of all the work you do in the Develop module. But you only need to pay a fleeting visit as it takes just a few seconds to do what you need.

Process Both Lightroom 4 and Lightroom 5 use the 2012 Process. The word Process refers to the algorithms that Lightroom uses to process your images. The most notable difference is the sliders in the Basic panel have changed. The Recovery, Fill Light and Brightness sliders from Lightroom 3 have disappeared. The Highlights, Shadows and White sliders have taken their place. The way the Tone sliders work has also changed, although you may not notice until it is pointed out. There are three Processes to choose from: 2003, 2010 and 2012. You should select 2012 for virtually everything you do (it is the default for images imported into Lightroom). The only time you will see an earlier process used is for images originally processed in earlier versions of Lightroom. The older Process is kept because updating may change some of the tonal values in your image. There’s little point in updating to Process 2012 if you consider a photo finished as you may have to readjust the exposure and contrast settings so that it looks like it originally did. But there’s no harm in trying if you are curious, as both Lightroom 4 and Lightroom 5 let you undo the change and revert back to the original Process.

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Tip: One of the main benefits of the 2012 Process is that it offers better noise reduction than earlier Processes. If you have older images suffering from noise, it is worth updating the Process to see if it improves noise reduction performance.

Above: There are three Processes to choose from. New files are automatically assigned the 2012 Process.

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Above: The lightning bolt icon underneath the histogram indicates that the photo is developed with an old Process. Hover over it to reveal which Process is being used, and click to update to the most recent one.

Above: Process Version 2012. These are the sliders you will be used to in Lightroom 4 and 5. Note that the Red, Green and Blue tone curves found in the Tone Curve panel are also only available in Process Version 2012.

Above: Process Version 2010. This is what you will see if you use Lightroom 3 or select the 2010 Process version. The Tone sliders (marked) are different.

Above: This image is straight out of the camera, with no adjustments, Process 2012 and the Adobe Standard Profile.

Above: Lightroom uses Profiles to determine how to interpret the colours and tones within a Raw file. The default profile is Adobe Standard. The others depend which camera you used to take the photo. The Profiles in my list (marked) mirror the Picture Styles available on my camera. Selecting a Profile is just a matter of selecting the one that suits your image best.

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Above: The same image, but with the Landscape Profile. This Profile enhances the blue skies and boosts contrast.

Note: Profiles are only applicable to Raw files. For other photo types the Profile simply says Embedded. Profiles, like Picture Styles or Picture Controls, become part of the image in a JPEG or TIFF file and cannot be changed.

Colour calibration The colour sliders underneath the Profile menu (marked right) are for fine-tuning the colours within your image. Most photographers won’t need to touch these. Their main use is to help you create photos with accurate colour, and you can do that with the White Balance slider in the Basic panel. The controls in the Camera Calibration panel are of more interest to professional photographers whose clients demand colour accuracy. One way to use the Camera Calibration sliders is to take a photo of a colour test card and display it on your monitor. Hold the real card next to it and use the sliders to match the colours. This only works if you have a calibrated monitor, but once you have profiled your camera you can create a Develop preset to apply those settings to all Raw files imported from your camera. These sliders work with all photo file types, not just Raw files.

DNG Profile Editor If the sliders in the Calibration panel are not accurate enough for you, then another option is to download Adobe’s DNG Profile Editor (it’s free, pictured on the right) and use it to create your own profile. It’s intended for advanced users only and you need to convert your Raw files to DNG format to use it. But may come in useful if you want to create profiles for two or more camera bodies (so that the images coming out of them look the same), use infrared-modified cameras (and need to go beyond the 2000 Kelvin lower limit of White Balance in Lightroom) or need to create profiles to match a fixed light source (potentially useful for product shots). You can download it here: http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=5493

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Monitor calibration Colour management in Lightroom starts with a properly calibrated monitor. None of the adjustments you make in the Camera Calibration panel really matter if you are working with an uncalibrated monitor, as it is highly unlikely that it is displaying colour accurately. What happens if you don’t calibrate your monitor? Well, most monitors, as purchased from the shop, have a strong blue colour cast. Everything you look at on the monitor is blue, although you probably won’t realise this until it is pointed out because your eyes are so good at adjusting to different colours. Every photo you edit on an uncalibrated monitor is too warm – because you are warming up the image when you adjust colour to compensate for the screen’s blue cast. You may also have trouble with contrast and brightness – and you’ll never manage to get a print that matches what you see on the screen. The bottom line is this – you will never get accurate colour from an uncalibrated monitor. Monitor calibration isn’t complicated. It’s easy to do as long as you buy a special monitor calibration tool called a colorimetric device (these are made by manufacturers like Eye-One, ColorMunki, Pantone and Spyder). I use one made by Spyder – they start at around £60, and even the least expensive models are accurate enough for most photographers. Calibrating your monitor is as simple as connecting the device to your computer, starting the software and following the on-screeen instructions. The software that comes with it displays a series of colour patches on the monitor, which are measured in turn by the device. The software measures the difference between what the monitor displayed, and what it should have displayed, and creates a

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colour profile that corrects any inaccurate colours. When you’re done, the program shows you a comparison of before and after the calibration process. If you’ve never seen this before, you’ll be surprised by how different they are. The program saves a profile to your computer that programs like Lightroom can use to render colour accurately on your monitor. After the initial calibration you need to repeat the process every month or so (maybe even more often if accurate colour is of high importance to you). This is because monitor colour slowly drifts – so you need to recalibrate to ensure that the colours on your screen haven’t changed.

The Lens Corrections panel All camera lenses, regardless of the price or quality, have optical aberrations of one kind or another. On some high quality lenses they are virtually imperceptible, and is one of the reasons these lenses cost more. On others, particularly inexpensive wide-angle zooms, they are quite noticeable. Wide-angle lenses are always more prone to aberrations than normal and telephoto lenses. One of the benefits of digital cameras is that you can use software like Lightroom to eliminate most aberrations. It can’t turn an inexpensive lens into a high quality one. But it you can squeeze the best quality possible from the lenses you have. These are the types of lens aberration that Lightroom can eliminate: Vignetting: The edges of the frame are darker than the centre. Occurs at the widest aperture settings of all lenses and gradually disappears as you stop down. Chromatic aberration and colour blur: Coloured fringes along highlight edges. Most common towards the edge of the frame on wide-angle lenses. Barrel distortion: Straight lines appear bent outwards. A characteristic of wideangle lenses, and is more pronounced near the edge of the frame and with shorter focal lengths. Pincushion distortion: Straight lines appear bent inwards. This is a characteristic of telephoto lenses and is rarely as noticeable as barrel distortion.

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Converging verticals Lightroom can also help you correct converging verticals. They occur because the camera isn’t straight when you take the photo. If it is tipped backwards or forwards, or turned to the side, any verticals in the photo won’t be parallel with the edges of the frame. While it’s better to try and get the camera aligned correctly in the first place, Lightroom can help out when that’s not possible. Lens Corrections can only be applied if you use a lens that appears in Lightroom’s database. Luckily the database is quite extensive. If you use your camera maker’s software to process your photos, and find that it doesn’t contain lens correction information for one of your lenses, try it in Lightroom instead. There is a up-to-date list of supported lenses here: http://helpx.adobe.com/x-productkb/multi/lens-profile-support-lightroom-4. html#main_List_of_supported_lenses By the way, Lightroom’s Lens Corrections panel isn’t limited to Raw files. It works just as well with JPEG and TIFF files.

Above: This photo has two visible types of optical aberration: barrel distortion and chromatic aberration.

Barrel distortion (this line should be straight). Chromatic aberration. Clearest around the branches and leaves in the top left corner.

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Above: Enabling lens corrections in Lightroom has eliminated the barrel distortion.

Left: Lightroom has also removed most of the chromatic aberration.

Lens Corrections in detail The Lens Corrections panel is divided into four tabs: Basic, Profile, Color and Manual.

Basic Come to this tab first to enable lens corrections and chromatic aberration removal: Enable Profile Corrections Tick this box to tell Lightroom to apply corrections to the image. Each lens in the Lightroom database has a profile used to correct the effects of vignetting and barrel or pincushion distortion. Remove Chromatic Aberration Tick here to tell Lightroom to automatically remove chromatic aberrations. There are very few reasons not to tick either of these boxes. The only one I can think of is if you use a fisheye lens. You probably won’t want to correct barrel distortion and lose the fisheye effect. Constrain Crop This box is for the Upright tool. It’s here because Lightroom may distort your image to correct the verticals when you use the Full button (see the illustrations on the next few pages). Probably best to leave this unticked – you can always tick it after seeing the effect of the Full button if you need to.

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These are the four tabs of the Lens Corrections panel. Tick these two boxes to enable lens corrections.

This section is where you can correct converging verticals.

The Upright Tool The Upright Tool is located at the bottom of the Basic tab. It’s purpose is to correct converging verticals and straighten buildings that look like they’re leaning over because the camera was held at an angle when the photo was taken.

Tip: In the Toolbar set Show Grid to Always and use the slider to adjust the size of the grid squares. The grid will help you see if the lines in your photo are straight, and judge the accuracy of perspective corrections.

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Above: This image, taken with an 18-55mm zoom lens set to 30mm, has converging verticals. Look closely and you can see that the sides of the house aren’t straight. Converging verticals are often used for creative effect (i.e get down low with a wide angle lens and really make the building tip backwards). But sometimes it is preferable for the building to be correctly aligned. The Upright tool helps you do that.

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Auto The Auto button is the simplest approach. It tells Lightroom to do what it thinks is best. It works quite well as you can see, although the sides of the house are not absolutely straight. A side effect of the correction is that the tip of the roof is cut off. When taking photos like this, include plenty of space around the building in case you need to use the Upright tool. Take an extra photo from a little further away just in case.

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Level

Vertical

The Level button levels the subject, without trying to correct any converging verticals. Lightroom rotates and crops the image so that the bottom of the building (shown by the red line) runs parallel with the bottom edge of the frame.

Applies a Level adjustment and corrects converging verticals as well. In this case it has given a better result than the Auto button. There is less garden in the frame, but the roof hasn’t been cropped.

Full The Full button levels the building, corrects converging verticals and applies horizontal perspective correction. This means that horizontal lines are adjusted so that they run parallel to the edge of frame as well as vertical ones. This gives the most accurate overall correction. The only drawback is that the correction is so great that part of the image becomes white space (the original boundary of the photo is indicated by the black frame). You can crop it manually or tick the Constrain Crop box – the result of doing that is shown on the right.

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Above: The result with the Full button pressed and the Constrain Crop box ticked. This gives the best overall perspective correction, but with the tightest crop.

Note: You can make perspective correction adjustments like these manually, or tweak the ones made automatically by Lightroom, under the Manual tab.

Profile Tick the Enable Profile Corrections box and set Setup to Auto. Lightroom will find the correct profile for your lens if it is in the database.

The Profile tab is where you select the lens profile that Lightroom uses to correct distortion and vignetting. The simplest approach is to select Auto from the Setup menu. Lightroom automatically selects the profile for your lens, if it is in the database. If Lightroom doesn’t make a selection, then select the brand of your lens from the Make menu (under the Lens Profile heading). Lightroom then picks the closest match it can find.

These fields show you the active lens profile. You can change these settings if you wish.

Lens profiles are dependent on both camera body and lens type. If your lens is in the database, but hasn’t been profiled for your specific body, Lightroom selects the closest profile. If your lens isn’t in the database, then Lightroom also selects the closest profile. For example, I have photos taken with a discontinued Canon 18-55mm kit lens. The lens profile doesn’t exist in Lightroom, so Lightroom automatically selects the profile of a more recent 18-55mm lens. While this is not ideal, it is still a lot better than nothing. It seems to work quite well, at least for this specific lens.

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The Vignetting slider controls the amount of Vignetting correction applied by Lightroom. The default setting of 100 is theoretically a perfect correction. You can adjust the amount, although this is usually for aesthetic reasons rather than inaccuracy on the part of Lightroom. Bear in mind that correcting vignetting is really just making the edges and corners lighter. A side effect may be increased noise. If that’s the case reduce the Vignetting setting to minimise or eliminate it.

This slider controls the amount of distortion correction applied to the image. The default is 100, which should be a perfect correction. But you can change the value if that’s not the case. Could be useful if Lightroom doesn’t have a profile for your lens and is using the closest it can find instead.

Color The sliders under the Color tab are used to eliminate chromatic aberrations. Once again the simple approach is to tick the Remove Chromatic Aberration box and see if that removes all signs of colour fringing. This automatic feature of Lightroom normally does an excellent job, although it may not eliminate purple/green colour fringing, the hardest kind to deal with. But for that you can use the Defringe sliders. Chromatic aberrations are most likely in photos taken with wide-angle zoom lenses. Colour fringing is always more pronounced near the edges of the frame, and along the edges of highlights. If you want to minimise colour fringing, then avoiding bright highlights or backlit subjects is a good start. Buying a better quality lens, though not always practical, would help. So would switching to a longer focal length if possible, as normal and telephoto lenses tend to suffer less from all types of optical aberration. But luckily, Lightroom is on hand to help you out, and you should be able eliminate virtually all colour fringing here, no matter how prone to it your lens is. In short, Lightroom can make an inexpensive wide-angle zoom look like a much better lens than it really is. In the example on the next few pages I’ve used a photo taken with an old 1855mm kit lens to show you how to use Lightroom to eliminate colour fringing.

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Tick the Remove Chromatic Aberration box to eliminate colour fringing. This should automatically remove any blue/ yellow or red/cyan colour fringes (the term for these is transverse or lateral chromatic aberration).

Use the Defringe sliders to eliminate any remaining colour fringing. The most likely fringes to remain are purple/green (termed axial or longitudinal chromatic aberration).

Above: This close-up from the top-left corner of the image on the right shows colour fringing caused by chromatic aberrations within the lens. There is a cyan fringe along the edge of the roof, and a magenta fringe around the edges of the leaves.

Note: It is becoming more common to see a chromatic aberration reduction feature on digital cameras. It’s a useful tool if you use the JPEG format, but only works if you are using a lens contained in the camera’s database. When you use Raw, chromatic aberration reduction is carried out by Lightroom, giving you far more precision. Future versions of Lightroom may become even better at it.

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Above: When you tick the Remove Chromatic Aberration box Lightroom should remove any blue/yellow or red/cyan colour fringes automatically. If you look closely at the above sample you’ll see that the cyan fringing along the edge of the roof has gone but there is still some purple fringing around the leaves. Removing purple/green fringing requires a little more work.

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Above: Click on the Fringe Color Selector Tool (the eyedropper icon) and move it over the coloured fringe. Lightroom displays a box showing the pixels under the eyedropper. Fill the box with purple (or green) pixels and click the mouse.

Above: The coloured pixels are converted to a neutral grey, and the Defringe sliders adjusted to the settings required to eliminate the fringing. If this doesn’t eliminate the fringing completely, you can adjust the sliders manually.

Manual So far, the functions of the tabs in the Lens Corrections panel have been for the most part automatic. The Manual tab gives you back control if you need it. Use the sliders here to tweak the adjustments that Lightroom makes to correct lens distortions, converging verticals or vignetting. You can even start from scratch and do it all here in the Manual tab if you wish, or use it to make creative rather than realistic changes.

These sliders let you correct lens distortion or perspective manually. Above: This image has been processed in Lightroom, with the default Lens Correction and Chromatic Aberration corrections applied. The Lens vignetting sliders let you apply your own vignette to an image as well as correct vignetting caused by using a lens at wide apertures.

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Above: I used the Rotate slider to level up the house and the Scale slider to enlarge it. This is similar to cropping, except that the pixel dimensions of the image remain the same. The changes in scale are achieved through interpolation rather than cropping.

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Above: Moving the Aspect slider left makes the house seem bigger than it really is. I hardly think the owner of this property needs to show off even more, but Lightroom gives you the option. Another use for the Aspect slider is to correct any image distortion caused by using the Upright tool.

Tip: Is there a delay while your photos render on your monitor? This is something that may happen at any time, but especially so in the Lens Corrections panel. To understand why this happens when viewing or zooming into images, it’s helpful to be familiar with the way Lightroom works. When it displays a photo, it does so by looking at the original Raw file then using the information stored in the Catalog (i.e. the edits you have made) to create a preview. Lightroom displays photos most quickly when you convert your Raw files to DNG upon import and include Fast Load Data, and tell Lightroom to create 1:1 previews (this is covered in detail in Understanding Lightroom – Book one: The Library Module). The 1:1 previews take up a lot of hard drive space so Lightroom discards them after a certain amount of time has elapsed (the default setting is 30 days). Even if you have a 1:1 preview it may be for the unedited Raw file rather than the edited version. A new 1:1 preview is required – without it you will see a delay while the photo is rendered. Either way, the solution is simple. Go to Grid View and select the photo or photos that require new 1:1 previews. Then go to Library > Previews > Build 1:1 Previews. Lightroom generates new previews and displays the images much more quickly.

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The Basic Panel The Basic panel is where you set white balance, adjust exposure and make global tonal adjustments. Each of these is important because it lays the groundwork for the rest of the work you will do in Lightroom. That’s why the Basic panel is third on my workflow list, after the Camera Calibration and Lens Corrections panels. Looking at the work of other photographers reveals two distinct approaches to post-processing: Approach 1: The photographer who uses Lightroom to make the type of adjustments that you could in a chemical darkroom (or might wish to if it were possible). These include settings such as white balance, exposure and contrast plus local adjustments such as making parts of the image lighter or darker (called dodging and burning after the darkroom techniques of the same name). Approach 2: Using Lightroom to process images in ways that are not possible or extremely difficult in a chemical darkroom. These include sharpening, adding clarity, anything requiring complex masks, applying a vintage look and portrait retouching. The photographer may use these with a light touch or a heavy one. Personal taste comes into play – what may appeal to one photographer may seem over-processed to another. Some of these techniques require external plug-ins or the use of Photoshop to complete. Regardless of which style your photography tends towards, the work you do in the Basic panel lays a foundation for everything that comes afterwards.

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Do you want to work in colour or black and white? This ebook deals entirely with processing colour images, so make sure that you have selected Color. White balance: This is where you adjust the colour temperature of the image. Tone: These sliders adjust overall brightness and to determine the tonal values of highlights and shadows. Presence: These sliders are for adjusting mid-tone contrast and colour saturation.

Note: Some of the sliders in the Basic Panel are different to those in earlier versions of Lightroom. That’s because the Process version (Adobe’s term for the part of Lightroom that converts Raw files into photos) has changed. If the Basic panel seems odd to you because of this, you can relax. The 2012 Process is much better than previous ones. It’s easier to process Raw files in Lightroom now that it ever has been.

Basic Panel: White balance People often talk about using the white balance sliders to create an image with a neutral colour balance. But take a few seconds to think about the reason you would want to do that. What is the ultimate aim of your photo? Do you want to create a colour photo with emotional impact? I would guess that most photographers do, as this is part of creative expression. If that’s your intention, then you need to consider how you want to use colours in the image.

The WB menu lets you select a preset white balance setting to use as a starting point. Alternatively, you can click Auto and let Lightroom calculate what it thinks are the correct settings to produce a neutral colour balance.

There are three basic options when it comes to white balance: • You create an image with a blue colour cast. Blue suggests cold; good examples are landscapes shot at twilight (during the blue hour) or in winter. • Create an image with a neutral colour cast. This is your aim if your intention is to faithfully reproduce the colour of your subject. For example, wildlife photographers may require accurate colours when photographing animals. It may also be important to commercial photographers (or more accurately their clients). If you are photographing a brand new red sofa for a furniture store, no doubt they will require that the colour is accurately reproduced in any photos. The same is probably true of the type of editorial photography you see in home and interior design magazines. In all these situations accurate colour is important to somebody, and you can use Lightroom to obtain it. • Create an image with a warm colour cast. Lots of subjects look attractive with a warm cast – good examples are portraits and landscapes.

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Use the Temp and Tint sliders to adjust white balance by eye.

What is colour temperature? The colour of light changes according to the weather conditions and time of day: • On a cloudy day, or at dusk after the sun has set, light is blue. • At sunrise or sunset it is orange. Tungsten light bulbs and candles also emit orange light.

The slider there to help you eliminate colour casts caused by non-incandescent light sources. It is also useful for removing casts caused naturally, such as light reflecting onto someone’s face from green grass, or a green wall, or light that is passing through green leaves in a forest. Green casts can look fairly unpleasant, especially on people, so Lightroom gives you a tool to remove them.

• Light has a neutral colour in the middle hours of a sunny day. All these examples have one thing in common – the light comes from an incandescent light source; that is, ones that burn. The colour temperature of light from incandescent sources fits neatly on a colour scale that is blue at one end and orange at the other. You have one of these in Lightroom – it’s the Temp slider in the white balance section of the Basic panel. Artificial lights, such as fluorescent bulbs, create their own colour casts. The conventional wisdom was that fluorescent bulbs emit green light. That’s no longer always true, now that they are commonly used in people’s homes manufacturers make ones that emit orange light. All you really need to know is that many artificial light sources are not incandescent and emit light on a scale that is green at one end and magenta at the other. The colour from these light sources may fall anywhere on that scale, or even outside it. The green / magenta scale is reproduced in lightroom in the form of the Tint slider in the Basic panel.

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One way to see the colour of the light falling on your subject is to go to the WB menu and select the Daylight setting. For example, if your subject is lit by light from the setting sun, it will have a warm colour cast. If it is lit by sunlight on a cloudy day, it will have a blue colour cast. Now assess your subject. Is the light too cold, too warm, or just right? Try moving the Temp slider to the left or right to see what happens. Does the subject have an unwanted green or magenta cast? Use the Tint slider as well. You can also select the Auto setting to see what Lightroom thinks. For those of you who remember (or perhaps even still use) slide film, setting white balance to Daylight replicates using daylight balanced slide film. Perhaps that’s why this method works so well for me, as it connects with the way that I learnt about colour temperature.

Any light emitted by a incandescent light source has a temperature that falls within the following range on the Kelvin scale. Kelvin (K) is temperature unit used to measure colour temperature:

1000K

2000K

candlelight (1000K-2000K)

3000K

4000K

household tungsten bulb (2500K-3500K) sunrise or sunset on a clear day (3000K-4000K)

5000K

6000K

7000K

electronic studio flash (5000K-5500K)

9000K

10000K

cloudy sky (6500K-8000K)

daylight on a sunny day (5000K-6500K)

colour temperature of incandescent light sources

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8000K

shade or very cloudy sky (9000K-10000K)

Applying white balance Here’s an example of using white balance in action. I processed this portrait in Lightroom and set the white balance to Auto (which gave a better result than the Daylight setting). This is a starting point. From here you can move the Temp slider right to warm the image up, or left to cool it down, and decide which interpretation you prefer.

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Right: Moving the Temp slider right warms up the photo. Note how the rocks in the background are much warmer. It is probably a matter of personal opinion which you prefer – I lean towards the previous image.

Far right: Moving the Temp slider left to cool down the photo doesn’t have a pleasing effect in this case. Neutral or warm coloured light suits people best most of the time.

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The clay pot in this photo was lit by an overhead tungsten light. I set the white balance to Daylight (left). To my eye it works to retain the natural warmth of the tungsten light. The version on the right shows how the image looks with the Tungsten white balance setting. Lightroom cooled the image down to counter the warming effect of the tungsten light. This photo has a more neutral, and a more accurate colour cast – but is not as aesthetically pleasing.

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Difficult white balance Sometimes it isn’t easy to assess the colour of the light falling on the subject and from there the adjustments you need to make to arrive at a neutral colour cast (assuming that’s what you want in the first place). The difficulties arise when the subject is lit by light bouncing off a coloured surface. Stand someone next to a purple wall, for example, and it is quite likely that they will be at least partly lit by purple coloured light. The portrait on these pages is interesting for that reason. It has picked up a warm colour cast from somewhere, presumably from the daylight being reflected off the red terracotta bricks surrounding the subject. That’s okay – a warm colour cast suits most portraits. But it makes for an interesting exercise in achieving neutral colour balance.

Above: White balance set to Daylight. Theoretically the colour in the photo should be slightly blue as this was taken in the shade on a partially cloudy day. Instead, the opposite has happened. The colour of the light is orange, almost red. It looks like it has picked up the terracotta colour of the brickwork.

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Above: If you’re unsure which white balance setting to use it is useful to try the Auto setting. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t. Here, there is so much red in the image that Lightroom over-compensated and turned the photo blue.

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Above: Another way to arrive at a neutral colour cast is to use the white balance selector (the eyedropper icon). Move the cursor over a grey, white or black tone in the photo. Lightroom displays a grid showing a 5x5 view of the 25 pixels directly underneath the cursor. When the grid is full of grey (or white or black) squares, click and Lightroom calculates the white balance required to render those pixels neutral (if you click on an area that is too light, you will get an error message).

Above: I obtained this result by clicking on the blue stripe in the model’s jumper. Look closely and you will see that it is now grey instead of blue. How do you make blue grey? Add plenty of yellow – hence the strong yellow colour cast in the rest of the image. This is a technique you often see mentioned in photography magazines as a processing technique. Funnily enough, they never explain why you should

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do this. I suppose you could use it if you were trying to replicate the crossprocessed effect that you get if you process slide film through C-41 chemistry. Or you could use it as a starting point and see what happens. I played around with the image, reducing the saturation and adding a vignette. The result is quite interesting, you can see it above. It’s a little like a hand-tinted black and white portrait.

Using grey cards

Above: An easy way to obtain accurate white balance is to take a test photo containing an 18% grey card. Activate the white balance selector, then click on the grey card. Lightroom calculates the settings required for a neutral colour cast.

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Basic Panel: Tonal controls They may only take up a small section of the right hand panels, but the Tone sliders are an essential part of the processing process. You can change the look of your images dramatically using these six sliders alone.

Curious to see how Lightroom would interpret your image? Press the Auto button to find out. Use the settings as a starting point or press Cmd + Z (PC: Ctrl + Z) to undo.

They are designed to be adjusted in the order that they appear, starting with Exposure and Contrast then progressing through the Highlights, Shadows, Whites and Blacks sliders. But like most thing in Lightroom that’s not compulsory. There may be times when you prefer to set the white and black points early, and that task is carried out with the Whites and Blacks sliders. This approach may appeal to photographers accustomed to working in Lightroom, where setting white and black points is an essential part of the workflow. In Lightroom, it doesn’t seem to be so important, and you might not have to touch the last two sliders at all. There is more than one approach, but as long as you understand what each slider does then you can use them as you wish.

Use these six sliders to adjust the tones within the image manually. Start with the Exposure and Contrast Sliders, then move onto the Highlights and Shadows sliders, before finishing with the Whites and Blacks sliders.

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Move the sliders left to make the relevant tones darker or right to make them lighter. The only exception is the Contrast slider – move it right to increase contrast or left to decrease it. Double-click on the name of the slider to reset it back to zero.

The Exposure slider At first glance the Exposure slider seems simple. You move it to the right to make your images brighter, or to the left to make them darker. It’s a little like using exposure compensation on your camera. Here’s an experiment for you to try. Select a well-exposed Raw file and open it in the Develop module. Move the Exposure slider to the right and look carefully at what happens. Do you notice anything unusual? The clue is in the histogram. As you move the slider the histogram bunches up towards the right, without going over the edge of the graph. It will go over if you push the slider far enough, but it tries not to.

This tells us something about how the Exposure slider works. It doesn’t just make your images brighter, but is also designed to preserve highlight detail where it can. If you have just upgraded from Lightroom 3 or earlier, you will know that in those versions this was the function of the Brightness slider. That slider doesn’t exist in versions 4 and 5. Instead, that functionality is assigned to the Exposure slider. The Exposure slider is a little more complex than it initially appears. Let’s take a look at what’s going on behind the scenes.

The 2012 process In the 2012 process, Lightroom does two new things when you open a Raw file: 1. Lightroom recovers highlights automatically. To understand highlight recovery, let’s take a look at how your camera’s histogram and highlight alert work. Both are generated from a JPEG file that the camera creates to use as a preview, even if you are using Raw. The JPEG is processed by your camera according to the white balance and contrast settings set in the menu.

Above: The histogram of a photo with the Exposure slider at zero.

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Above: The photo, with Exposure set to +1.5. All highlight detail is preserved.

The extra bit depth of Raw files means that they contain more detail in highlight areas than JPEG files. Most Raw files contain detail in areas that the highlight alert indicates are clipped. Lightroom automatically recovers those highlights when you open the Raw file – you don’t have to do anything, it does it for you. This is different from how Lightroom 3 (and earlier) work, and explains why there is no Recovery slider in Lightroom 4 and 5.

If Lightroom indicates that an image contains clipped highlights (use the ‘J’ keyboard shortcut, clipped highlights are shown in red) you may be able to use the Highlights slider to recover a little more detail. But more than likely there is no detail to recover. 2. Lightroom sets the black point automatically. If there are lots of deep shadows, Lightroom sets the black point to show detail in the darkest tones (as long as it is in the Raw file in the first place.) If you have upgraded to Lightroom 4 or 5 from an earlier version, then the 2012 process will be new to you. In older versions, you set the black point yourself (or accepted Lightroom’s default setting) and used the Recovery slider to recover lost highlight detail. No more!

Image adaptive processing Another feature of the 2012 process is image adaptive processing. Lightroom analyses the content of the image and makes tonal adjustments accordingly. Increasing exposure by a given amount in one image may produce a different effect than in another. Every Raw file is different. This applies to all six tone adjustment sliders. As we saw earlier, the Exposure slider increases brightness predominantly in midtones, while maintaining the white and black points (covered shortly). Push it far enough to the right and you may clip some highlight detail. But Lightroom tries to preserve highlight detail when it can. You will see that as you push the Exposure slider to the right, that the highlights stop getting brighter but the mid-tones still get brighter. That’s image adaptive processing in action.

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You will get the best results in Lightroom from a correctly exposed Raw file. There are three basic principles to keep in mind: 1. Use the Raw format, as the extra bit depth means the file has more information that Lightroom can work with. 2. If you underexpose the image in-camera, then make it brighter using the Exposure slider in Lightroom, you create more noise in dark tones. You may also lose shadow detail. Both effects become more noticeable at higher ISOs. Yes, it’s possible to reduce noise in Lightroom, but you’ll obtain a better result by getting the exposure right in the first place. 3. If you overexpose the image in-camera, you lose detail in the brightest areas. Once it has gone, you can’t get it back. Get the exposure right in-camera and using the tone adjustment sliders becomes very easy. But get it wrong, you’ll have to work a lot harder. You will find it difficult to obtain the same quality as you would get from a well exposed Raw file.

Above: A demonstration of automatic highlight recovery. This screen shot is from Canon’s Digital Photo Professional (DPP). I opened the image in DPP and left the settings at their default. Here it is zoomed into 100%, so you can see just part of the image. The sun shining on the water created bright, overexposed highlights that are difficult for any camera to capture successfully.

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Above: The same Raw file in Lightroom 5’s default settings. Lightroom has recovered far more detail from the highlights.

The Contrast slider The function of the Contrast slider is also simple. Move it right to increase contrast, or left to decrease it. Most adjustments are made to the mid-tones, and the black and white points remain unchanged. When you increase contrast, dark tones become darker and light tones become lighter simultaneously. The difference in brightness between light and dark tones increases. With the 2012 Process (but not with earlier processes) the mid-point may also move (see diagrams). When you decrease contrast, dark tones become lighter, and light tones become darker. The difference in brightness between light and dark tones decreases. Readers who are new to Lightroom but proficient in Photoshop may be accustomed to using curves to adjust contrast. The diagrams on the right show the relationship between the Contrast slider and the Tone curve.

Increasing contrast is like applying an S-curve to the image’s curve.

The image-adaptive behaviour of the 2012 Process means Lightroom may move the midpoint of the curve.

Decreasing contrast is like applying a reverse S-curve. Again, Lightroom may move the midpoint.

Another way of changing contrast is to go straight to the Tone Curve panel (covered in the next section) and adjust the curve there. Feel free to set contrast in the Basic panel, the Tone curve panel, or a mixture of the two (the effects are cumulative). It’s up to you.

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The Highlights and Shadows sliders The Contrast slider adjusts light tones and dark tones simultaneously. The Highlights and Shadows sliders adjust them separately. Use them to alter the brightness of light tones without affecting the dark tones, and vice versa. There may be some overlap towards the middle of the Tone curve.

It’s probably easiest to demonstrate the use of these sliders by going back to the tone curve: The Highlights slider affects tones to the right of the mid-point. The Shadows slider affects tones to the left of the mid-point. Image adaptive processing comes into play again. Both sliders have a greater effect on high contrast images than flat ones. The Highlights slider is useful for making bright highlights in a high contrast image darker. Conversely, you can also use it to make the highlights in a flat image brighter. The Shadows slider is useful for making dark areas lighter. But you can also use it to make them darker. It comes back to intent – see the mini case study at the end of this section for an example. Neither the Highlights or Shadow sliders affect the white or black points. That’s the job of the Whites and Blacks sliders.

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The Shadows sliders primarily affects tones to the left of the mid-point (the darkest tones in the photo).

The Highlights sliders primarily affects tones to the right of the mid-point (the lightest tones in the photo).

The Whites and Blacks sliders

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Unlike the Exposure, Contrast, Highlights and Shadows sliders, the Whites and Blacks sliders alter the white and black points. As Lightroom sets the black point automatically, and also recovers highlights automatically, there may be little reason to use these sliders. But they are there if you need them – perhaps to help add contrast to an extremely flat image, or to increase the amount of pure black or pure white in an image for aesthetic reasons.

Improving flat images

Above: The Blacks slider sets the black point of the photo. It’s the equivalent of moving the black point inwards using Levels or Curves in Photoshop.

Above: You can tell this histogram belongs to a flat image because there is large gap on between the histogram and the right side of the graph.

Above: The Whites slider sets the white point of the photo. It’s the equivalent of moving the white point inwards using Levels or Curves in Photoshop.

If you take a photo on a cloudy day or in the shade without including any bright highlights such as the sky then you will probably end up with a flat image. There’s nothing wrong with that as you can easily extend the brightness range of the image in Lightroom.

Above: This is how the histogram looks after using the Whites slider to alter the white point. The histogram now covers the entire range of the graph.

Above: This is the image that corresponds to the first histogram on the previous page (also shown below). The photo contains dark tones and mid tones, but no light tones.

Above: Hold the Alt key down and click on the Whites slider. The image turns black. Move the Whites slider right until you start to see coloured dots. These may be blue, white, yellow or green and represent clipped highlights. Let go of the slider when you’ve found the point with minimal coloured dots (circled). You can repeat the process with the Blacks slider if there’s a gap on the left side of the graph.

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Above: This version goes with the second histogram on the previous page (also shown below). It is now much brighter, but without losing any highlight detail.

A closer look at the Histogram The histogram is directly related to the tonal adjustment sliders. Whenever you move one of the sliders, the histogram changes:

The white triangle icon indicates clipped shadows.

Indicates that you are editing the Original Photo, rather than a Smart Preview (Lightroom 5 only).

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The grey triangle icon indicates there is no highlight clipping.

Key camera settings (focal length and exposure values).

Above: The histogram on the left belongs to the above photo. Using the keyboard shortcut ‘J’ (Show Clipping) confirms that the shadows are clipped; dark tones with no detail are shown in blue (right). Some clipping in the shadows is normal. Clipped highlights are shown in red. There are none in this photo.

The Black sliders affects the tones on the leftmost side of the histogram.

The Shadows slider affects the dark tones in the next zone.

The Exposure slider predominantly affects mid-tones, the largest zone within the histogram.

The Highlights slider affects the light tones in the fourth zone.

The histogram is divided up into five zones that correspond roughly to the Exposure, Highlights, Shadows, Whites and Blacks sliders. When you move the mouse over the histogram Lightroom tells you which slider affects that specific part of the histogram (the zone is highlighted in light grey). The same thing happens when you move the mouse over the sliders. You can use the tone adjustment sliders to alter the tonal values of your images, from the shadows right through to the highlights. The examples on the next few pages show you how it works. The Whites slider affects the lightest tones.

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Left: This histogram belongs to the above photo. The way it leans to the left, leaving a gap on the right hand side, indicates that the photo is underexposed.

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Adjustment: Exposure +0.55 The exposure adjustment brightened the photo. The histogram shifted to the right and the gap has disappeared.

Adjustment: Highlights +100 The lightest tones are brighter, and the darkest tones unchanged. The histogram is longer, with more tones on the right. The blue triangle (circled left) shows that there are clipped highlights in the blue channel.

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Adjustment: Shadows -100 The darkest tones are darker, and the lightest tones unchanged. The histogram is shorter, with more tones on the left. If you look closely you will see that the man’s shirt is much darker compared to the photo on the left.

Above: Another way of seeing if there is any highlight clipping is to hold down the Alt key when you move the Whites slider (this also works with the Highlights slider). Push the Whites slider to +100 and you will see something like this. Any clipped tones are shown in red, blue or white against a black background.

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Above: The opposite happens when you hold the Alt key down while moving the Blacks or Shadows sliders. Clipped tones are shown in red, blue or black against a white background.

The Presence sliders At the bottom of the Basic panel you’ll find the three Presence sliders – Clarity, Vibrance and Saturation. The best way to demonstrate how they work is with examples, so let’s get started.

The Clarity slider The purpose of the Clarity slider is to boost mid-tone contrast. The effectiveness of increasing Clarity depends on the content of the photo as well as your ultimate intent. A light touch is required in portraits, unless you want to emphasise wrinkles and blemishes. But with subjects like architecture or the landscape, increasing Clarity may add some much needed punch. As we work our way through the examples, bear in mind that in this section we are working with global adjustments – ones that affect the entire image. But there’s no harm in thinking about how you can use these tools locally. You will learn how later on the ebook when we look at the Graduated filter, Radial filter and Adjustment brush tools.

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This photo of a statue is flat and lacks contrast. We can fix that by adjusting the white and black points, then adding Clarity.

The histogram for the original photo of the statue (above left) shows the tones occupying the centre of the graph. It’s an easy fix, using the techniques explored in the last section. Hold down the Alt key and move the Whites slider right until the first white patches, indicating clipping, appear. Then move the slider back a little until they disappear. Repeat with the Blacks slider, this time moving it left. The histogram has changed (above right) – the tones have been stretched out to fill the graph. It’s still a little flat, but you can add some punch using the Contrast and Clarity sliders.

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Contrast + 50

Above: The Contrast slider works well, but a side effect is that it increases colour saturation. If the colours are too intense, you can knock them back with the Vibrance or Saturation sliders.

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Clarity + 50

Above: The Clarity slider increases contrast in the mid-tones. Texture is more pronounced, and the colours don’t increase so much in intensity.

Contrast + 50, Clarity + 50

Above: Naturally, you can enjoy the best of both worlds and increase both Contrast and Clarity together.

Contrast +50 Clarity + 50 Contrast + 50, Clarity + 50 I’ve zoomed into the same three images so you can see the difference in colour and texture. The Clarity slider increases texture and apparent sharpness without increasing Colour Saturation.

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Right: This is what happens when you push the Contrast and Clarity sliders as far as they will go. The difference between the two is even clearer.

Note: In this example, I was able to push the Clarity slider all the way to +100 without ruining the photo. It works with this image because the original lacks contrast and the texture of the stonework takes kindly to increasing Clarity. Don’t feel that you should push the Clarity slider to the right – a subtle touch is often best. Every photo is potentially different and you have to decide for yourself.

Contrast +100

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Clarity + 100

Clarity 0

Clarity and portraits Clarity requires care with portraits. The result depends very much on the quality of the skin of your sitter. The better the skin he or she has, the more you can increase Clarity without making the skin look bad. Remember to think about your intent – if you want to create a portrait with impact, consider increasing Clarity. As you will see later you can also increase Clarity locally, for instance in the eyes, lips or hair. If you’d like to create a softer portrait, consider going the other way and decreasing Clarity. There are some more examples on the next page. Later we will look at the Soften Skin preset, which uses a combination of low Clarity and increased Sharpness to smoothen skin tones. It works beautifully as a local adjustment.

Clarity +50

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Clarity -50 Clarity 0 Clarity + 50 Three Clarity settings. Note the difference in skin texture. Subtle Clarity adjustments (around +10 or so) are usually best for female portraits, both +50 and -50 are a little extreme for this type of subject.

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Clarity 0 Clarity +34

Clarity also comes in useful for portraits of men. While it is conventional to smooth the skin of women in photos, there is no such expectation with men and you can often use a higher setting. Compare the above examples – increasing Clarity to +34 has taken away the softness and added impact.

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The Saturation and Vibrance sliders The Saturation and Vibrance sliders give you control over the intensity of colours in your photos.

you move it left – strong colours are desaturated before weak ones. And at -100 there is still some colour in the image. The effect is a little like an old-fashioned hand-tinted black and white print and is not displeasing:

Most readers will be familiar with the function of the Saturation slider. You can move it right to increase the saturation of all the colours within your image, or you can move it left to decrease the saturation. Move it all the way to -100 and you’ll end up with no colour at all and a black and white image. Generally, it’s a good idea to move the Saturation slider left rather than right. Increasing colour saturation is rarely worthwhile – and usually detrimental because it doesn’t look natural. On the other hand, it’s surprising how often reducing the colour saturation, even just a touch, can improve an image. Sometimes colour just demands too much attention, and reducing the saturation means that other elements of the composition (such as line, texture and the use of light) become more prominent. You could also decrease saturation to create a faded or vintage feel to the image. The Saturation slider, useful as it can be, is bit of a blunt instrument. Pushing it to the right increases the saturation of all the colours in the image, even those that are quite intense to start with. Decreasing saturation works the same way, all colours are evenly desaturated. Enter the Vibrance slider. When you move it right, it increases intensity in weak colours before strong ones. It’s image adaptive processing in action again, and the effect is much more subtle than increasing saturation. The opposite happens when

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Vibrance -100

Saturation -50

Saturation +50

Saturation 0, Vibrance 0

Vibrance -50

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Vibrance +50

Stylising an image using the Clarity and Vibrance sliders You can use Clarity and Vibrance in conjunction to create a stylised effect. The idea is to emphasise texture, lift contrast and reduce colour saturation. It seems to work particularly well with architectural photos like the ones on this page. The first image (above right) has been processed with minimal modifications. I boosted contrast (the original was quite flat) and warmed up the colour temperature so the buildings look as if they were lit by the setting sun. I created the second version (below right) by setting Clarity to +77 and Vibrance to -66 respectively.

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The Tone Curve panel The Tone Curve panel is bit of an oddity in the Develop module. It’s possible to bypass it altogether if you use the tone adjustment sliders in the Basic panel to set brightness and contrast levels. I suspect the photographers who will find the Tone Curve panel most useful are those who are accustomed to using curves in Photoshop for tonal adjustments.

Click on the Curve to add control points. Use them to create a custom curve.

Select which Tone Curve you want to adjust here. Choose from RGB, Red, Blue or Green.

The Tone Curve panel gives you control over four curves. There’s the RGB curve, which affects brightness and contrast and may also increase colour saturation. Then there are the three colour curves: red, green and blue. You can adjust these individually to fine-tune the colour balance or to create a cross-processed or vintage look. With all that in mind, I will show you a couple of quick ways to use the Tone Curve panel, then give some more detailed information for those of you interested in diving in deeper.

Note: Generally, it is better to make initial tonal adjustments in the Basic panel, then switch to the Tone curve for fine tuning. After making adjustments in the Tone curve there is nothing to stop you going back to the Basic panel and tweaking the sliders again – you can switch between the two panels as much as you like.

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Use this menu to select a curve preset. The choices are Linear (no change), Medium Contrast or Strong Contrast.

Click this icon to reveal four sliders that you can use to adjust the Tone Curve instead of manually creating control points.

Point curve presets After you have made your adjustments in the Basic panel, open the Tone curve panel. You will see that the curve is set to Linear. It is in a neutral position, a straight line running from the bottom left to the top right. The Tone curve starts off in this position no matter what adjustments you have made to the tonal values in the Basic panel. Any adjustments you make with the Tone curve are added to those made in the Basic panel. There are three Point curve presets: Linear, Medium Contrast and Strong Contrast. Selecting Medium or Strong Contrast increases contrast without clipping the shadows or highlights. There is no harm in trying these to see if they improve your image.

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Adjusting the Point Curve The RGB point curve has two primary functions. The first is to adjust brightness. The second is to increase (or decrease) contrast. In both cases this primarily affects midtones. The brightest highlights and darkest shadows are unaffected as long as you don’t move the point curve too far.

Left: Click on the centre of the Point Curve (it’s called a curve even though it starts off as a straight line) and move it upwards to make the image brighter. The more you move the curve, the brighter the image becomes, but without clipping any highlights. The white and black points, indicated by the ends of the curve, remain unmoved.

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Left: If you move the Point Curve too far upwards you’ll get something like this. The straight line at the top of the graph indicates that you have clipped the highlights.

Left: Move the Point Curve in the opposite direction to make the image darker. Note that these movements imitate the use of the Exposure slider, which is still the easiest way to make your image brighter or darker.

Edit Point Curve icon If you click on the Point Curve icon (marked below) Lightroom reveals four sliders: Highlights, Lights, Darks and Shadows. Move the mouse over each slider to see which part of the Tone Curve it corresponds to:

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Adjusting the Point Curve You can use the four sliders mentioned on the previous page to adjust the Point Curve. They work the same way as the sliders in the Basic panel. Move a slider to the right to make the corresponding tones lighter, and to the left to make them darker.

Left: If you move the Lights slider to the right, the top half of the Point Curve lifts upwards.

Left: If you move the Darks slider to the left, the bottom half of the Point Curve moves downwards. What does that leave you with? An S curve – which is just a way of adjusting the Point Curve to make light tones brighter and dark tones darker. In other words, increase contrast. Moving the Contrast slider in the Basic panel to the right does the same thing.

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Highlights

Darks

Left: You can control the tones that the Highlights, Lights, Darks and Shadows sliders change by moving the pointers under the histogram.

Lights

You won’t need to do this often – most of the time you will either leave the image as it is or increase contrast.

Shadows

Left: If you move the Lights slider left and the Darks slider right you end up with a reverse S curve. You have just made dark tones lighter, and light tones darker, reducing the contrast.

A white line appears when you move the cursor over a pointer (all three shown in the diagram). They divide the Point Curve and histogram into four zones corresponding to the sliders. Move the pointers to expand or compress the range of tonal values controlled by each slider.

The Targeted Adjustment Tool (TAT) The final way you have of adjusting the Point Curve is by using the Targeted Adjustment Tool. The purpose of the Targeted Adjustment Tool is to give you an easy way to select specific tones in the image and adjust their brightness level. Simply move the mouse pointer over the tones you want to adjust, and then move the mouse up to make them lighter or down to make them darker.

Above: Click on the Targeted Adjustment Tool icon (circled).

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Above: The crosshair indicates the targeted area (the other icon indicates you are using the TAT). A dot appears on the Point Curve to indicate the selected tone.

Above: Push the mouse up to make the tones underlaying the pointer lighter, or pull it down to make them darker. The appropriate sliders move as well.

The colour Curves If you are a Photoshop user you may be accustomed to using the colour Tone Curves to adjust colour balance. That’s not necessary in Lightroom – it gives you enough tools with the white balance sliders in the Basic panel and the colour sliders in the HSL / Color / B&W panel. You really don’t need to go messing with the colour curves, at least when it comes to colour balance, for any reason other than curiosity. But the colour curves do come in useful for creating a vintage look or for imitating the look of cross-processed film. But first, let’s think about intent for a second. Why would you want to create a cross-processed or vintage look? One reason could be that you saw the effect somewhere else and think it looks cool. Is that a good reason for using that effect? Maybe. Perhaps a better question is does using that effect help you create a better image? Does it add atmosphere and increase the emotional value of the photo? Does it help you create mood? It’s important that the answer to one of these questions is yes. I’m a little sceptical about using effects just for the sake of it. Sometimes it’s more about showing how clever you are than anything else. By the way, you are welcome to disagree – in fact, I encourage it. The purpose of writing about these themes is to get you thinking about the reasons behind what you do. I don’t expect every reader to agree with me. There are several ways of adjusting colour in Lightroom. You can do similar things with the HSL / Color / B&W panel (see next section) or the Split Toning panel. The choice is yours.

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What is cross-processing? There are two types of colour film: colour negative and colour transparency (also known as slide film). They are processed differently. Most colour transparency film is processed using the E-6 chemical process. Colour negative films are developed using the C-41 process. Cross-processing is when you deliberately process colour film in the wrong chemistry. The most common way is to process transparency film in C-41 chemistry. You finish with colour negatives that you can print (or scan). The result (depending on the type of transparency film used) is a high-contrast negative with odd colours. Nowadays, the chemical processes are no longer required and you can play around with applying cross-processing effects to your images in Lightroom. Don’t worry about how authentic the technique is – you’re not going to be able to replicate the cross-processed look exactly. The important question is does it look good? If it suits your purpose, then use it. There is an example of a cross-processed effect on the next page.

Before

Above: Start by selecting the Blue curve. Moving the black point (circled) up. This reduces contrast and adds blue to the shadows.

Above: Go to the Red curve and create an S curve. This increases contrast in the red channel and adds a magenta colour cast. The steeper the S curve, the stronger the effect.

Left: Go to the Green curve and apply another S curve. This increases contrast in the green channel and adds a green colour cast. Keep the S curve the same or a little less steep than the Red curve. This neutralises the red cast applied by the red channel S curve while increasing contrast.

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After

Saving curves Whenever you create a custom curve Lightroom provides the option for you to save it, so you can use it with other photos:

Above: Click on the Point Curve menu icon (circled) and select Save from the menu (below). Type in an appropriate name when you save it.

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What is a vintage look? Before you create a vintage look, you have to decide what characteristics you think that look should have. Vintage means different things to different people, but here’s my version. Vintage is nostalgic, and evokes the look of photos taken in previous decades that have faded with time. A photo processed with a vintage look should look as if it could have been taken using film. It may have a warm colour cast.

Above: Now, when you click on the Point Curve menu, you will see the names of any curves you have created and saved at the bottom (marked). The name of the selected curve is displayed in the Tone Curve panel (below).

What is your definition of vintage? Whatever it is, once you have arrived at a definition, you can think about how you can achieve that look in Lightroom. The example on these pages utilises the colour tone curves to complete this lesson on the Tone Curve panel, but feel free to use the saturation or vibrance sliders, the HSL/Color/B&W panel or the Split Toning panel if you need to. I will show you how when we get to those sections.

The Effects panel There are two things you can do in the Effects panel: • Add or remove a vignette. Post-crop Vignetting is based on a technique used by darkroom printers. The idea is to make the edges of the photo darker in order to gently guide the viewer’s eye towards the centre of the image. • Add grain. An interesting feature because it shows that some photographers are still interested in achieving what is often referred to as the ‘filmic look’. Digital photos don’t have film grain, so it needs to be added.

Two types of vignetting

Post-Crop Vignetting. The greyed out sliders become active when you move the Amount slider.

Grain. Again, the greyed out sliders become active when you move the Amount slider.

The difference between the Vignetting slider (found under the Profile tab in the Lens Corrections panel) and the Post-Crop Vignetting tool in the Effects panel is this: • The Vignetting slider in the Lens Correction panel is designed to correct vignetting caused by the optical characteristics of the lens. The aim is to achieve an image with uniform brightness from edge to edge. • Post-Crop Vignetting is used to make the edges of the image darker (or lighter) for aesthetic reasons. The effect is always applied, even if you crop the image.

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Tip: The Radial Filter, introduced in Lightroom 5, provides an alternative to the Post-Crop Vignetting tool. The main benefit of the Radial Filter is that you can choose where to put it. If your main subject is off-centre, you can place the vignette accordingly. In comparison, Post-Crop Vignetting is always central.

Post-Crop Vignetting The images on the next few pages demonstrate the Post-Crop Vignetting tool. The following photos show the effect each slider has.

Amount At zero, no Post-crop Vignetting is applied (below). A positive value brightens the edges of the image, and a negative one darkens them. Each example on the following pages uses the extremes, so you can see the full effect. But most of the time you would use the Amount slider much more subtly.

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Midpoint The Midpoint slider controls the size of the vignette. A value of zero gives the greatest coverage, and 100 the least.

Tip: The Midpoint, Roundness and Feather sliders control the shape of the vignette. A good way to use Post-crop Vignetting is to set Amount to 100. This makes it easy to see the effect of the other sliders. Then, when you are happy with the shape of the vignette, you can adjust the Amount slider to exactly where you want it.

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Roundness The Roundness slider determines the shape of the vignette. The default setting of 50 gives an oval. A value of zero makes a square vignette, and a value of 100 a near-circle.

Tip: The ability to create a square shaped vignette is one of the factors that differentiates Post-Crop Vignetting from the Radial filter tool.

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Feather The Feather slider controls the hardness of the selection used to create the vignette. A value of zero gives the hardest edge, and 100 the softest.

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Highlights An effective way to use Post-crop Vignetting is to darken the edges of an image that already has lots of shadows. In this type of composition, you are using Post-crop Vignetting as a tweak, often in conjunction with the Shadows or Blacks sliders in the Basic panel, to make an already dark background even darker. There are times though when you will want to darken the edges of an image that contains light tones. The result may look unnatural, and in that case you can use the Highlights slider to preserve any light tones near the edges of the image. The further you push it right, the lighter they stay. Note: I’ve chose the example on this page and set Amount to -100 because it shows how the Highlight slider works, not because I recommend you use these particular settings.

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Grain Back when everybody used film, grain tended to be seen in one of two ways. One view held that the best type of grain was the sort that you didn’t see. Proponents used low ISO film, or even medium or large format cameras, to minimise it. Then there were the photographers that embraced grain. Two big names that did so were Robert Farber and Sarah Moon, both of whom used fast colour film and produced a lot of beautiful work. The colours produced by fast films are less saturated than slow films, hence a look was created exploiting fast grain, muted colours and soft light. Many black and white photographers also embraced it and films such as Delta 400 and T-MAX P3200 were noted for the beauty and aesthetic quality of their grain. The character of grain is an inherent characteristic of a specific film – if you want a different quality of grain (pushing and pulling techniques aside) you need to use a different film. Now, digital cameras have removed the problem (if indeed you see it as a problem) of grain. If you want a grainy look, or miss the grainy look of a particular film, you can add it back in with Lightroom. Above: A portrait taken on an EOS 5D Mark II at ISO 1600. Even at this relatively high ISO setting there is very little noise, and definitely no grain.

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Above: It’s hard to see at this size (there are 100% enlargements on the next page) but increasing Grain using the Amount slider set to 50 created a nice effect. Use the Size and Roughness sliders to alter the grain quality.

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Above: Fast films desaturate colours. If imitating film is your intent, then go to the Presence sliders in the Basic Panel and use the Saturation or Vibrance slider to mute the colours. Now it looks more like it may have been taken on fast film.

These 100% enlargements show the effect of adding grain.

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The HSL / Color / B&W panel These tools are grouped together because they help you deal with a single element: colour. Here’s a quick look at what they do:

The Color tab

HSL & Color tabs HSL stands for Hue, Saturation and Luminance. These three properties all contain values that describe the colours Lightroom is capable of handling. It’s like using the RGB (red, green and blue) system that most photographers are accustomed to, but with different properties.

Click ALL to see every the slider at the same time.

The HSL and Color tabs let you adjust the hue, saturation or luminance of eight colours. They do the same thing, but present the sliders in different layouts. • The HSL tab groups the sliders by function, so that you can concentrate on adjusting either hue, saturation or luminosity. • The Color tab groups the sliders by colour. Choose this if you want to alter the qualities of specific colours. • The Targeted Adjustment tool is available under the HSL tab, but not the Color tab. The sliders are the same, just presented in a different order. If you reduce (for example) the Blue Saturation slider under the Color tab to -20, then switch to the HSL tab, you will see the Blue Saturation slider there is also set to -20.

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Click on a colour patch to see the sliders for just one colour.

The HSL tab

Alternatively, click on the Hue, Saturation or Luminance headings to use one set of sliders.

Click All to see all the Hue, Saturation and Luminance sliders.

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The Targeted Adjustment Tool icon.

Black and white: You won’t be surprised to learn that the B&W tab is for converting your images to monochrome. It’s a complex topic that I will explore in full in the next ebook in this series.

Selective desaturation One of my favourite applications of the HSL tab is selectively reducing the saturation of specific colours without affecting others. Take the portrait on this page as an example. The background is in shade, and has a blue colour cast compared to the model. What happens if we use the Saturation slider in the Basic panel to reduce colour saturation? All the colours are reduced in saturation together – as seen in the image on the far right. There’s nothing wrong with that, if it’s what you want. But the HSL tab opens up some interesting creative possibilities by allowing us to reduce colour saturation in the background without affecting the model or her clothes. The technique is shown on the next page.

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1. Click on the HSL tab and then the Saturation tab to hide the other sliders. Click the Targeted Adjustment Tool (circled).

2. Move the mouse over your image. The colours underneath the crosshair (circled) are the ones that will be targeted. Hold the left mouse button down and drag the mouse downwards to desaturate the targeted colours. In this case, Lightroom desaturated both Blue and Aqua (left). You could achieve a similar effect by going to the Blue slider and reducing Saturation, but the Targeted Adjustment Tool is more accurate.

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Adjusting luminance Another reason for going to the HSL / Color / B&W panel is to adjust the luminance values of specific colours. Luminance is another word for brightness, and you may find it useful to make certain colours lighter or darker. The reason why is to do with the relationship between tonal contrast and colour contrast. You may already be familiar with the concept of colour contrast. It occurs when two colours from opposing sides of the colour wheel (see below) are placed next to each other. The photos on this page show how it works. The orange and yellow fish contrast with the blue background. Now look at the black and white version of the same image, below. All I did was set saturation to zero to remove the colour. The body of the fish (orange in the colour photo) and the background (blue in the original) have very nearly the same brightness value. There is no tonal contrast between them – just colour contrast.

Left: This is a colour wheel – a type of diagram used by creatives that work with colour to understand the relationships between hues. Colours that are opposite, or nearly opposite, each other on the wheel are said to be contrasting colours. Colours that are close to each other on the wheel are complementary. Colour contrast is an effective tool for creating visually dynamic and exciting images.

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One simple adjustment in the HSL tab is all that’s required to improve this image. You can make the blue background darker by using the Targeted Adjustment Tool (see below for details). When you reduce the luminance of a colour, it becomes darker and more saturated. If you increase the luminance, it becomes lighter and less saturated. At the same time, adjusting luminance also changes the tonal contrast, as the desaturated black and white version of the main photo on this page shows. Compare it to the version on the previous page. The background is darker than the body of the fish. The colour image now has tonal contrast as well as colour contrast. Below: Go to the HSL tab and click Luminance, then the Targeted Adjustment Tool (circled). Move the mouse over the colour you would like to adjust, hold the left mouse button down and move the mouse downwards. Lightroom moves the appropriate sliders (marked right).

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Adjusting hue The final adjustment you can make in the HSL and Color tabs is to the hue. Hue is another word for colour – and you can use the Hue sliders to alter colours in your images. I haven’t found a practical use for this, but you might be able to. But it does show one of the advantages of working with Raw and processing your images in Lightroom. You have a lot of control over colour, and you never know when the ability to adjust hue (not to mention saturation and luminance) may come in useful.

How the Hue slider works The Hue slider alters the hue of the selected colour by replacing it with another one. Take the Red slider as an example. Push the slider right and Lightroom replaces the primary colour red with the neighbouring colour in a counter-clockwise direction on the colour wheel. The further you push the slider the further around the colour wheel you go. So red turns to orange, then orange-yellow (but not any further, changes are limited to similar hues). Pushing the slider left takes you in the opposite direction around the colour wheel, where red is replaced by magenta. These colours are indicated on the sliders so you can see what will happen when you make the adjustment The Hue sliders in the Camera Calibration panel work exactly the same way.

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Above: Pushing the Red slider to the right replaces all red tones with one of the neighbouring colours on the colour wheel (right).

Above: Let’s see how we can change the hues in the above photo. Start by clicking Hue, then the Targeted Adjustment Tool Icon (circled right) in the HSL tab. Click and drag the mouse down to move the hue sliders responding to the colour under the cross hair to the left (middle). Move it up to move them right ( far right).

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The Split Toning panel We’ve already seen how you can use the HSL / Color / B&W panel to alter the qualities of colours in Lightroom. That’s on top of the White Balance, Vibrance and Saturation sliders in the Basic panel, and any adjustments to colour curves that you may make in the Tone Curve panel. There a lot of ways to adjust colours, and the Split Toning panel is another. If you think back to the White Balance tools, you will remember that you can warm the image up or cool it down with the Temp slider, and add (or more likely remove) green or magenta casts with the Tint slider. These changes affect the entire image. One way to think about the Split Toning panel is to see it as an extension of the White Balance tool. The difference is that you can apply any colour you like to your image, and that you are most likely to be doing this for creative reasons, rather than practical ones like setting white balance. If you want to apply a vintage effect, imitate the effects of cross-processing colour film in the wrong chemistry, or simply create mood by adding colour, this is a good place to start. For those of you accustomed to using Photoshop, it may help to think of the Split Toning panel as a separate layer. There’s no Opacity slider like the one in Photoshop, but you can reduce the intensity of the effect by reducing the saturation of the selected colours.

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Use the Hue and Saturation sliders to set the colours applied to the Highlights and Shadows. Alternatively, click on the coloured swatches to activate the Colour Picker.

Use the Balance slider to give priority to either the Highlights colour or the Shadows colour.

The Split Toning panel contains five sliders. Two of those control the colour applied to the highlights, and another two the colour applied to the shadows. The selected colours are applied to the highlights and mid-tones on one hand, and the shadows and mid-tones on the other. They meet somewhere in the middle, and you can influence where by using the Balance slider. Move it right to give precedence to the Highlights, and left to give precedence to the Shadows.

Above: The original image, without any Split Toning applied.

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Above: This version has a warm colour applied to the highlights and mid-tones.

Above: This version has a warm colour applied to the highlights and mid-tones, and a cool colour to the shadows and mid-tones. The Balance slider is set to zero, so the colours meet in the middle.

Above: Start by clicking the Highlights swatch. Use the colour picker to set Hue and Saturation values. You can also adjust the Saturation of the selected colour with the slider (marked by an S) under the colour picker. Click the X in the top-left corner (or anywhere outside the Highlights window) when you’re done. The Hue and Saturation values are transferred to the sliders, which you can adjust if you need to.

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Above: Repeat for the Shadows. The selected values are transferred to the Hue and Saturation sliders.

Right: You can save colours to one of five swatches. Move the cursor over a swatch and hold the left button down to change it to the currently selected colour.

The Detail panel The Detail panel is where you apply noise reduction and sharpening to your images. Most of the time you leave the settings at their default, and you may not have to visit this panel at all. But it’s still worth spending some time learning how to use the sharpening and noise reduction tools, for those occasions where tweaking the settings will obtain a better result.

Image preview at 100% enlargement

Sharpening One of the advantages of using the Raw format and processing your images in Lightroom is that it is very easy to adjust the Sharpness settings at any point. If you use JPEG, sharpening is applied by the camera when you take the photo. That gives you less leeway in post-processing as additional sharpening may also make any artefacts such as halos worse. Photoshop users will be accustomed to leaving sharpening until the very last step of their processing workflow. This helps avoid artefacts and lets you apply the amount of sharpening required according to what you intend to do with the photo. An image that will be displayed at small size online, for example, may require a different level of sharpening to one that will be printed. With Lightroom, you can apply Sharpening at any stage (it applies some by default anyway). Every setting can be altered at any stage, and you always have the ability to adjust sharpness if it turns out that you have under- or over-sharpened an image.

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Sharpening sliders

Noise Reduction sliders

Sharpening requirements The amount of sharpening required depends on what you intend to do with your photo. If you are printing an image, sharpening depends as much on the content of the image as well as the print size and paper type. You may find after you have printed the image you need to increase or lower the amount of sharpening to get the best result. If you are going to display your images online, they also need sharpening, and probably with a different setting than you would use for printing. Some photo sharing websites, like Flickr, apply sharpening when you upload images, and require less sharpening on your part. If you are preparing images for publication the criteria change again. Stock libraries usually require unsharpened images, so that they can apply sharpening according to the client’s requirements. Magazines require unsharpened images too, as sharpening is applied at the printing stage. Sometimes you will see over-sharpened images in a magazine – look out for halos and other artefacts. It shows that even the professionals can sometimes get it wrong.

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Above: The CMOS sensor from the EOS 70D camera. Most digital cameras have an anti-aliasing filter in front of the sensor. The filter reduces moire patterns which may show up in certain textured materials like clothing by blurring the image slightly. Any photo produced from a Raw file from a digital camera with an anti-aliasing filter is slightly soft and needs to be sharpened. Some manufacturers, most notably Leica, Nikon and Fujifilm, have started producing cameras without anti-aliasing filters for sharper images.

Sharpening sliders The effects of all the Sharpening sliders are best judged at 1:1 magnification. There are examples of each on the next few pages: Amount: Controls the amount of sharpness applied to the image. Default is 25 for Raw files and zero for JPEG or TIFF files.

These are the sliders used for sharpening images, shown at their default settings for Raw files. The defaults work well for most images, but feel free to experiment with the sliders and see if you can improve the result.

Radius: Controls the spread of the sharpness. Move it too far right and you will lose detail. Move it too far left and sharpening isn’t as effective. The default setting of 1 seems to work well for most images. Increase Radius to make edges and lines sharper. Detail: Move the slider right to increase textural detail. The trade off is that it also increases halos and unwanted grain in smooth areas like sky. Most of the time you can leave it at the default setting of 25. Masking: A potential side effect of sharpening is increased sharpness in smooth areas like sky. It adds texture where there shouldn’t be any and looks unnatural.

Tip: Lightroom can’t do much to help you if any lack of sharpness is down to poor technique. It can’t eliminate softness caused by camera shake, inaccurate focusing or lack of depth-of-field. The sharpening settings are there to help you compensate for softening caused by the anti-aliasing filter, and prepare your images for print or publication.

The Masking slider helps prevent this by limiting sharpening to the edges within the photo. At zero (the default) Lightroom applies sharpening evenly across the entire image. The further right you move the slider, the more it is restricted. The easiest way to see which areas are affected is to hold down the Alt key. Areas shown in white will be sharpened, and areas shown in black won’t be. The black areas increase as you move the Masking slider right. You can also hold down the Alt key while using any of the sliders to see similar information.

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Tip: Sharpening applied from the Detail panel is a global adjustment affecting the entire image. You can also local adjustments to sharpen (or reduce the sharpness of) parts of the image. The idea is to guide the viewer’s eye gently towards the sharpest parts of the image.

Above: A 100% enlargement from an image processed using Lightroom’s default sharpening settings.

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Above: The same image with the Sharpening slider set to 150. There are white halos around the stonework where it meets the sky, and more grain. These are signs of over-sharpening. This is just an example – I can’t imagine that you would ever need to increase sharpening so much. The trick is keep it subtle. While the sample on the left looks a little soft, I think it’s mainly to do with over-sharpened version making it look softer than it really is in comparison.

Here’s what happens when you hold down the Alt key and use the Masking slider:

Above: Masking 45, Alt key held down. Areas affected by sharpening shown in white.

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Above: Masking 100, Alt key held down. Now there is much less white as the area affected by sharpening is reduced.

The Alt key is also useful for evaluating the effect of the Radius slider:

Above: Radius 1.0 (default), Alt key held down.

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Above: Radius 3.0, Alt key held down. Edges and lines will be much sharper at this setting.

The Alt key also helps you valuate the effect of the Detail slider:

Above: Detail 25 (default), Alt key held down.

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Above: Detail 100, Alt key held down. This setting brings out more detail in texture areas.

Sharpening at export The Detail panel isn’t the only place you can apply sharpening. You can also do it when you export your images and save them as JPEG or TIFF files. The simple approach is to leave the Sharpness settings at their default and apply sharpening at the export stage. There are lots of photographers that do this as it saves you time, especially when processing large numbers of photos. I’ll go more into exporting later, but for now here are the Output Sharpening options Lightroom gives you: Sharpen for: Here you can choose from Screen (for web use) and Matte Paper or Glossy Paper if you are printing. Lightroom uses a sharpening formula designed to give the best performance for these purposes. Amount: You have the choice of Low, Standard and High. Trial and error will reveal the best choices for you. I use Standard and it works fine for me.

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Noise Reduction The days when photographers used third-party software or complex processes in Photoshop to reduce noise are gone. Modern digital cameras produce images with very little noise, and if you use Lightroom to process the Raw files you will be pleasantly surprised at how little noise there is in your images, even at higher ISO settings. It works with older cameras too. If you have recently upgraded from an earlier version of Lightroom you should notice an improvement in performance – Adobe has improved Noise Reduction with every iteration.

Lightroom’s default Noise Reduction settings. They are the same regardless of the ISO setting of the photo you are developing.

As with sharpening, you can take the simple approach and leave the Noise Reduction settings at their default. It’s more than good enough most of the time. The results will vary depending on which camera you have, but I have noticed that Lightroom renders noise on files from my EOS 5D Mark II in a way that closely resembles the grain structure of high ISO film. The texture of the noise becomes an integral part of the image, and aesthetically pleasing in its own right. Lightroom’s Noise Reduction is not intended to compensate for poor technique. Help Lightroom out by getting exposure right when you take the photo. Remember this principle: If you underexpose the image when you take the photo, then brighten it in Lightroom, you will increase any noise in the dark tones. You can’t compensate for underexposure in Lightroom (or any other software) without increasing noise.

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Types of noise Luminance noise: Affects the brightness of pixels but not the colour. It looks a little like black and white speckles in your image. The default setting for luminance noise reduction in Lightroom is zero, as applying luminance noise reduction always reduces the sharpness of the image. Colour noise: Prominent coloured speckles, highly visible at high ISO settings. The default setting of 25 for colour noise reduction may be all you need for the majority of your images. Unlike luminance noise reduction, you can increase colour noise reduction without much loss of sharpness.

A detail from a photo taken at ISO 12,800 on my EOS 5D Mark II. The statue in the photo was in a very dimly building and I had no choice but to use this extraordinarily high ISO setting. The screenshot shows a Before image (left) with Lightroom’s noise reduction settings turned off. The After image (right) is with the noise reduction set to the default settings. The difference is clear – the coloured speckles created by colour noise are eliminated when Noise Reduction is enabled. The worst noise is in the darkest tones. The lightest tones contain virtually no noise even at this high ISO setting.

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A concise guide to Noise Reduction Every image is different, so the best way to see if you can improve on the default Noise Reduction settings is to try it. Sharpness settings have an effect on noise as well (increasing sharpness can increase noise). They are grouped together so you can adjust them in tandem for the best result.

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Tip: If you use the Raw format you can leave the High ISO Noise Reduction or Long Exposure Noise Reduction functions on your camera switched off. They are only applied by the camera to JPEG files. When you use Raw, noise reduction is applied by your Raw conversion software instead.

Move the Luminance slider right to reduce luminance noise. But not too far, as it also reduces sharpness.

Move the Color slider right to reduce colour noise. You’re looking for the sweet spot where the slider is as far left as possible while eliminating as much colour noise as you can.

Use the Detail and Contrast sliders to bring back some of the detail lost use to luminance noise reduction. Beware of introducing artefacts if pushed too far to the right.

The Color slider destroys detail by blurring the image, although not nearly as much as the Luminance slider. Use the Detail slider right to bring some of that detail back. Introduces coloured speckles if you move it too far right.

The Contrast slider lifts contrast to compensate for the loss of contrast caused by the softening effect of the Luminance slider.

The Smoothness slider helps smooth out artefacts caused by the Color and Detail sliders. The effect is very subtle. New with Lightroom 5.2.

local adj ustments Lightroom works best when you apply global adjustments first. Once you have set the colour and tonal values, you can think about making local adjustments to improve the image. If you are new to Lightroom you will be pleasantly surprised how easy it is to make local adjustments. In Photoshop, you need to make a selection or use a mask, and combine this with using layers. Lightroom is different. There are no layers and no Marquee Tool to create selections. It has its own tools, and they are simple and intuitive to use. As we look at the local adjustment tools keep in mind that it is easy to go overboard, and end up with something that doesn’t look natural. This isn’t unique to Lightroom, it can happen in any software, or in the chemical darkroom. I understand that some photographers prefer a more heavily processed look than I do, and that’s fine. But along the way I will point out the tools that can produce unnatural results if pushed too far.

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There are three local adjustment tools in Lightroom: the Adjustment Brush, the Graduated Filter and (new to Lightroom 5) the Radial Filter. Each gives you a different way of creating a selection, but what you can do once you’ve created it is the same regardless of which tool you use. The panels for these tools are shown on this page. They appear when you click on the tool’s icon (located under the Histogram and above the Basic Panel). I’ll go into more detail about the sliders and presets in a little while, but first it’s time to learn how to use the tools.

Adjustment Brush

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Radial Filter (Lightroom 5 only)

Graduated Filter

The Graduated Filter

Click this icon to use the Graduated Filter.

If you’re familiar with the graduated neutral density filters used by landscape photographers the concept of the Graduated Filter is easy to understand. Lightroom’s version is similar, although please don’t think that it obviates the need for a physical graduated filter. It doesn’t. The Graduated Filter can’t bring back detail in burnt out skies, and it’s up to you to make sure that the camera’s sensor captures as much information as possible for Lightroom to use.

Click New to create a new Graduated Filter, or Edit to adjust one that already exists. Move a slider to apply the effect to the area covered by the Graduated Filter. You can apply as many sliders as you wish to a single Graduated Filter.

In other respects the Graduated Filter is much more useful than a physical filter. It helps to see it as a way of making a selection, rather than to make skies darker. You can also use it to adjust contrast or colour temperature, or even apply a soft focus or lens blur effect. It has lots of uses, and there is no limit to the number of Graduated Filters you can apply to a photo. The diagram on this page shows you what each part of the Graduated Filter panel does. The Radial Filter and Adjustment Brush panels work exactly the same way.

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Click this icon to select a colour to apply to the area covered by the Graduated Filter, in addition to the effects of any sliders. Click Reset to delete all Graduated Filters, or Close to close the Graduated Filter panel. Click Custom to select a preset from the menu on the left. Select Save Current Settings as New Preset to create your own preset.

Click this icon to toggle the visibility of all Graduated Filters. They are invisible when it is in the down position.

Using the Graduated Filter 1. Click on the Graduated Filter icon. Hold the left mouse button down and drag it across the image. 2. Adjust the appropriate slider or sliders, or choose a Preset from the menu. Here, I moved the Exposure slider left to make the sky darker. 3. Adjust the position of the Graduated Filter if you need to, and press Done when you’re finished. Note: You can add as many Graduated Filters as you like. Any you have added already are shown by grey pins. Click on a pin to activate the Graduated Filter associated with it. You can then move, edit, duplicate or delete it.

The black pin indicates this Graduated Filter is active.

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The effect is feathered around either side of the centre line.

The full effect is applied at the top of the Graduated Filter.

I darkened the edges of this image with three Graduated Filters. The white lines indicate their position. One advantage of using Graduated Filters (as opposed to the Radial Filter or Post-crop vignetting) is that you can place each one precisely and adjust them separately. Here, I reduced the Exposure of the rightmost Graduated Filter by less than the others to prevent the right side going too dark.

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The Color setting comes in useful for adding colour to a Graduated Filter. Click on the white rectangle icon and select a colour using the selector (illustrated below). The new hue is added to the Graduated Filter, regardless of which sliders you use. You can also use it with the Adjustment Brush and Radial Filter. The colour is applied to the area covered by the Graduated Filter. Select a colour here. The hue and saturation are indicated under the colour swatch.

Click the white rectangle to activate the colour picker.

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The current colour is shown here. Double-click the word Color to remove it.

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One application, and probably the first to occur to some older photographers, is to mimic the use of coloured graduated neutral density filters such as those popularised by Cokin in the seventies and eighties. If you miss those old tobacco grads then now is your chance to indulge in a little nostalgia. You can make the adjustment as subtle as you like by reducing the saturation of the selected colour. It’s useful for adding a touch of colour to skies – perhaps you’d like to emphasise the blue colour of the sky, or make sunset colours warmer. In this example I selected a tan colour and applied the Graduated Filter from the top left of the image. I increased the value of the Exposure slider to make it look as though the rocks behind my model were lit by the rays of the setting sun. The sun was indeed setting behind her, so it’s not so far from the truth.

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The Radial Filter The Radial Filter works exactly the same way as the Graduated Filter in terms of the effects that you can apply to the selection. The difference is in the circular shape of the selection.

Click this icon to use the Radial Filter.

The Radial Filter lets you create a mask in the shape of a circle or oval. You can apply the adjustment to the area outside the mask (the default) or inside it (tick the Inverse Mask box to do so). Use the Feather setting to soften the edge of the mask. The Radial Filter is a relatively new feature introduced in Lightroom 5. If you have an earlier version, you can achieve these effects using Adjustment Brushes (covered next). But Radial Filters have several advantages: • Radial filters are quicker, as you don’t have to paint in the area you want to mask. • You can duplicate a Radial Filter (right-click the pin and select Duplicate). This lets you apply the same effect elsewhere in the image or a different effect to the same shape.

Use the Feather slider to set the hardness of the mask edges. 100 gives the softest edge.

Tick this box to apply the effect to the area inside the mask.

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1. Click the Radial Filter icon and use the mouse to draw an ellipse across the relevant area of the photo.

2. Click and drag the white squares to adjust the size and shape of the mask.

3. Rotate the selection by hovering the mouse near the edge of the mask until the double arrow icon (left) appears. Click and drag to rotate.

4. Use the Feather slider to adjust the softness of the selection. A setting of zero gives you a hard edge, and 100 the softest. Tick the Invert Mask box to apply the changes inside the circle.

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The Radial Filter provides a similar function to Post-crop Vignetting as it lets you darken the edges of the image in a similar way to that caused by optical lens vignetting. The idea is to gently guide the viewer’s eye towards the centre of the photo by making the edges darker. The technique comes in useful in portraits as it helps direct attention towards the model The benefit of using the Radial Filter for this is that you can centre the effect wherever you like, and rotate it as well if you need to. That is something you can’t do with the Post-crop Vignetting tool.

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The Adjustment Brush The third local adjustment tool is the Adjustment Brush. The Graduated and Radial filters are quicker and easier to apply, but there are times when you need to customise the masked area. For that you need the Adjustment Brush. To use it, click the Adjustment Brush icon and paint the area you want to apply the adjustment to. Control the size and flow of the brush using the Adjustment Brush panel (see right).

Tip: Tick the Show Selected Mask Overlay box in the Toolbar to show the area covered by the mask with a red transparent overlay. You can also use the ‘O’ keyboard shortcut.

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There are two brushes: A and B. You can assign different Size, Feather, Flow and Density settings to each. Switch between the two by clicking on the brush you want to use or with the ‘/’ keyboard shortcut. If the Auto Mask box is ticked Lightroom attempts to keep the selection to similar colours. However, it slows down the program and often creates a patchy effect, meaning that the effect you chose to apply won’t be even. It’s best to leave this box unticked. Density sets the maximum strength of the effect. For example, set it to 50 to limit the strength to 50%, no matter how much you brush over it.

Click this icon to use the Adjustment Brush. Use the Erase brush to remove part of the selection. It is for making precise adjustments to the area covered by the mask. Click this arrow to reveal or hide the Feather, Flow and Density sliders. Use Size so set the brush size (or use the ‘[‘ and ‘]’ keyboard shortcuts). The Feather slider sets the hardness of the mask edges. 100 gives the softest edge. Flow controls the opacity of the mask. One approach is to use a low Flow setting and gradually build up the effect. Alternatively, set Flow to 100 and control the strength of the effect using the sliders.

In this example I used the Adjustment Brush and increased Exposure and Clarity to make the old house stand out from the background. The red Mask Overlay (use the ‘O’ keyboard shortcut to toggle it on and off) makes it easy to see which areas of the photo are included in the adjustment. You can use brushes to add to the mask or erase part of it.

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Next I created another Adjustment Brush and painted in the sky. You can be as precise as you like with the selection – it’s really just a matter of how patient you are. I selected the sky and reduced the contrast, creating a more subtle graduation between mid and light tones in the grey clouds.

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You can see in this comparison that the adjustments have made the house brighter than its surroundings. A couple of subtle alterations are all it took to make it really stand out.

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Portrait retouching Now I’m going to show you how to bring the skills you’ve learnt so far together to retouch a portrait. I’ll introduce you to the Spot Removal tool, and you’ll learn how to use the Adjustment Brush to retouch skin.

Right: Here’s the portrait, before retouching. I’ve already made adjustments in the Basic panel, including altering Saturation and Vibrance to reduce the intensity of the colours (far right). Now it is ready to apply the finishing touches.

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Spot Removal Tool Tip: Hold the space bar down and click and drag to navigate around the photo. This saves you having to zoom out then in again to retouch a different part of the image.

The model has great skin, but she still has a few spots. They are easy to remove with the Spot Removal tool:

Click on the Spot Removal tool icon (marked above). Set Opacity to 100 and Feather to around 70. Make sure Heal (not clone) is selected.

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Move the cursor over the blemish. The outer circle shows the affected area, the inner circle where feathering starts. Use the ‘[‘ and ‘]’ keyboard shortcuts to alter the size of the brush, or click and drag the edge. You can also use the sliders to adjust the Size, Feather and Opacity settings.

When you are ready click the left mouse button. Lightroom selects another part of the image to sample. Normally this works fine but occasionally the sample area may contain a mark or line, compromising the healing process. If this happens, move the second circle (showing the sampled area) to a better position until you are happy with the result.

Repeat with other blemishes, and click the Done button in the Toolbar (or Close in the Spot Removal panel) when you are finished.

Adjustment Brush You have probably seen several portrait retouching programs advertised in magazines or online, and wondered if they were worth buying. The answer is a firm no. I have tried out quite a few, and the truth is that the Soften Skin preset in Lightroom does just as good a job as any of them. For most photographers Lightroom’s retouching tools all are you will ever need. Take some time to think about your personal approach to portrait retouching. Some photographers seem to like the airbrushed, almost plastic look of heavy processing, and it’s something you see used a lot in commercial photography or movie posters. Others will go for a more natural effect, and use the retouching tools with a light touch. That’s definitely my approach, and it fits with my preference for natural light and for creating portraits that capture character. Either way, Lightroom can accommodate your needs. The Adjustment Brush is the best tool to use to apply the Soften Skin preset with, as it lets you create a mask of any shape. Before applying skin smoothing to the entire face, it may be helpful to clean up any dark shadows under the model’s eyes. You don’t want to hide them completely, as they are a natural feature of most faces created by the crease under the lower eyelid. But it’s nice to minimise them:

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Above: Start by painting in the area under the eyes with the Adjustment Brush. Use the ‘O’ keyboard shortcut to show you the covered area.

Above: Go to the Effect menu in the Adjustment Brush panel and select Soften Skin. Use the ‘O’ shortcut to hide the mask. You’ll see the improvement immediately. If you look at the sliders you will see that Lightroom has set Clarity to -100 and Sharpness to 25. This combination smooths the skin yet retains some of the underlying texture.

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Above: Increase Exposure slightly to lighten the shadows. Be careful not to lighten them too much. This step may not be necessary with some portraits.

It’s not necessary for every portrait, but there will be times when you want to apply the Soften Skin preset to the entire face. The Adjustment Brush is also the best tool for this task.

Above: Use the Adjustment Brush to paint in the face, leaving the eyes, eyebrows, lips and the bottom of the nose unchanged. The easiest way is to use either the A or B brush to paint the entire face, then the Erase brush to remove the mask from the areas you don’t wish to soften.

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Above: Press ‘O’ to hide the mask and select Soften Skin from the Effects menu. Lightroom sets Clarity to -100 and Sharpness to +25. The effect is much stronger than you need unless you’re going for the heavily retouched look.

You could reduce the strength of the Soften Skin preset by increasing Clarity and decreasing Sharpness manually, but it’s a little tricky to keep them in proportion. Luckily, there’s an easier way. If you have followed the instructions so far there will be two grey pins over the model’s face (see right). The first is underneath the model’s eye, and represents the initial Adjustment Brush applied to that area. The second represents the mask that covers the face. It is coloured black to indicate that it’s the active Adjustment Brush. Move the mouse over the active pin. A double arrow icon appears (circled right). Hold the left mouse button down and drag the mouse left. The Clarity and Sharpness sliders adjust equally to reduce the strength of the skin smoothing effect. Move the mouse left to reduce the effect (you’ll get to zero if you move it far enough), and right to increase it. Let go of the mouse button when it looks good to your eye. This technique applies to any Adjustment Brush preset.

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Graduated Filters Finally, let’s apply a couple of Graduated filters to the background to make it darker. You can use the Adjustment Brush as well to do this, but the Graduated filters are often easier. You can always use the Adjustment Brush to fill in the gaps if necessary.

Apply a Graduated Filter to the left side of the background and reduce Exposure. The amount you do that by depends on your portrait, in this example it was around one and half stops.

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Apply a second Graduated Filter to the right side and reduce Exposure until it looks the same as the left side. The best way to judge is by eye rather than trying to match the numbers exactly, as one part of the background may be brighter to start with.

Here’s the final result:

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The Crop Overlay

Click this icon to use the Crop Overlay.

The Crop Overlay has three functions: • To crop your images while keeping the original aspect ratio. You could use it for this if there is something at the edge of the frame that needs removing, or cropping improves the composition, or you need to rotate the image to make the horizon or a building straight. • To crop images to a different aspect ratio. Examples are panoramas or the square format.

Sets the Aspect Ratio of the crop.

Use this slider to rotate the image.

• To place an overlay over the image to help you visualise how well the composition works. It includes common compositional tools such as a rule-ofthirds grid and a Golden Spiral. The overlay changes size to suit as you crop. Tick the Constrain to Warp box to constrain the crop within the boundaries of the original photo. It doesn’t have any visible effect while you are cropping. But if you are using the Lens Corrections panel to correct distortions, it has the same function as ticking the Constrain Crop box (tick one of these and Lightroom ticks the other automatically). Enabled, it prevents Lightroom from adding white space to the frame when it makes lens corrections.

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The Straighten tool The Straighten tool is there to help you make sure the horizon is level or to straighten a straight edge like that of the side of a building:

1. Click on the Crop Overlay Tool icon (marked above) to get started.

2. Click on the Angle tool icon. It looks like a yellow spirit level (marked left).

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3. Click and drag to draw a line along the edge you want to be straight (i.e. parallel with the side of the frame). It doesn’t matter if the line is vertical, as in the example above, or horizontal.

4. When you release the mouse button Lightroom rotates and crops the image so that the line you created is parallel with the side of the frame (right). The crop is also adjusted, retaining the aspect ratio.

Note: As an alternative to the Angle tool, you can rotate the image manually using the Angle slider. Lightroom places a square grid over the image to help you see whether the horizon (or any other straight lines) are level.

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Aspect ratio Aspect ratio is the term used to describe the relationship of the width of an image to its height. It’s expressed as a ratio, like this – width : height (width is always first).

6x6, 5x4, 6x7 and the panoramic format are four more popular aspect ratios that some of you will be familiar with. You can buy film cameras that utilise these, but they have not made their way into digital photography as native sensor sizes yet:

The commonest aspect ratios in digital photography are 35mm and micro fourthirds: • 35mm cameras have an aspect ratio of 3:2. The frame is one and a half times as wide as it is long. The aspect ratio remains the same whether you have a fullframe or a crop sensor camera.

5

1

4

1

• Micro four-thirds cameras have an aspect ratio of 4:3. It is a shorter rectangle than 35mm. Here they are together:

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4 2

35mm (3:2)

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Square (1:1)

5x4 (5:4)

16

7

3

Micro four-thirds (4:3)

6

9

Panorama (16:9)

6x7 (7:6)

1: All of the aspect ratios on the previous page, and more, are available in Lightroom. To use them, start by clicking on the Crop Overlay icon (marked above). The Crop Overlay panel opens below.

2. Click on the Aspect menu (the default setting is As shot) and select the aspect ratio you want from the drop down menu. You can use one of the presets or select Enter Custom to enter your own dimensions. Use the ‘X’ keyboard shortcut to switch between the horizontal and vertical orientations.

3. Move the photo back and forth until you’re happy with the crop. Alternatively, use the mouse to grab hold of an edge or a corner of the frame and click and drag to change the size of the cropping frame. As long as the lock icon (marked above) is in the locked position, Lightroom maintains the selected aspect ratio. If you want to break free of the selected aspect ratio, click the lock icon so it is in the unlocked position (right). Then you can adjust one side of the frame without affecting the others. If you move the cursor near the corner of the cropping frame a curly arrow appears. Click and drag on this to use it as an alternative to the Angle tool to rotate the image.

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Use the Lights Out feature to hide the cropped part of the image and the Lightroom interface. This makes it easier to see how effective the crop is. Press the ‘L’ key once to fade out the interface, again to turn it black, and once more to reveal it again.

Lights Out 1 (background faded)

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Lights Out 2 (black background)

At this point you may be wondering why you would alter the aspect ratio of an image. The short answer is that it may improve the composition. If you have a 35mm camera, it can be hard to compose effectively using the entire width of the frame (or height in the portrait orientation). If you have any wasted space at the ends of the frame, you may be able to create a stronger photo by cropping to a shorter rectangle. Using one of the aspect ratios mentioned in the previous pages is a good idea. Each one has been used for many years in at least one camera system, and photographers have learnt to compose images within these formats. Also, if you crop to a specific aspect ratio, rather than arbitrarily, you retain consistency amongst your photos. This may assist when it comes to putting together a portfolio or a website. Let’s take a look at some of these aspect ratios in more detail: The square format (1:1): Used in many medium format cameras, including the Hasselblads used by many professional photographers in the heyday of film, the square format has experienced something of a renaissance with digital photography. The square frame changes the dynamic of the image, and emphasises simple, graphic compositions that make strong use of shape. You’ll often see this format used in black and white photography. 5x4 (5:4): This is a format associated with large format view cameras and landscape photography. It is much easier to compose a landscape photo when the camera is in the portrait orientation in the 5x4 aspect ratio than 35mm. Some photographers used micro four-thirds cameras for the same reason.

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Panorama (16:9): The panoramic format comes into its own when used with wideangle lenses to capture the sweep of the landscape. The 16:9 ratio is the same one used in the cinema and encourages the eye to move from side to side, taking in the detail in the image. Micro four-thirds (4:3): This is a relatively new format in digital terms, although it was used in 6x4.5cm medium format film cameras. Micro four-thirds cameras have a sensor that is half the size of that found in full-frame models. That enables manufacturers to make smaller cameras and lenses. Like the 5x4 aspect ratio, the micro four-thirds format provides a smaller rectangle than the 35mm frame, which can make it easier to compose some subjects such as landscapes and portraits. 6x7 (6:7): Another format used by medium format film cameras for many decades. Often used by landscape photographers to take advantage of the shorter rectangle in comparison to 35mm cameras.

Tip: Some cameras with electronic viewfinders or Live View give you the option of cropping to different aspect ratios in-camera. If you use the Raw format, the image captured by the entire sensor is recorded, but the camera shows you the cropped image. In Lightroom, you can crop the image however you like. With most cameras, Lightroom will initially display the cropped version. If you wish, you can select another aspect ratio from the Crop Overlay panel.

Here are some examples of how changing the aspect ratio alters the composition of an image:

35mm format (5:4)

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5x4 format (5:4)

Square format (1:1)

Panorama format (16:9)

Crop Guide Overlays If you are not accustomed to cropping or thinking in aspect ratios other than the one of your camera’s sensor it’s natural to be a little uncertain as to the best way to crop, or even if you should crop at all. In general, unless you are deliberately composing with the end in mind of cropping to a different aspect ratio (such as the square format) it is best to try and compose your images in such a way that no cropping is required. This is just good discipline, and if you get it right you don’t even have to think about whether cropping will improve your photo. However, few photographers get it right all the time. Sometimes you don’t realise that a closer crop will improve an image until you see it on your computer monitor. Or you may realise the main subject should be a little to the left or to the right in the frame, and that you can make that happen by cropping. With experience these types of crop become second nature and you won’t have to think about them much. But, if you need it, Lightroom has a tool to help you – the Crop Guide Overlays. To use the Crop Guide Overlays click the Crop Overlay icon under the histogram and use the Cmd-O keyboard shortcut (PC: Ctrl-O). Lightroom places a grid over the photo. This is the first Crop Guide Overlay. Use the ‘O’ keyboard shortcut to cycle through the Crop Guide Overlays. The available overlays are illustrated on the next few pages, with a brief explanation of why you might use each one. If you want to hide the overlay, the easiest way is to go to the Tool Overlay menu in the bottom left of the screen and select the Never option (marked right). The Cmd-O (PC: Ctrl-O) shortcut brings the overlay back again if you need it.

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Grid Overlay This overlay is useful for checking that any lines in the photo are straight. Useful when processing landscapes or photos of buildings.

Thirds Overlay Places four lines over the photo to indicate the thirds. If you like to compose according to the rule-of-thirds, this overlay will help you see where the subject is located in the frame in relation to the thirds and their intersections.

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Diagonal Overlay The diagonal is similar to the rule-of-thirds. The idea is that a composition based on diagonal lines is more powerful when they align with these lines. If you select the 1:1 aspect ratio, the number of guidelines is reduced to two.

Triangle Overlay Another guide based on the idea that diagonal lines become more powerful if placed on the lines in this grid. Use the ‘Shift+O’ shortcut to reverse the overlay.

Golden Ratio Overlay Yes, yet another way to align your subject. Similar to the rule-of-thirds, this overlay attempts to follow the theory of the golden ratio. Wikipedia has a long and complex article about the Golden Ratio if you are interested in learning more.

Golden Spiral Overlay The Golden Spiral is based on the Golden Ratio. The basic idea seems to be that elements of your photo corresponding with the spiral gain more impact. Use the ‘Shift+O’ shortcut to cycle through a selection of spirals. Wikipedia has an extensive article about the Golden Spiral if you are curious.

Beyond Thirds The Diagonal, Triangle, Golden Ratio and Golden Spiral overlays are heavy going for those of us simply interested in creating beautiful photos. My advice is to ignore them – their use in composition is dubious at best, and more or less useless at the post-processing stage considering that composition is carried out at the time you take a photo, not in Lightroom. If you’d like to learn more about genuinely useful ways to improve your composition, then take a look at my ebook Beyond Thirds, sold by Craft & Vision (click the link to go to their website). It’s full of solid, useful tips that will help you compose more interesting images. Plus, it doesn’t mention Golden Spirals once!

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Aspect Ratios Overlay This overlay shows you how you image will look if cropped to one of the selected aspect ratios. Go to Tools > Crop Guide Overlay > Choose Aspect Ratios to select the aspect ratios you would like Lightroom to display. There are eight to choose from (see right), but it’s not a bad idea just to select the ones you use regularly otherwise the screen gets too crowded. Use ‘Shift+O’ to switch between the horizontal and vertical orientations.

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Tip: You can simplify the use of Crop Guide Overlays by going to Tools > Crop Guide Overlay > Choose Overlays to Cycle (above). Untick any overlays you don’t want to see. My preference is to show the Grid, Thirds and Aspect Ratios overlays only.

The Spot Removal tool The Spot Removal tool helps you remove visible dust spots (caused by dirt on the sensor) or blemishes from people’s faces (covered earlier in the section on retouching portraits). You can also use it to tidy up backgrounds by removing distractions such as highlights or distant figures. The Spot Removal tool underwent a significant upgrade in Lightroom 5. In previous versions the tool could only be applied in a circle. That’s ideal for removing dust spots, but not as versatile as Photoshop’s Healing Brush tool. Now that’s changed, and by the simple technique of holding the left mouse button down and dragging, you can create all manner of shapes, much like using the Adjustment Brush tool. Adobe call this new feature the Advanced Healing Brush in their tutorials and press releases, although it is still named the Spot Removal tool in Lightroom itself.

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Click this icon to use the Spot Removal tool. Select Heal for the best results. If Lightroom is smudging the dust spot instead of healing it, which may happen if it is close to another object, then Clone may be the better option. Use these sliders to set the Size, edge hardness (Feather) and Opacity of the Spot Removal tool brush.

Removing dust spots No matter how much you clean your camera’s sensor (and I’m sure most photographers don’t do it that often) there always seems to be dirt on there. You’ll notice dust spots more if you tend to use wide-angle lenses stopped down to narrow apertures, as the extended depth-of-field brings them into view. Luckily, Lightroom makes it easy to remove dust spots. Just follow these steps (which work in both Lightroom 4 and 5). 1. Zoom into the top left portion of your photo at 100% magnification. 2. Click on the Spot Removal tool icon. 3. Move the cursor over a dust spot. Use the ‘[‘ and ‘]’ keys to adjust the size of the brush (you can also use the Size slider in the Spot Removal tool panel). Make sure the Opacity slider is set to 100 and Feather to around 50-70. The brush should be set to Heal. Click on the dust spot to remove it. 4. When you have finished removing dust spots (if any) in the portion of your photo that you can see, press the Page Down key (or the Function + Down Arrow keys together if your keyboard doesn’t have a Page Down key). Lightroom moves down to the next section of the photo. When you reach the bottom, Lightroom moves back to the top of the photo, but over to the right. You can continue like this, covering the image in a series of columns, until the entire image is covered. This way you know you haven’t missed anything. Click the Done button in the Toolbar when you’re finished, or Close in the Spot Removal panel.

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Above: Use the ‘[‘ and ‘]’ keys to adjust the size of the brush. The gap between the inner and outer circles shows the area being feathered. It changes in size as you move the Feather slider back and forth.

Above: When you click on the dust spot, Lightroom removes it and places another circle to show you the area it took the sample from. If required, click and drag the second circle to sample a different area.

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Above: Repeat with any other dust spots. Lightroom displays light grey circles to show you where else you used the Spot Removal tool.

Visualise Spots (Lightroom 5 only) While some dust spots are obvious, some are harder to see. They are easy to miss, and you may not even notice they are there, especially if you are not in the habit of viewing your photos at 100% magnification. This could become a problem if you print your photos, or create a photo book with them – having to reprint is both a pain and an expense. It might also be an issue if you sell your photos to a magazine or through a stock library. In Lightroom 5 Adobe introduced the Visualise Spots function to simplify the task of detecting spots. Activate it by ticking the Visualise Spots box in the Toolbar. The photo turns black and spots show up as white circles. Move the slider right to increase the sensitivity or left to decrease it. You can use the Spot Removal tool with Visualise Spots activated, but don’t forget to untick the box every now and then to make sure you are actually removing genuine dust spots, and that Lightroom is sampling from the most appropriate area.

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Removing shapes (Lightroom 5 only) Healing objects with more complex shapes than dust spots is now easy with the new Spot Removal tool in Lightroom 5. Hold the left mouse button down and drag the mouse over the shape you want to remove. Lightroom selects an area to sample and connects it with an arrow. The larger the area you are healing, the more likely it is that Lightroom will take a sample from another part of the image. You may have to zoom out (hold the space bar down until the cursor changes to the hand icon and click once to zoom out to see the entire image) to see the sampled area and move it around if required. You can use the ‘H’ keyboard shortcut to hide the edges of the area covered by the Spot Removal tool. This makes it much easier to see how effective the healing process was. The most useful thing about the new functionality of the Spot Removal tool is that it saves you having to go into Photoshop from Lightroom for minor retouching (although Photoshop is still better for complex cloning or healing tasks).

Above: Let’s look at a common example – removing power lines. It’s best to tackle subjects like this bit by bit, so start by clicking and dragging the mouse over the power line.

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Above: Lightroom selects another part of the image to sample. Be prepared to move the sample area around for the best effect.

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Above: For fine healing work, such as the spot where the power line meets the pole, it may be easier to zoom past the 100% mark, to 200% (shown here) or even higher. Adjust the brush size if needed and run the brush over the rest of the power line, taking care where it meets any other object, such as the pole.

Above: The final result – for this power line at least. With care, it’s possible to remove the others from the photo as well.

The lef t- hand panels The right-hand panels are the heart of the Develop module. This is where you carry out all your post-processing tasks, and for many photographers is the most important part of Lightroom. The left-hand panels are there to make your life easier. Most of them do something that can either save you time or help you get organised. The Navigator and Collections panels are also available in the Library Module, and were covered fully in my ebook Mastering Lightroom: Book One – The Library Module (click the link to learn more).

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The Navigator panel The Navigator panel displays a thumbnail of the most selected photo.

Click on any of these ratios to magnify the image. More are revealed when you click the double arrow icon.

Click on Fit to show the entire image, or on one of the zoom ratio settings to magnify the image. Alternatively, click on the thumbnail once to go to the last used zoom setting. The white rectangle indicates which part of the image you have magnified. Drag the square around to view different parts of the image.

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The Presets panel After you have processed a photo, you can save some or all of the settings used as a Develop Preset. Lightroom adds it to the Presets panel (your presets are saved under the heading User Presets) and you can then apply that Develop Preset to another photo, saving you the time it took to arrive at those settings.

The second category is what you could call genuinely useful presets. They are a bit better thought out, and designed to make post-processing an easier and quicker task. Usually they are created by a photographer that has put them to use over a long period of time and tweaked them until they work well.

Presets do more than save you time – they can also help you achieve a consistent look across your portfolio by developing an individual approach to post-processing and employing creative effects.

There are examples of both in a few pages.

However, you do need to use common sense with Develop Presets – just because they work with one photo doesn’t mean that they will work with others. If you are new to Presets this is something you will get the hang of as you go along. In addition to creating your own, Lightroom comes with some built-in presets, and you can download more from other websites. Some are free, and others (usually the more useful ones) you have to pay for. They tend to fall into one of two categories: The first are what you might call one-shot presets, which seem to work well on one or two images but not many others. A good example is Develop Presets intended to create a vintage or cross-processed look. They may work well on the photos that the photographer originally created them for, but not with your images. Having said that, you can always use them as a starting point and tweak the settings to see if you can improve the result.

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Left: Some of Lightroom’s built-in Develop presets.

The Presets panel contains all Develop Presets that you have created yourself (listed under User Presets) or downloaded from other sources. If you hover over any of the presets then the thumbnail in the Navigator panel shows you what your photo will look like with that preset applied. Click on the preset to apply it to your photo.

Develop Presets are listed here.

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The thumbnail in the Navigator panel changes as you move the cursor over the list of Develop Presets.

Tip: Another benefit of using Develop Presets is that they fit in neatly with your Lightroom workflow. There’s no need to export your images to Photoshop or other software, saving both time and hard drive space.

The Develop Preset is highlighted when you click on it to apply it to your photo.

The preview displayed in the Content Window is updated with the new settings.

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The right-hand panels are also updated to show the new settings.

Creating Develop Presets It’s easy to make your own Develop Presets: 1. Select a photo and make the required adjustments using the righthand panels of the Develop Module. 2. Go to Develop > New Preset. Alternatively, click the Create New Preset icon in the Presets panel (below).

3. Give the Preset a name and select the settings that you want to include in the Develop Preset in the New Develop Preset window. You don’t have to tick every box. If you did, the Develop Preset would probably only be useful for that specific photo. 4. By default the new Develop Preset appears in the User Presets folder. You can change that by selecting a different folder from the drop down menu. If you want to create a new folder for your preset, go to Develop > New Preset Folder before you create the preset. 4. Press the Create button when you are done.

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Installing Develop Presets Develop Presets downloaded from other sources are just as easy to install: 1. Open Preferences, go to the Presets tab and click on the Show Lightroom Presets Folder button. 2. Inside this folder is another called Lightroom Settings, and inside that is one called Develop Presets. Drag the Develop Presets to this folder. You will need to restart Lightroom before they appear in the Presets panel.

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Free Develop Presets If you haven’t used Develop Presets before then apart from the ones that come with Lightroom you likely don’t have many to play with. There are plenty of websites where you can download free Develop Presets. The problem is, as with anything free, sorting out the rubbish, especially as most of these fall into the first category of presets. Here are a couple of recommendations to get you started:

OnOne Software OnOne Software, who some of you will be familiar with thanks to their Perfect Photo Suite software, have created several sets of Lightroom Develop Presets that you can download from their website at the link below. There are a lot of good presets in these sets. One of my favourites are the Instantastic presets, part of the OnOne Signature Collection Presets Vol. 2 (Lightroom 5 only). They imitate the filters that come in the Instagram app., and are the easiest way that I know of to apply Instagram-like effects to your photos. www.ononesoftware.com/products/lightroom-presets/

Presets Heaven These vintage presets from Presets Heaven are a nice addition to your presets collection. They are especially effective with portraits. Search through the website to find more free presets. www.presetsheaven.com/featured/7-free-vintage-presets-for-lightroom-4/

Right: Photo processed with the Daisy preset from the OnOne Signature Collection Vol. 2.

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Other Develop presets If you don’t mind buying Develop presets then Craft & Vision sell a couple of sets that you will find genuinely useful. They were created by photographers David duChemin and Dave Delnea and are used by both photographers to process their own images. Each comes with a PDF booklet that explains how to install the presets and get the most out of them. You can learn more about both by following these links: www.craftandvision.com/collections/lightroom-photoshop/products/lrdevelop-presets-duchemin www.craftandvision.com/collections/lightroom-photoshop/products/lrdevelop-presets-delnea

Right: Photo processed with the New Direct Positive – Max Vignette preset from David duChemin.

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You can’t always tell much from the thumbnail in the Navigator panel as it’s so small. You’ll get a better view if you click on the Before/After View icon. Set the Zoom slider to Fit to show the entire image on the screen. When you click on a Develop Preset to apply it to your image you will see the original photo and the new version displayed side by side. If you don’t like the result, Undo it using the Cmd+Z (PC: Ctrl+Z) shortcut. This Develop Preset is called Brandenburg and is part of the OnOne Software Signature Collection Vol. 2.

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One of the interesting things about using Develop Presets from other sources is that you can look at how the settings have changed afterwards to see how the effect is achieved. It’s an easy way to learn new processing techniques, and gives great insight into both the processing techniques used by other photographers and the creative potential of Lightroom. Before In this example, using the Gritty Medium preset from OnOne Software, all the changes occurred in the Basic panel. The preset boosted contrast by moving the Contrast and Clarity sliders, then negated that effect somewhat in the mid-tones by moving the Highlights slider left and the Shadows slider right. It also reduced Vibrance and Saturation. The end result is gritty and dramatic, but not so harsh that it’s unsuitable for portraits (see close-up on next page).

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After

Tip: You can create several virtual copies (covered later in the ebook) of an image and use different Develop Presets to see how they come out. Doing so uses virtually no extra hard drive space as the changes are stored in the Lightroom Catalog in the form of text commands, and is an easy way to experiment with different processing styles.

For a close-up look at the effect the Develop Preset has had on your photo, click the Before/After View icon in the Toolbar (marked) and set the Zoom slider to 1:1. Take a look at important part of the photo, like the model’s face in this portrait, to make sure that the newly applied preset hasn’t created any undesirable effects. Some presets do go a little over the top with settings such as Clarity, so it’s wise to double check. You can make adjustments to the appropriate sliders if required. This is a close-up of the Gritty Medium preset shown on the previous page.

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Fading Develop presets If I have one quibble with downloading Develop Presets is that most of them are not subtle. What we really need is a way of fading the effect – a kind of opacity slider in Lightroom. Maybe it will come in a future version. But at the moment there isn’t, so we have to find a way around that. One method is to export two versions of your image, one with the preset applied and the other without. You place one on top of the other in Photoshop and use the Opacity slider to fade the effect. Easy enough – but it does take you out of Lightroom, something that’s good to avoid where possible as the exported files take up valuable hard drive space. Plus, you may want to do something else to the image afterwards back in Lightroom. As a smart Lightroom user you probably want to save time as well as hard drive space. That’s where a Lightroom plug-in called The Fader comes in. The Fader does exactly what its name suggests. Once installed, you can activate it, select the Develop Preset you want to apply from the drop down menu, and use an Opacity slider to fade the effect. This clever plug-in calculates the changes the Develop preset made to the image, and fades them all at the same time. It’s simple, and it works wonderfully well. It isn’t free, but it’s relatively inexpensive at $US10 (plus 24% VAT if you live in the European Union). You can download it, and test it out, with Lightroom’s built-in Develop presets at no cost. Paying the registration fee lets you use it with all your Develop presets. Learn more about The Fader here: www.capturemonkey.com/thefader

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Installing The Fader plug-in 1. Go to the Capture Monkey website and download The Fader plug-in. Select a folder to store it in (creating one called “Lightroom Plug-ins” in your Documents seems logical). Double-click the zipped folder to extract the files. 2. Open Lightroom and go to the Plug-In Manager (File > Plug-in Manager). Click the Add button in the bottom left-hand corner (marked above) and navigate to the folder where you saved The Fader plug-in. Open the folder and double-click on the file called TheFader.lrplugin to complete the installation.

Using The Fader 1. Open the photo you want to process in the Develop module. If you are using Develop Presets like the ones in OnOne Software’s Signature Collection, then you should process your file first in Lightroom and then apply the Develop Preset afterwards. Don’t expect the preset to do all the developing for you, it doesn’t work that way.

Select the Develop Preset you want to use here.

2. Go to File > Plug-in Extras > The Fader and select the Develop Preset you want to apply. 3. Use the Opacity slider to reduce the intensity of the Develop Preset: 4. Fine-tune the fade by selecting which parameters to apply to your photo. For example, if the Develop Preset you selected applies a Tone Curve to the photo, you can disable that part of the preset by unticking the Tone Curve box. Then you can use the Opacity slider to fade out the rest of the Develop Preset.

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Use the Opacity slider to fade the Develop Preset. Values range from -50 to 150. Values above 100 increase the intensity of the Develop Preset effect. The effect of minus values varies according to the Develop Preset used, but it is highly unlikely you will ever use them.

Press OK when you’re done to apply the fade and return to the Develop module.

Grandma’s Lemonade preset faded to 50%

For this example I used the Grandma’s Lemonade preset from OnOne Software to finish processing this portrait. I felt the full effect was a little too strong, so I faded it to 50% using The Fader plug-in.

Original

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Grandma’s Lemonade preset

The Snapshots and History panels There may be times when you are processing images when you wish you could go back to a point part-way through and begin again. You could use the Undo shortcut and work your way backwards, but that’s a little tiresome. Luckily, the Snapshots and History panels make it easy.

The Snapshots panel The Snapshots panel lets you take a snapshot of the photo you are working on. Lightroom keeps a record of all the develop settings at that point and adds the Snapshot to the panel. You can add as many Snapshots as you like, and return to any one of them whenever you wish. Snapshots come in handy when you are experimenting with new processing techniques as they give you an easy way to return to an earlier stage.

The History panel Lightroom keeps a record of every action you have taken to a photo and stores it in the History panel. Not only is this useful if you forget which changes you have made to an image, but you can revert back to a previous stage in the development of an image at any time. The only caveat is that as the History panel records every change, however minor, it may be difficult to find the correct step to return to.

Above: The History panel stores every step in the development of a photo, starting with the initial import.

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Go to the History panel at any time to view every action you have carried out on a photo. The history, unless you delete it, is saved in the Lightroom Catalog and is retained as long as the photo remains in your Catalog. This is useful as you can go back and look at any of your photos and open the History panel to see exactly what you did to it and in what order. Double-click on any of the entries to return to the image at that stage in its development. All history steps are retained. If you want to return to the most recent state of the photo click on the topmost entry in the History panel.

The history of the photo is listed here. Click on any of these entries to return to that point in the photo’s development history.

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Above: Snapshots are very useful when you get to a stage in the development of an image when you’re happy with what you’ve achieved so far, but you’d like to try something adventurous and are not sure if it will work. To make a Snapshot, click on the Create Snapshot icon (circled above) and give it a name in the New Snapshot window (below).

Above: If you realise you have made a mistake, all you have to do is doubleclick on the Snapshot you created earlier (marked) to return to it.

Tip: You can right-click on any of the entries in the History panel to turn it into a Snapshot. Click on Create Snapshot option in the menu to do so.

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The Before/After View Let’s delve a little deeper into the Before / After view as there are a couple of interesting ways to use it in the Snapshots and History panels. If you click the white arrow to the right of the Before / After View icon, you will see a menu giving you four display options. You can switch between them, and use the Zoom slider to vary the magnification, depending on the best comparison method that suits you. Note: If you don’t see the icons then press ‘T’ on the keyboard to reveal the Toolbar.

This button copies the After settings to the Before window. It’s a little like making a Snapshot, except that it isn’t added to the Snapshots panel.

Use the Zoom slider to magnify both images. The Before / After View icon. This button copies the Before settings to the image. In other words, use it to revert back to the original image. You probably won’t need to use this much.

Click the white arrow to reveal the four Before / After display options (see right). They are illustrated on the next page.

You can copy any Snapshot or any History setting to the Before settings by right-clicking on the entry and choosing either Copy Snapshot Settings to Before or Copy History Step Settings to Before. This lets you compare the After view with the image at any stage during its development. Alternatively, just click and drag the setting into the Before image.

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This button swaps the Before and After settings. Use it if you want to revert back to the version of the photo in the Before window.

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Before/After Left/Right

Before/After Left/Right Split

Before/After Top/Bottom

Before/After Top/Bottom Split

More from the De velop module Now that you have learnt to process your photos in the Develop module, it’s time to learn how to use some of Lightroom’s additional features to help make the task of developing photos, and particularly groups of similar photos, easier. Not least amongst these is the job of exporting photo files in the form of JPEG or TIFF files. Unless you intend to go into one of Lightroom’s other modules (such as the Print or Book modules) then this, for many photographers, is the final part of the developing process.

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Using Virtual Copies in Lightroom Imagine that you have just processed a colour image and that you are happy with the result. But you’d also like to experiment with it a little. Perhaps you’re curious to see how it will look if you convert it to black and white. Maybe you’d like to use a Develop Preset, like those provided by OnOne Software, or crop to the square format. Or even all three. In Photoshop, you would have to make a copy of the file for every variation you want to try. If you are working with 16 bit TIFF files, the extra copies take up a lot of hard drive space. By contrast, with Lightroom you make a Virtual Copy by using the Cmd+’ (PC: Ctrl + ’) keyboard shortcut. Lightroom creates a copy of the image which is identical in every way to the original and places it in the same Folder or Collection. You can create as many Virtual Copies as you need, and process each one any way you like without affecting the original photo. They take up hardly any space on your hard drive, as each one is saved as a series of text commands stored in the Lightroom Catalog.

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1. Select the image you want to work with and use the Cmd+’ (PC: Ctrl + ‘) keyboard shortcut. Alternatively, right-click on the image and select Create Virtual Copy or go to Photo > Create Virtual Copy.

2. The Virtual Copy appears alongside the original in Grid View. It is identical in every way.

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3. You can make as many changes to the Virtual Copy as you like without affecting the original. In this example, I cropped to the square format and used the XPro Develop Preset from OnOne Software to create an Instagram-like effect.

Useful Develop module shortcuts There are two useful buttons in the Develop module which may save you time:

The Previous button The Previous button applies the settings from the previously selected photo to the current one. It’s a quick way of copying all the Develop settings from one to another. Here’s how it works: 1. Open a photo in the Develop module and process it. 2. Go to another photo in the same Collection (or Folder) and open it in the Develop module (you can get to the second photo by pressing ‘G’ to return to Grid View or selecting it from the Filmstrip). 3. Press the Previous button. All the Develop settings are copied from the first image to the second. Note: The Previous button is only useful when the images are similar to each other, or close enough that the copied settings make a useful starting point for processing the second image.

The Reset button The Reset button puts all the settings back to their default. It comes in useful if you make such a mess of a photo that it is easier to start over rather than continue.

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Copy Settings The Previous button copies every setting. It’s a useful shortcut, but there are times when it is better to copy just some of the settings, not all of them. This is how you do it: 1. Right-click on a photo and go to Settings > Copy Settings. Choose which develop settings to copy in the Copy Settings window (right). Click the Copy button to complete the process. 2. Select another image, rightclick and go to Settings > Paste Settings. Lightroom applies the Develop settings you selected previously.

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Syncing settings Use the Sync button when you want to copy Develop settings to more than one image: 1. Select an image and process it as normal. This is the most selected image. 2. Select the other images you’d like to apply those settings to. Hold the Command key (PC: Control key) down so that they are added to the selection. Do this in either Grid View or the Filmstrip. 3. Press the Sync button. Select the settings you want to synchronise in the Synchronize Settings window, then click the Synchronize button. Lightroom copies the selected settings from the most selected image to the rest. Note: You can pick as many or as few Develop settings as you like. For example, you could synchronize white balance across a selection of images taken at the same time of the day, so that you don’t have to adjust them individually.

Auto Sync The Auto Sync button works the same way, except that it copies the settings from the most selected image as you make them (click the toggle next to the Sync button to reveal it). In effect, with Auto Sync you are processing two or more photos at the same time. The Sync button is located at the bottom of the right-hand panels. It replaces the Previous button when you select multiple images.

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Click the toggle at the side of the Sync button to switch between Sync and Auto Sync.

Processing Photo Files The emphasis of this ebook has been on editing Raw files, because that is what most photographers use Lightroom for. But you may not be aware that you can also use Lightroom to process JPEG and TIFF files. It works the same way – the photos are imported into your Catalog and any changes you made stored in the Catalog in text form. You can make Virtual Copies and export the images when you are finished. This may seem counter-intuitive at first. After all, Lightroom is designed for processing Raw files. But it works surprisingly well for photo files, although there are limitations. You can’t adjust the Profile setting in the Camera Calibration panel. Some of the sliders have different values. White balance, for example, runs on a numeric scale of -100 to +100. A setting of zero makes no changes to the colour balance, a minus setting applies a blue colour cast, and a positive value an orange one. But you can apply all Lens Corrections, including chromatic aberration removal, something you may find useful if you have photos that only exist in JPEG or TIFF form, such as those created from scanned negatives or slides.

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Exporting photos Exporting is one of the final steps in the development process. If you want to view your processed photos in software other than Lightroom, or send them to someone else (perhaps a magazine, stock library or a client), then you need to convert them to a format that other people and programs can use. The two most common formats are JPEG and TIFF. The JPEG format is a compressed file suitable for sending images to another person, or for uploading photos to a website (such as Flickr, 500px or Facebook). TIFF files are much larger, but let you save 16 bit files which are best for editing in software like Photoshop. Start by selecting the photo or photos to be exported. It is easiest to do this in Grid View. Then go to File > Export to start the export process.

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Above: This is the file export window. We’ll take a closer look at the options over the next few pages.

You can choose from one of these export presets. You can also create your own, saved under the heading User Presets.

Select Hard Drive from this menu to save your files to a location on your hard drive.

Export Location: Tells Lightroom where to save the exported files. Select Ask what to do or Choose a new name for the exported file from the Existing Files menu to avoid accidentally overwriting existing files.

File Naming: Opt to keep the original file name or create new ones. What you choose to do here depends partially on whether you created new file names at import, or kept the original names created by your camera. The most obvious use here is creating a naming format for images to be sent to clients.

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File Settings: Select the format, quality and colour space of exported files. There are five Image Format options to choose from. The settings change with each one:

JPEG: For creating small files for sending to other people or uploading to websites. Suggested settings:

PSD: Photoshop files. For maximum quality set Color Space to ProPhoto RGB and Bit Depth to 16 bits/component.

For web use: Set Quality to between 60 and 80 and Color Space to sRGB. You may also wish to tick the Limit File Size box to ensure that files are below a certain size. If you are exporting photos to use on a web page, restricting file sizes to less than 150kb will help the page load faster in a browser. You also need to set the pixel size of the exported files under the Image Sizing heading. For full size images: Set Quality to 100 and Color Space to sRGB.

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TIFF: Photoshop files. For maximum quality set Compression to None, Color Space to ProPhoto RGB and Bit Depth to 16 bits/component.

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DNG: Use this setting to convert native Raw files to the DNG format. Tick the Embed Fast Load Data box to create DNG files that load faster in Lightroom.

Image Sizing: Lets you alter the size of the image and set the resolution. Use this to upscale the photo for printing, or to create a smaller file for uploading to a website.

Original: Retains the original photo file format. If the original is a Raw file, Lightroom exports the unmodified original, with a sidecar .XMP file containing the changes made in Lightroom.

Output Sharpening: Lets you add sharpening for display (Screen) or printing (Matte Paper and Glossy Paper). Select from three levels: Low, Standard and High.

Export Presets: If you find yourself using the same export settings a lot, you can save them as a User Preset. Click the Add button in the bottom left corner to do so.

Metadata: Choose whether to include all metadata in the exported image or just some of it.

Watermark: Tick the Watermark box to add a watermark to your images. Select Edit Watermarks from the menu to create your own watermark.

Post-Processing: Tell Lightroom what to do after exporting the images.

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Conclusion

This is one of my longest ebooks, and has been an educational experience for me as I wrote it. I hope it has been at least as helpful to you in your quest to learn to use Lightroom. There is a lot you can do with Lightroom that I haven’t covered here. One of those is convert images to black and white, the subject of the next ebook in this series. But at least now you have enough information to set you on the right track, and start learning how to use this amazing program. It really does give us photographers all the tools we need to organise and process our Raw files in the shortest amount of time possible. Heres to more photos, and better ones. Happy shooting. Andrew S Gibson

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Photography ebooks

Mastering LIGHTROOM Andrew S Gibson

The rest of my photography ebooks are listed on the next few pages. Click the links or the ebook covers to learn more.

About the author My interest in photography began when my parents bought me a Ricoh KR-10m camera over 20 years ago. Since then I’ve taken photos in over 60 countries, studied for a degree in photography and worked as Technical Editor for EOS magazine. Now I’m a freelance writer and I make a living writing about photography. Mastering Photography Your digital camera has so many controls and buttons. How do you know which ones to use? You don’t have to – you just need an understanding of the fundamentals, and an eye for a good picture. Mastering Photography is the simple guide you’ve been looking for that teaches you how to use your digital camera.

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Square In Square, I delve deep into the mysteries of the square format. Digital cameras have opened up the square format to everybody. But using the square format isn’t simply a matter of cropping. It demands a new approach to composition and relies on aspects like shape, simplicity and balance. This ebook explores these concepts in detail.

Mastering Lightroom: Book One – The Lightroom Module This ebook shows you how to use the Library Module to import, organise and search your images. This important task lays the foundation for the work you do in Lightroom and ultimately saves you time that you can spend either in the Develop module or with your camera.

AndrewSGibson.com Design & layout: Andrew S Gibson Copyright © 2014 Andrew S Gibson Notice of rights All rights reserved. No part of this ebook may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means without the permission of the author.

Understanding EOS Are you new to photography? Are you wondering what all the buttons and dials on your camera are for? Do you want to know how to use the potential of your EOS camera to take creative photos? Understanding EOS teaches you how to use your EOS camera to take beautiful photos by exploring the settings that you need to know how to use to get started. You’ll learn about exposure modes, Picture Style and white balance, plus the importance of composition, lighting and postprocessing.

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Understanding Lenses: Part II This ebook is the follow up to Understanding Lenses: Part I and explores Canon’s range of normal, short telephoto and super telephoto lenses. The first section looks at the artistic side of using normal and telephoto lenses. It’s a guide to using them to help you create beautiful portraits, landscape, travel and close-up images. The second part is a buying guide. It gives you an overview of Canon’s current lens range, and explains the differences between the various models, so you can choose wisely.

Understanding Lenses: Part I Buying a new lens can be one of the most difficult choices you make as a photographer. How do you know which lenses are a good buy if you can’t try them out beforehand? Why do some Canon lenses cost so much and others so little? Should you buy a zoom lens or a prime? Is that superzoom a good a deal as it seems? Photography is a creative endeavour, and lenses are the ‘eyes’ of your camera system. Once you understand how lenses ‘see’ you can harness their creative potential to create eye-catching images.

Understanding Exposure Understanding Exposure explains the principles of exposure so that you understand why your camera doesn’t always get the exposure correct. Once you understand these you will know why your camera gets exposure wrong, and what to do to put it right. This ebook explores advanced concepts in simple terms and gives you the tools you need to get the perfect exposure every time. You’ll be walked through both basic and advanced principles of exposure and shown how to arrive at the optimum settings every time.

Understanding DPP Understanding DPP is written for anybody who uses a Canon EOS camera and wants to learn how to get the best out of their Raw files with DPP (the free but powerful Raw processing software that comes with the camera). It will appeal to photographers who would like to use Raw, but are put off by the complexity or expense of more advanced software. It’s written for photographers who want to use the functions within DPP to make creative images, and explains why as well as how to use DPP’s functions.

These ebooks are published by Craft & Vision. Click on the graphics or the links to go straight to their website.

The Natural Portrait The Natural Portrait teaches you how to take beautiful portraits in natural light. It’s all about taking the simple approach to portrait photography. Avoid tying yourself down with complicated lighting setups and get back to basics with a camera and good portrait lens. This frees you to communicate with your model and build rapport, the most essential skill any portrait photographer could have.

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Slow Slow takes you through the creative possibilities of using slow shutter speeds, from blurring motion with a shutter speed of 1/30 second to long exposure techniques using shutter speeds of five minutes or longer. It explores the creative side of the slow end of your shutter speed dial including slow-sync flash, panning, intentional camera movement and long exposure photography.

Up Close A guidebook for photographers who want to create fresh and stunning close-up photographs. Enthusiasts of every level will thoroughly enjoy the discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of working with the best tools. I cover crop factor and magnification, focusing techniques, depth-offield, lighting, single/doubleelement lenses, reverse lens macro, extension tubes and more.

Beyond Thirds This captivating and inspiring ebook is about taking composition past the socalled rules. It’s a thoughtful but practical look at the way we build our photographs. It explores important subjects like the creative use of balance and focal points, insights into how to shape a subject, and using aspect ratio to establish an ideal foundation for making photographs, and so much more.

The Evocative Image How do you create images that capture the atmosphere or show the beauty of something that you perceived at a particular time and place? This ebook explores three key concepts that will help you create evocative images – light, colour and composition. Another concept that I tackle is that evocative photos are created on the edges – for example, twilight is the edge between night and day.

The Magic of Black & White: Part I – Vision is written for anyone who would like to learn to work in monochrome. The first step is learning to see in black and white. The ebook is split into three sections: composition, lighting and subject. You’ll learn how to compose a black and white photo, how to work in different types of light and about subjects that work well in black and white. This ebook will give you an understanding of what black and white photography is all about, and why it’s such a beautiful medium for creative self-expression.

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The Magic of Black & White: Part II – Craft I explain how I process my digital black & white photos step-by-step using Photoshop CS and Photoshop Elements. I guide you through the transformation process that starts with a colour photo and ends with a beautiful, toned monochrome image. Craft and vision go together – black and white photography becomes truly magical when the two meet, and you have the technical skills to bring your creative vision alive.

The Magic of Black & White: Part III – Nine Photos I take you through nine black and white images with the intention of explaining the more advanced Photoshop techniques behind them. To be anything more than a technical exercise Photoshop technique needs to be aligned with creative vision. The thoughts and emotions that drive our vision are just as important as the Photoshop techniques required to achieve them. This ebook helps you think about how you see the world and how you can express your vision.

Andes High in the Andes are wonders such as the world’s highest city, deserts above the clouds and remote villages where the local people hold traditional celebrations whose origins stretch back to the years before the Spanish conquest. This ebook has over forty black and white photos created during my travels to the Andes over a six year period. Part monograph, part travelogue, it tells of my journeys to the Andes and my parallel journey through photography as I made the transition from film to digital.