Tutorials

September 1, 2021

Are You an Imposter?

by Mickey Rountree

You’ve had a good couple of years of photography, made some really nice images, won some awards, and gained some new skills. And then one day you look at your images and ask yourself “How can you pretend to be a photographer? You’re not good enough to call yourself a photographer, you just don’t have the skills.” Or you’re on stage playing in a band, when it hits you that you don’t belong up there. You don’t play well enough, and everyone in the band and the audience knows it.

You’ve just experienced the “Imposter Syndrome” and most people will experience at least brief imposter feelings at some point in their lives.

First, let me say that I’m not a psychiatrist, or psychologist and I couldn’t even play one on TV. I barely passed Psych 101 with a “C”, though I did make an “A” in Abnormal Psych (I guess I could relate). I just want you to know that if you’ve had these doubts and fears you aren’t alone.

Imposter syndrome was first described in the 1970’s and is the feeling that you are not as competent as you should be, or as others see you. Any minute now people will see you for the fraud you are. This is in contrast to all objective evidence of your skills, talents and accomplishments. Common characteristics are: self-doubt, inability to accept your own skills and achievements, underrating yourself, fearing that you don’t meet the expectations of others, being driven to overachieve, setting impossible goals, and then feeling bad when you don’t reach them.

Often imposter syndrome happens to very high achievers, such as executives, doctors and other healthcare workers (the context in which I first heard the term), and creatives such as actors, musicians, and, yes, even photographers. Most of my friends are photographers and/or musicians and almost everybody I know has had these self-doubts at least briefly, so in my limited experience, creatives seem particularly vulnerable. In fact, my examples above are due to the fact that there is a huge correlation between photography and music. I think creatives may be even more at risk because it is difficult to evaluate the arts like photography, music, painting, etc. objectively. That also makes it easier to subjectively devalue your own skills and accomplishments.

For most people these symptoms are temporary, but if they persist or feel like they are controlling your life, you may need to see a professional. If you just get those occasional doubts, here are several things that may help.

Talk to other people in your field. You may be surprised to find out that you are not alone in these feelings. Just recognizing that others have the same self-doubts may help reassure you that that you aren’t as bad off as you think.
Learn to evaluate yourself objectively without self-criticism.
Have someone whose opinion you trust and value, critique your work, and help you see your strengths.
If someone critiques your work and points out a flaw, or suggests an improvement, it doesn’t mean that you are terrible or worthless. Do consider the merits of what they tell you.
Accept that there is always someone better. Stop comparing yourself against the best of the best. Don’t forget that even they sometimes have these thoughts too.
Don’t expect to reach perfection, and certainly don’t expect instant success. Appreciate that steady small improvements are a much more practical and achievable goal. And give yourself credit for the improvements you do make.
Let these feelings inspire you to work to improve, but don’t let them drive you to an incessant quest for perfection that burns you out and only adds to your feelings of frustration, exhaustion, and unworthiness.
Don’t let these feelings keep you from working. Start a new project or shake up something in your work to get you moving and keep you motivated.
If you see someone else struggling with self-doubt, try to do something to help them. You will probably find that it helps you as much as it helps them.
If these feelings are persistent, debilitating, or dominate your life and keep you from functioning get help from a professional.

August 1, 2021

Go Steal an Idea Today

by Mickey Rountree

The other day a picture on 500PX caught my eye and I liked the effect the photographer used. Since it’s not my image, I won’t put it here, but rather I’ll give you the link below.

https://500px.com/photo/1028087066/%E6%97%B6%E5%B0%9A%E4%B8%BD%E5%BD%B1%E2%80%943-by-%E5%AD%99%E5%A4%A7%E5%9C%A3-null

I liked it so much, I decided to steal the idea, figure out how to reproduce the effect, but still make it my own. When you see an image you like, figure out what it is that caught your attention. It might be lens selection, viewpoint, lighting, color or post processing. Whatever it is try to duplicate it. By that I don’t mean copy it exactly. Besides being virtually impossible, that’s also unethical, especially if you try to pass it off as you own. But using another photographer’s image as a starting point isn’t really stealing, it’s just being inspired. Many times when you see an effect you like, you may be able to search for it on Google and find instructions or even videos. The hardest part may be how to describe it in Google to get relevant results.

What caught my eye in the image I liked was the faded looking background that was large with a normal looking smaller image in front. It’s almost like the subject is casting a large colored shadow. You’ve probably seen similar effects in product shots, but you don’t often see it with people shots. So that was the key concept I “stole” for my attempts. This one was easy enough to figure out on my own, and I’ll give you the basic steps below.

I started by looking for some high key portraits. I didn’t visualize this working with low key subjects, but as you’ll see below, it really can work.

Step 1 Open the image and select the subject.

I won’t go into a lot of detail on making a selection, since there are lots of good tutorials out there. I selected the quick selection tool, and then clicked on “select subject”.

Step 2 Refine the selection

“Select subject” did a pretty good rough selection, but you’ll see it missed a lot of the loose hair. I clicked on “select and mask”, “refine hair”, and most importantly checked the box to “decontaminate color”. I selected on “output to new layer” and clicked OK. I had a pretty good selection faster than you read these directions. Just a couple of years ago this would have taken me 20 or 30 minutes.

Step 3 Duplicate this layer

Simply duplicating this layer with Ctrl-J makes the wispy hairs become thicker. Then merge this layer with Ctrl-E.

Step 4 (Optional) Convert the subject layer to a smart object.

Do this either from the layer menu or right clicking on the layer and choosing create smart object. The advantage of creating a smart object is that in a later step when we resize the subject, if we reduce it and save it and then change our mind and enlarge it, it will lose detail with each resizing. This doesn’t happen if the subject layer is a smart object. If you’re decisive and always get it just right on the first try you can skip this step.

Step 5 Unlock the background layer.

You can’t change the opacity of the background layer because it is locked. To unlock it, just click on the lock icon.

Step 6 Decrease the opacity of the background Layer.

This is personal taste, but I find something between 40 and 55% usually works. You’ll see the gray and white checkerboard pattern that represents transparency.

Step 7 Resize and reposition your subject

Select the subject layer and Ctrl-T to open free transform. Scale your subject down to the size you want and hit “enter” to complete the change. Use the move tool to reposition it. If you decide you need to resize it again, you’ll be glad you created a smart object.

Step 8 Flatten the image.

Go to layers/flatten image. By the way, you won’t really see the full effect until you’ve flattened the image. I’ve done it enough to visualize the results, but you may find it helpful to create a new blank layer, move it to the bottom and fill it with white. Then the effect will look more like the final image, even before you flatten it.

Here is my final image and a couple of other attempts.

At first I started out by using the same subject both large and small. But it works just as well with two (or even more) different images.

When I first starting working with this technique I visualized images with white or light gray backgrounds. But just to see what would happen, I tried it with a black background and it worked well. So far I’ve done this technique mainly with portraits, but it would work with products, cityscapes and maybe even landscapes with some imagination.

July 1, 2021

Creating a Light Painting Effect at Mid Day

by Mickey Rountree

This article might be a bit beyond basic, but only because it involves Photoshop and the use of layers and layer masks. Even if you have never used layers, you should be able to follow along and make this work for you.

I’m a fan of light painting, and the photographers who do it well. However, I find that I don’t have the patience or opportunities to learn and do it well. Traditionally, light painting is difficult, requiring light painting with flashlights during a single long exposure, or using speedlites or flashlights to light small segments of an object in multiple shots and then combining and blending them in Photoshop. The single shot is particularly difficult as the exposure on different parts of the subject requires counting the different exposures and rushing to get it done in one 30 second exposure. If even a part of the image is not properly exposed, you have to repeat the whole procedure, hoping you fix the bad part, and don’t produce any new errors. And then there is the issue of obtaining access to places and subjects at night which may not be convenient or possible.

So I have tried to come up with a way to produce a light painting effect in Photoshop that doesn’t require working in the dark, long exposures or merging and blending dozens of layers. This works on subjects that you wouldn’t be able to access at night, moving subjects like people, and you can work on your existing images.

Start with an image (of course I usually use an HDR image) and edit it as you normally would. I usually do my basic editing in Lightroom and then move the image over to Photoshop. After whatever edits you do in Photoshop, flatten the image. Here is my starting image.

Use the shortcut ctrl-J (cmd-J on Mac) to copy the base layer and add a layer mask.

Next, use the camera raw filter (filter/camera raw or the shortcut ctrl/shift-A) to drastically drop the exposure of this layer, until it looks like night or is very dark. It doesn’t have to be solid black, but it should look like at least very late twilight. I find I usually decrease the exposure somewhere between -3 and -4.5. I usually also decrease highlights, and if there is a bright sky I may also use a graduated filter. Underexposure exposure increases saturation, so you may also need to decrease it.

Select the layer mask by clicking on it, and use a soft, black brush at a low opacity like 10 or 15% to paint on the mask to begin lighting the subject. Vary the brush size depending on the size of what you need to paint. It’s better to use multiple painting strokes to build up the lighting rather than trying to add a lot of light quickly with high opacity brushes. Using low opacity also makes it easier to vary the exposure in different parts of the image. As you paint on the mask, you’ll see the objects you paint over begin to lighten. The more opacity you build on the mask, the lighter they become. Don’t overdo this. The goal is to have a picture that looks like a night scene with some light added selectively.

Below I’ve painted over the barn, lightly over the grass, and made some dabs on the surrounding trees. You can see the effect and the corresponding mask. Try not to light the sky, since that wouldn’t happen in real life night painting unless you have an aircraft search light. If you make a mistake, switch to white, paint over your mistake, then switch back to black, check your opacity, and continue.

After my light painting I decided on a couple of finishing touches. First I cropped some of the sky off since while it was dramatic in the daytime shot, it was just black dead space in the night shot. You might also notice the rule of thirds coming into play.

Next I added a photo filter adjustment layer. I chose an 85 orange at about 25% to warm things up a bit as an old tungsten flashlight would. Or you might even prefer a blue filter; it’s all personal taste.

And here is the final image below. I would suggest that you don’t flatten your image and that you save it in Photoshop format (.PSD). That way if you decide later to change the image you won’t have to start over from scratch.

I’ve found that this technique works well on landscapes, Old Car City Cars, still lifes, flowers, low key portraits, and almost anything else you can think of. You can see some of my other examples at:

https://mickeyrountree.smugmug.com/Blogs/n-RZ7dzb/2021/Light-Painting/

June 1, 2021

Focus on the Eyes

by Mickey Rountree

Focus, Daniel-san. Look eye! Always look eye. Who knew that in The Karate Kid, Mr. Miyagi was actually giving portrait photography advice?

In a portrait, probably the most important element is the eyes. The eyes are the “window of the soul” and it’s how we make a connection to the subject. If the eyes aren’t in focus, that connection is weakened, and most likely the image will be a failure. And this also applies when photographing animals and wildlife where the eyes are visible.

When shooting full length or ¾ length portraits, if the subject is in focus, most likely the eyes are in focus, especially at smaller apertures. But, as we come in tighter and tighter on the face, focus on the eyes becomes more and more critical. If you’re shooting at a wide aperture like f/1.8 to f/2.8 depth of field becomes very shallow, requiring very careful focus on the eyes. Many of the newer mirrorless cameras have not only face detection, but eye detection as well. If depth of field is so shallow that only one eye can be in focus, it should be the eye nearest the camera. Some of the cameras with eye detection follow the closest eye rule, and others not so much. With shallow depth of field, the difference in focus on the eyes is minimized when the subject faces the camera squarely, and it’s accentuated as the subject turns away.

As you shoot, review your images, zoom in and make sure the eyes are truly sharp. In tight and wide open, realize that not every shot will be razor sharp. Just the slight movement of the photographer or subject breathing can change the focus. Using a tripod can help by at least eliminating movement of the photographer. Also, as you review and edit on the computer, zoom in on the eyes to be sure they are really in sharp focus.

In the examples below I was testing a new camera and lens setup along with a fluorescent ringlight (notice the circular catchlights). Exposure was f/2.0 at 1/200 sec and ISO 200. This close at f/2.0 gave me a depth of field that was just fractions of an inch.

The examples below depend on very fine detail, which is sometimes lost by the time the newsletter is converted to a PDF and the resolution is reduced to create a manageable file size. If you want to see the images at higher resolution, go to my website. You’ll also find all of my past articles here.

May 1, 2021

Photographing High Key Flowers in the Studio

by Mickey Rountree

Here are two quick high key setups for photographing translucent flowers in the studio. I used irises from my yard, but any delicate, translucent flower would work. First, a quick definition of “high key” is an image that is almost entirely very bright with very little or no dark shadows present. Each of these setups took less than five minutes to create, yet they give a very unique look. I’ve said it before, but I am not really a flower photographer, so if I can do this anyone can.

My first setup had the flower positioned in front of a softbox. This was both the background, and a strong backlight which showed off the delicate transparency of the flower. To add some light to the front of the flower I brought in a silver reflector close to the flower and as close as possible to my camera. I used a Canon 5D Mark IV and a 100mm macro lens and shot at f/16 for depth of field. I misted the flower with a small spray bottle for extra texture and interest.

If you don’t have a softbox, you could hang a white shower curtain liner and light it with a speedlite or even place it over a window. You could use a white card as a reflector, or cover it with crumpled tin foil for a brighter fill. If you use the window, be sure to use a tripod since your shutter speed will be much longer than the duration of the flash that I used.

And below are the results I achieved with this simple setup.

April 1, 2021

Four Image Edits Part 4

by Mickey Rountree

This is the fourth of my series where 4 photographers submit an image and it is edited by all four. My fellow photographers for this project are Bob Copeland, Bill Mueller, and Richard Smith.

For this fourth image by Bob Copeland, we could edit in Lightroom, Photoshop or both.

Bob’s RAW image was a Canon RAW file with no editing applied.

Original Image

My Edit

Global Adjustments

I brought Bob’s image into Lightroom with no editing or sharpening applied. It defaulted to Adobe color profile. A quick look at the histogram shows there is no highlight or shadow clipping and the histogram almost touches the right hand side, so the in camera exposure was perfect.

I started by doing all of my basic adjustments in Lightroom before moving the image into Photoshop.

1) Since Bob was using my Canon 5D Mark III, I changed the color profile to my color profile for that camera.

2) I turned on lens profile and chromatic aberration corrections.

3) I left the color balance as shot.

4) In the tone panel my settings were:
Exposure 0
Contrast +29
Highlights -66
Shadows +43
Whites +36
Blacks -20
Texture 70
Clarity +35
Dehaze 8
Vibrance +20
Saturation 0
5) I sharpened with settings of amount 40, radius .8, and detail 35.

Local Adjustments

Still in Lightroom I added a graduated filter to the sky with -0.8 exposure and -24 color (toward blue)to add detail and color. I masked it from the buildings using the color range mask.

Photoshop Editing

First I used content aware fill to remove the tourist sitting on the steps, and did a bit of cleaning up with the clone tool. I removed the three people in the alley with the clone stamp tool.

I sharpened the image using high pass sharpening, one of my favorite sharpening methods for landscapes and HDR. High pass settings were 2 pixels and softlight blend mode.

I used NIK Color EFEX tonal contrast filter. Normally I mask out the sky with this, but on this image I didn’t.

I used the camera raw filter and an adjustment brush to darken down the lower corners.

I tried turning this into a black and white image using NIK Silver EFEX. It was OK, but I preferred the color. I then used Topaz Impression 2 and after trying several presets, I chose the Cezanne painting effect. This is ironic since Cezanne was from this region of France.

My Final Edit

Bill Mueller’s edit in his words

Global Adjustments
I started this document in Lightroom with the initial adjustments of Transform to straighten the image and Lens Corrections to remove Chromatic Aberration and Enable Profile Corrections. Next, I adjusted the White point by +10 and the Black Point by +7. I increased contrast to +98 and dropped Highlights to -100 and increased the shadows to +100. I added 48 points of Texture to enhance the surface of the buildings and added 43 points of Clarity. Then I sent the image over to Photoshop.

Local Adjustments
In Photoshop, I thought I’d add a little element of interest by adding the Hooters sign to the side of the building. Once I got it positioned and sized, I needed to blend the lighting and color to more closely match the tone of the main image. I converted the image to B&W since I find it easier to match the tone that way. I used a Levels adjustment on the Hooters image to more closely match the tone of the building. I’m sure you all know that the Hooters sign is bright Orange, so I wanted to bring it down a little bit to better blend in with the main image. I did that with the Photoshops Color Match adjustment.

I wanted to bring out the blue in the sky more, so I set up a Hue/Saturation layer and used a Color Range selection to create a mask of the Sky. Then increased the saturation. I wanted to brighten up the white flowers and the lighter parts of the variegated leaves on the tree. I used a luminosity mask to only show the brightest parts of the image, painted out the parts of the mask I didn’t want to use, like the sky, and used a curves adjustment to brighten the targeted areas. I added a little bit of sharpening to the image and sent it back to Lightroom.

Final Adjustments

Once I got it back into Lightroom, I added about 25 points of Clarity to finish it off.

Bill’s Final edit

Richard Smith’s Edit in his words
My Confession
The following narrative of how I edited this image is not entirely truthful. My workflow does not proceed in a logical, linear fashion from A —> B —> C—> D—> E . The reality is more like A —> B —> C —> A —> D —> B —> C—> E—> B—> A —> OCD, OCD, OCD …… So what follows is a somewhat more coherent summary of an often random, disorganized and mildly schizophrenic workflow process. Some of you may be disappointed to hear this. Others are saying “I knew it, I knew it, I knew it !”

Although I give the value for each slider adjustment, the direction of the adjustment (+/-) is usually more important. If I re-work an image, the numerical values of the adjustments change more often the direction of the adjustment.

Global Adjustments
First things First
Lens Correction Panel – Check boxes for “Remove Chromatic Aberration” and “Enable Profile Corrections.”

Transform Panel – Click on “Auto” to level and straighten image.

Crop Tool
I cropped in from the left to the top of the roof line. Nothing of interest was lost and the downward slop of the roof now leads the viewer into the most important area of the image: the courtyard and the facades of the buildings at right angles to each.

Basic Panel
Highlights (-100), Shadows (+100), Whites (+12), Blacks (-11), Texture (+9), Clarity (+12)

Tone Curve
All RAW images will need more contrast. The questions are which tool to use to add the contrast, where to add it, and how much to add. Using the Contrast Slider in the Basic Panel will provide a uniform level of contrast to the entire image, which will also darken the image to some degree. The Clarity Slider will add contrast to the mid-tones and may lighten the image. I did use the Clarity Slider in this image, but most of the contrast was added using the Tone Curve. Specifically, I used the Control Points in the Point Curve editing mode to add contrast to targeted areas within the image.

By clicking on the box in the bottom right hand corner of the Tone Curve Panel, you can switch between the Point Curve Mode and the Parametric Mode. You begin with a straight diagonal line running from the bottom left corner to the top right corner in the Point Curve Mode. Both horizontal and vertical axes go from 0-100, starting from the bottom left hand corner. Zero (0) is absolute black and one hundred (100) is absolute white. A Control Point can be applied by clicking on the diagonal line with the cursor. The line can then be moved by dragging the cursor up and down or side to side. You can reposition the Control Point along the diagonal line by holding down on the cursor and sliding it along the line. Also when you click on the Control Point a pair of numbers appear in the upper left hand corner locating the position of the Control Point in relation to the horizontal and vertical axes (H/V). Using Control Points allows you to apply precise amounts of contrast to specific ares of the image. As you move the solid diagonal line with the Control Point a broken diagonal line is revealed beneath. This provides a visual of how far the solid line has been moved from its original position. The greater the slope of the line the more contrast is being added.

In adding more contrast to this image, I applied 3 Control Points with Horizontal/ Vertical numerical values of (29.4/26.3), (49/49/8) and (74.1/77.6). These were very small movements off the original diagonal line, but they yielded a dramatic change in the contrast in the image. (If you are a man of a certain age, you may be reminded of the advertising slogan for the hair product “Brylcreem” – “A little dab will do ya.”( Hey, Boomer !)).

HSL Panel (Hue, Saturation, Luminance)
Adjustments to the Saturation Slider in the Basic Panel uniformly affect all colors within the image. If I use it at all, it is usually to move it to the left (negative) to desaturate the image. I like to make adjustments to individual colors using using the Saturation and Luminance Sliders in the HSL Panel. First I activate the button in the upper left corner of the HSL Panel by clicking on it. As I run the activated crosshair over the image, the color corresponding to the location of the crosshair will light up in the HSL Panel. I do this because sometimes Lightroom reads these colors in unexpected ways. In this image both the peach-colored building and the yellow building were read by Lightroom as being “orange.” Although the orange slider did affect both buildings, it affected the peach colored building to a much greater degree. The yellow slider did affect the yellow building, but not the peach-colored building. The shutters were read as green. I wanted to make the green shutters stand out. Here are the my slider adjustments in the HSL Panel : Luminance Red(+23), Orange(-5), Yellow(+2). Green (+47); Saturation: Red (+14), Orange(+13), Yellow (+15)

Split Toning Panel
I wanted to something else to modify they yellow in the building on the left. I decided to try Split Toning. In Split Toning, I can add to an image a tint form a range of HUEs to just the Highlights or just the Shadows and also control the Saturation of the tint. Here in the Highlights I set the Hue value to 168, which added a green/aqua tent. I then set the saturation at 20% ( Split Toning seems to work best when the Saturation is 25% or lower).This provided a subtle greenish tent in the yellow that I have seen in many European buildings.

Local Adjustments
Photoshop
Whenever I have a difficult distracting element that needs to be removed, I take the image to Photoshop. The Spot Removal tool in Lightroom is usually good enough, but it is just not as effective on more difficult problems and when more repair to the scene is required. In this image I wanted to remove the man in the lower left corner, the black stain on the wall and the shrub at the corner of the yellow building. Using the Spot Healing Brush Tool and the Healing Brush Tool, I was able to remove both of these elements and repair the disruption to the scene caused by their removal. I always use a new Layer to remove distractions, I never work on the Background Layer ( Be sure that the “Sample All Layers” box in the horizontal bar at the top of the screen is checked). When, as here, removal of the distractions and repair of the scene is complicated, I use multiple Layers. When one section is repaired, I will then add a second Layer to repair the next section. This way if you mess up on one Layer you will not have to start completely over. In this image, It took me 6 Layers to complete the removal of the distracting elements and repair the image.

Finishing Adjustments
Back to Lightroom – Final Adjustments
Coming back to Lightroom from Photoshop, the image is now a TIFF document. In the HSL Panel, I lowered the Orange Saturation by -19. Next I used the Radial Filter and made a large sphere completely covering the area of the courtyard and building facades. Leaving the “Invert” box unchecked, I lowed the exposure by -20. This decreased the exposure on the area outside the sphere. Next, I again used the Radial Filter, duplication a second sphere over the approximate same area as the first. This time I checked the “Invert” box and increased the Exposure by +20. Both times I used the Radial Filter, I set the “Feather” to 50. In short, I used the Radial Filters twice to highlight and create a vignette around the area where I wanted to focus the viewer’s attention.

Sharpening
Detail Panel
This is where sharpening is applied. I set the Amount at 75, Radius 1.0, Detail 25, Masking at 53

I hope you found this useful.

Richard’s Final edit

Bob Copeland’s edit in his words

Global Adjustments

1) Adjust highlights (-100) Shadows (+100) White (-6) black (+28) Dehaze (+17)Texture(=7)

2) Move to Photoshop

Photoshop Adjustments

1) Adjust first curve input 128 to output 74 Use white to allow adjustment to darken image. Then use a soft brushbrush at 50% to lighten center area.

2) Adjust second curve with 3 points to adjust contrast. (First point input 2 output 0,) second point input 127 to 75 output) third point input 197 output 186) -fill curve layer with black to hide adjustment then use soft brush tool to add contrast in center area.

3) Third curve adjustment to lighten center area. Input 128 output 164. Mask with black to hide and again use brush at 25% to lighten center.

4) Create duplicate background. Use unsharp mask 176%, Radius at 1.0 and Threshold 1 levels.

5) Create duplicate background of unsharp mask and use Gaussian blur at 50 pixels and set opacity at 23%. Create layer mask and use soft brush at 25% on center portion. This will leave the edges soft and the center area sharper.

6) Size to print at 24×36 at 300dpi.

Bob’s Final Edit

Some closing thoughts

This seems to be the edit we were all most different in our processing and our individual tastes started to come out more.

March 1, 2021

Four Image Edits Part 3

by Mickey Rountree

This is the third of my series where 4 photographers submit an image and it is edited by all four. My fellow photographers for this project are Bob Copeland, Bill Mueller, and Richard Smith.

For this third image by Richard Smith, we could edit in Lightroom, Photoshop or both.

Richard’s RAW image was a DNG file with no editing applied.

Original Image

My Edit

Global Adjustments

I brought Richard’s image into Lightroom with no editing or sharpening applied. It defaulted to Adobe color profile. A quick look at the histogram shows there is no highlight or shadow clipping and the histogram almost touches the right hand side, so the in camera exposure was perfect.

I started by doing all of my basic adjustments in Lightroom before moving the image into Photoshop.

1) I usually fix the thing that bothers me most first. In this case it was the crooked Horizon. I straightened it with the level tool.

2) I changed the color profile to Adobe Landscape, and that helped the colors a lot.

3) The sky seemed a bit too cyan, so I changed the temperature to 6050 and added +7 Magenta.

4) In the tone panel my settings were:
Exposure -0.12
Contrast +24
Highlights -100
Shadows +40
Whites +33
Blacks -19
Texture 0
Clarity +12
Dehaze 25
Vibrance +5
Saturation 0

Local Adjustments

Still in Lightroom I painted over the light color rocks with brush settings of Texture +80, Highlights -22 and exposure -.35 to tone these bright rocks down a bit. I used a second brush at -1.0 exposure and painted over all of the foreground rocks to keep the eye in the center of the photo.

Photoshop Editing

I sharpened the image using high pass sharpening, one of my favorite sharpening methods for landscapes and HDR. High pass settings were 8 pixels and softlight blend mode.

I used NIK Color EFEX tonal contrast filter on a new layer and masked out the sky so it didn’t become too extreme.

I used the camera raw filter and an adjustment brush to paint over the canyon wall in the center of image with +20 dehaze for even more contrast and to make the colors pop a bit more. (I could have done this back in Lightroom just as easily)

I tried turning this into a black and white image using NIK Silver EFEX, but it wasn’t effective to me, since the colored layers in the canyon walls are part of the images impact.

My Final Edit

Bill Mueller’s edit in his words

I decided to do this image entirely in Lightroom to experiment with the luminosity masking capabilities added in the last year to the adjustment brush. Usually, I move over to photoshop for those types of adjustments. With every image I go to the Transform panel and hit Auto. This straightens the image. Sometimes further adjustments are needed but this works about 99% of the time. Next I move to Lens Corrections and make sure that Remove Chromatic Aberration and Enable Profile Corrections are checked.

Global Adjustments

To start off I did some basic adjustments. I set the White +26 and Black -17 points of the image. I increased the exposure+12, increased the Highlights +17 and increased the shadows +100. In the Presence box I Upped Texture +24, Clarity +38, Dehaze +10 and Vibrance +24.

I felt the adjustments made the blue in the sky too dark so in the HSL panel I increased the Blue Luminance +36

To finish off, I added some sharpening to the edges. To mask out all but the most obvious edges I moved the masking slider up to 92, then increased sharpening to 107.

Local Adjustments

Then I moved to the Adjustment Brush to use the Luminosity Masks. I set the first one up to address the Shadows. If you haven’t tried this, you paint the entire image with the adjustment brush, then you set the Range Mask to luminance and then adjust the range. I this case I moved the right slider from 100 down to 41. If you click on Show Luminance Mask you’ll see the Red areas of the mask are the ones that will be affected by the adjustments. I made adjustments to Exposure +.44, Texture +33. Dehaze +15 and Saturation +80. I also increased Sharpness by +57.

Next I moved on to the Highlights. This time I moved the left slider from 0 to 69. The adjustments I made here were to Exposure +.52, Highlights -100, shadows -2, Texture +48, Clarity +17, Dehaze +11 and Saturation +50.

Bill’s Final edit

Richard Smith’s Edit in his words

Analyzing the Image
This is my image. I made it in the Spring of 2018, when Louann and I drove out west to find the parts of old Route 66 that remain. We arrived at the south rim of the canyon at mid-morning on a beautiful spring day. Good things never last. An hour after I made this image, a sudden snow storm hit the canyon. In a span of about 5 minutes a view of miles was reduced to 20 feet. Within 10 minutes after that, we were up to our ankles in snow. Time to go.

I have processed this image many times. None have captured the sense of awe and wonder I experienced seeing it with my own eyes. But I keep trying.

This is a RAW image so it needs more contrast, saturation, sharpening. If I had shot this in jpeg, contrast, saturation and sharpening would have been automatically added to the image, but those additions would have been uniform throughout the image. The adjustments needed for the sky are different from those needed for the canyon.

Global Adjustments

Lens Corrections and Transform Panels
First things first. in Lens Corrections I checked the boxes to Remove Chromatic Aberrations and Enable Profile Corrections for my Nikon lens. In Transform I clicked on Auto to level the horizon.
Cropping
I am not afraid of heights, I just have a healthy respect of heights, so I stood well back from the edge when I made this image. But I wanted you the viewer to have the feeling of standing right on the edge, so I cropped up from the bottom a little. I also cropped down from the top to eliminate the pine cone in the middle of the image.

Tone
I have two different methods for setting the Black and White points. I will choose one, depending on my subjective judgment of which one works best for the particular image. In the older method, I would move the Whites slider to the right and the Blacks slider to the left until you begin to see clipping. Then I saw a video by one the Adobe gurus who slammed the Highlights slider all the way to the left (-100) and the Shadows slider all the way to the right (+100). In this image I used the latter method. I then adjusted by increasing the Whites (+31) and decreasing the blacks (-8). This is just like seasoning a stew – everybody does it a little differently.
HSL Panel
Sometimes I will use the HSL sliders nears the end of the edit to made final adjustments to specific colors. This is all purely subjective. Here I made the following adjustments: Luminance Red, Orange and Yellow (-10), Saturation Red, Orange, and Yellow (+15,) Green and Blue (-5).

Local Adjustments
The Sky
I first used the Graduated Filter tool, starting from the top and bringing it down to the top of the rim of the canyon. This included part of the tree on the left, which needed a different adjustment than the sky. To exclude the tree I used the Luminance Range Mask embedded in the Graduated Filter. Holding down the Option key (ALT on PC), I moved the slider for the Luminance Range Mask to 85 which turned the tree black, thereby excluding it from my adjustments to the sky. (Remember: black excludes, white includes.) Staying in the Graduated Filter, I moved the sliders as follows: Highlights (-5), Dehaze (+30) and Clarity (+10).
The Canyon
Again I used the Graduated Filter this time starting from the bottom and going upward to the canyon rim. Within the Graduated Filter, I adjusted the sliders as follows: Highlights (-10), Shadows (+12), Saturation (+10), Sharpness (+10), Clarity (+10), Texture (+40), Temperature (+20).
Tree on the Left
Using the Brush tool, I painted over the tree. I was not careful about my technique, because I next applied the Luminance Range Mask embedded within the Brush tool. Moving the slider to left until it reached 10, this left the tree white (included in the adjustment) and the surrounding areas black (excluded from the adjustment). I then adjusted the sliders as follows: Exposure (+40), Shadows (+100), Clarity (+30), Sharpness (+10).
Foreground Shadow
Using the Brush tool, I painted over the area of shadow and then adjusted the sliders as follows: Shadows (+50), Clarity (+40), Saturation (+10).
Bright Rock on the Right.
I felt the brightness of this rock formation drew the eye. It is a part of the image, but not the focus of interest. To de-emphasize it, I painted it with the Brush tool and then made the following adjustments: Highlights (-30), Texture (+25), Clarity (+20), Saturation (+10), Sharpness (+10).
Canyon Floor
Looking at the image I felt the canyon floor was a little soft. I used the brush tool to paint the portion of the floor nearest to the viewer and then made the following adjustments: Texture (+15), Sharpness (+10), Clarity (+10), and Dehaze (+15)

Finishing Adjustments
Sharpening
Amount: 65, Radius: 0.8, Detail: 30, Masking: 45. I increased the Masking slider to 45 because at that amount the blue sky was black, meaning it would not be sharpened (black excludes). You do not want to sharpen a clear blue sky with a smooth surface.
Vignette
I added a Vignette of -7.

I stepped away from the image overnight and then came back to it. I wanted to do something that would give the image a little more 3D effect. I turned to the Tone Curve tool. This is a tool most people avoid, including me, but it has its place. Using the Custom Point Curve. I placed control points at the middle of the linear line and at at the top of the smallest square in the lower left quadrant. This covered the area of the shadows in the image. I then placed another control point close to the bottom point and pulled down on it very slightly. Boom! That was enough to make it pop. Using three points gave me more precise control as none of the areas outside the outer point were affected by the adjustment.

None of these adjustments are written in stone. It is important to get the correct exposure for your image, but after that it’s just seasoning for the stew. Everyone likes their seasoning a little different.

Richard’s Final edit

Bob Copeland’s edit in his words

Global Adjustments
In Lightroom I adjusted highlights (-100) Shadows (+100) White (-15) black (+2) and Dehaze (+16). I cropped to 2 by 3 ratio. I then took the image over to Photoshop.

I adjusted the levels with an adjustment layer, Shadows 0, Midtones 100, highlights 228

I created a curves adjustment layer input 118 to output 96. I then created a second adjustment curve layer with input 130 to 155 output -fill curve layer and filled the mask with black. I painted white on the mask using a soft brush at 25% in center area and puffy clouds.

Local Adjustments

I created a third curves adjustment layer input 121 to 71 output . Fill with black soft brush at 25% and burn bottomland around edges. Go back over bottom at 50%.

I created a duplicate background. I sharpened using unsharp mask 176%, Radius at 1.0 and Threshold 1 levels.

I copied the unsharp mask and used Gaussian blur at 50 pixels and set opacity at 35%. I created a layer mask and used a soft brush at 25% on center portion.

Bob’s Final Edit

Some closing thoughts

This is the image that we all edited most similarly. While we used different techniques, we were all using exposure adjustments and contrast to guide the viewer’s eye through the image.

February 1, 2021

Four Image Edits Part 2

by Mickey Rountree

This is the second of my series where 4 photographers submit an image and it is edited by all four. My fellow photographers for this project are Bob Copeland, Bill Mueller, and Richard Smith.

For this second image by Bill Mueller, once again everyone is limited to editing in Lightroom only.

Bill created a DNG HDR in Lightroom but then exported it as a TIFF, so it doesn’t have the ability to use color profiles, and it doesn’t have the wide dynamic range of a HDR DNG. This is the completely unedited image, so there is only minimal sharpening applied and no other changes. Notice that the histogram shows an image with exposure almost all the way to the right with no clipped highlights, but some blocked up dark shadows. The blocked up shadows are shown in blue on this image from Lightroom. We’ll see if we can fix those.

Original Image

My Edit

Global Adjustments

I increased the overall exposure to +.80 to brighten the rocks, and open up the shadows. I increased contrast to +31, Highlights to -62, Shadows to +90, whites to -2 and blacks to -7. There are still some totally black shadows, but they are small and appropriate to the image. I could remove them completely by increasing the shadows to +100, but that seemed a bit flat and unnatural to me. Since Bill sent this as a TIFF, I could not apply a lens profile, but I did check “remove chromatic aberration.”

Also because this was a TIFF, I could not apply a camera matching color profile. The image feels a bit magenta, but there was a lot of magenta in the sky that morning, and some of the rocks have a natural pink tint. Trying to color balance using the rocks as a gray point produced a noticeably green image. The feel of the morning was better represented by leaving the color balance alone.

I added +33 Clarity, +20 Vibrance, and +12 Saturation. I sharpened with my typical scenic sharpening settings of amount 60, Radius .8, and detail 35 with no masking.

I used the level tool in the cropping panel to make a very minor correction to level the horizon.

Local Adjustments

For the sky I used a graduated filter with exposure -.9, highlights -20, and texture +35 to bring out the clouds a bit. I used the color range mask to limit the adjustment to the sky and not the land on the left.

I used the adjustment brush and painted over the rocks with Texture 100, Clarity 40 to really bring out detail in the rocks. This seemed to darken the shadows, so I also increased shadows to+50.

I cropped from the left and top to remove the limbs coming in from the left, and to get the horizon line further from the center.

As a final touch I used a new large, soft adjustment brush set to -1.0 and darkened down the lower corners, and a bit of the bottom center, to help pull attention up toward the center of the image. I used the adjustment brush, because using a vignette would have darkened the corners of the sky, which I don’t like to do.

If I could use Photoshop, I would probably remove the branch protruding from the left, but Lightroom’s spot removal tool couldn’t come close to removing it.

My Final Edit (#1)

My Edit Part 2

Although it was not planned, the fact that Bill originally sent a TIFF allowed us to look at the difference in a Lightroom HDR DNG compared to the TIFF. The first Image Bill sent was a TIFF of the HDR created in Lightroom, but not the actual DNG file. It did not have the large dynamic range of the DNG, so he re-sent the three original raw files and I created a HDR DNG in Lightroom. Immediately when I opened this the larger dynamic range was apparent because there was no clipping at all in the shadows. And I had a much larger range of adjustments possible as well as the ability to change color profiles. Here is the HDR DNG with no editing and you can see there is no highlight or shadow clipping.

Global Adjustments

I increased the overall exposure to +.80 to brighten the rocks, and open up the shadows. I increased contrast to +33, Highlights to -77, Shadows to +74, whites to +21 and blacks to -15. At this point there are no clipped highlights or shadows. I could not find a lens profile to apply, but I did check “remove chromatic aberration.”

I changed the color from Adobe Color to Adobe Landscape, and this made a big difference in the image. I added +33 Clarity, +20 Vibrance, and +12 Saturation. I sharpened with my typical scenic sharpening settings of amount 60, Radius .8, and detail 35 with no masking.

I used the level tool in the cropping panel to make a very minor correction to level the horizon.

Local Adjustments

For the sky I used a graduated filter with exposure -.8, highlights -15, and texture +40 to bring out the clouds a bit. I used the color range mask to limit the adjustment to the sky and not the land on the left.

I used the adjustment brush and painted over the rocks with Texture 100, Clarity 40 to really bring out detail in the rocks. This seemed to darken the shadows, so I also increased shadows to+50.

I cropped from the left and top to remove the limbs coming in from the left, and to get the horizon line further from the center.

If I could use Photoshop, I would probably remove the branch protruding from the left, but Lightroom’s spot removal tool couldn’t come close to removing it.

So here is my second final edit. I prefer it to the first image because I was able to change color profiles, and I started with an image that did not have blocked up shadows. Whether it was the landscape color profile, or the HDR DNG file vs. a TIFF file the colors are much more pleasing to me.

My Final Edit(#2)

Bill Mueller’s edit in his words

Global Adjustments

To start off, this image was a set of three shots taken at 3 different exposure settings: as metered, 2 stops over exposed and 2 stops under exposed. They were merged to HDR in Lightroom. The Lightroom HDR merge gives you all the dynamic range of HDR without the Harry Potter look that’s typically associated with HDR. To give you a specific example, if you take one of the individual images and adjust the Exposure slider you have a range of + or – 5. With the HDR image you have a range of + or – 10.

As always, the first things I did was to straighten the horizon using the Transform adjustment and check the Chromatic Aberration and Profile Correction boxes in the Lens Corrections section. Then it’s back to the Basic Panel to set up the image. I adjusted the Whites and Blacks moving there respective sliders to +52 and +21. I Dropped the Highlights to -100 and increased the shadows to +100. I also pumped up the Contrast to +50. Next I moved to the Tone Curve and set it for Medium Contrast.

Local Adjustments

My next area to work on was the sky. I wanted to darken that sunrise up a little bit. I used the Gradient tool and started the gradient at the Horizon and dropped it to the edge of the water. I used a Luminance mask with a range adjustment to mask out the rocks, trees and islands from the adjustment. I then dropped the exposure by ¾ of a stop, added 20 points of Clarity and 10 points of Dehaze. Finally, I added about 40 points of Contrast. Remember we’re just working on the sky here, everything else is masked out.

Now we’ll move on to the rocks. I drew another gradient but this time I started at the water’s edge and drew up past the Tree branch at the top. I used another Luminance mask with a range adjustment to mask out the sky and water. First, I moved the Tint slider to – 100 to remove all the magenta from the rocks. I increased the exposure by +1, I increased the highlights by 39 and upped the shadows to 52. Because they were rocks and trees, I upped the Texture to 72, upped clarity to 61 and added 15 points of Dehaze. Finally, I noticed a little noise showing up in the rocks so I increased Noise to 24. I wanted to increase the brightest areas of the trees and rocks so I drew another gradient, this time starting at the water’s edge but only going up to the edge of the rocks. Using a Luminance mask, I adjusted the range so that everything but the bright tips of the trees and the brightest tops of the rocks was masked out. I increased the exposure by +2.

There seemed to be a little Teal color tint in the rocks so I went to the HSL panel and reduced the Aqua saturation by 100 and the Blue by 40.

To finish it off I went to the Effects Panel and added a Vignette in the amount of -10. Then in the detail panel a added some sharpening by increasing the Masking to 199 (this eliminates any sharpening in the sky) and the amount to 63.

Bill’s Final edit

Richard Smith’s Edit in his words

Even though Bill provided three brackets, I decided not to create an HDR file, but just work on the normal exposure.

Global Adjustments

Lens Correction

I checked the boxes for “Remove Chromatic Aberration” and “Enable Profile Correction.” Under “Lens Profile” the Lightroom program said “Built-in.” Bill shoots with an Olympus camera, but that was not listed on the drop down menu, so I went with “Built-in.”

Transform

I checked “Auto” to make sure the horizon was level.

Crop

One of the most important decisions a photographer makes is what to include within the frame. In this case I made significant crops in from the left and up from the bottom. To me the subject of this image is the predawn sky, particularly near the horizon. The rocks provide foreground interest, an important supporting element in this image. Cropping benefits the image in two ways: 1) It simplifies the image and 2) It makes the two most important elements in the image (i.e., where the sun would rise and the rocks) larger and, therefore, more predominant. I decided to crop to a 16 x 9 aspect ratio, with the brightest spot on the horizon off-centered to the right, giving this landscape image a panoramic effect that works well.

I thought the trees on the left were a distraction, drawing attention from the two most important elements in the image. I considered removing the trees using the Spot Removal tool, but I was not able to get a good match from the water background using either the “Clone” or “Heal” options. Removal of distractions is one area where I think Photoshop is superior to Lightroom. In Photoshop, the intruding trees could have been easily removed, using either the “Healing Brush” of “Content Aware.” This was another reason to crop this image from the left.

These adjustments affect the entire image. When I first began using Lightroom, most of the adjustments to my images were of the global type. As time passed and I became more experienced with Lightroom, and as the program itself evolved, I have shifted to mostly local adjustments in editing my images. One global adjustment I still do is setting my white and black points. Usually I do this by holding down the Option key (Alt on a PC),clicking on the “Whites” cursor and moving it to the right until I see clipping on the right side and then moving the cursor back to the left until the clipping is gone. I then hold down the Option ( Alt) key again and click on the “Blacks” cursor and move it to the left until I see clipping on the left. I may allow a little clipping of the Blacks to remain if I think it helps the image.

In this image, however, I employed an alternative way to set the black and white points that is often more effective with landscape images. I simply moved the “Highlights” slider to -100 and the “Shadows” slider to +100. I then used the Whites and Blacks sliders as a finishing tool to make smaller adjustments. That was it for global adjustments.

Local Adjustments

In this image there were three areas that required different adjustment schemes

Sky

I first applied a “Graduated Filter” to select the sky. Because the sky was significantly brighter than the water I used a “Luminosity Range Mask” to assist in making a more exact separation of the sky from the water. The “Dehaze” slider does a good job of bringing out detail in clouds, so I set it at +20. Because I consider sunrises to be cool and sunsets to be warm, I moved the “Temperature Slider” to the left towards the blue range at -15. To bring out more of the magenta in the sky, I moved the “Tint Slider” to the right +18. Next, I switched to the “Bush Tool” and made two passes with the brush overlapping the orange and yellow parts of the sky at the horizon level and then moved the “Texture Slider” to the right to +23 to show the detail in the bottom of clouds being illuminated by the sun just below the horizon. I used the Brush Tool again; first, clicking on “New” so that my adjustments at the horizon would be unaffected by the further application of this tool. Then I made two passes with the brush tool across the sky at the top of the image and moved the “Temperature” slider to -32, the “Dehaze” Slider to +13 and the “Clarity” slider to +18 to further modify that area of the image.

The brilliance of the colors in sunrises and sunsets make them tricky subjects. They are easy to oversaturate, which makes them look fake. Not enough saturation, however, can make it seem that it really wasn’t worth getting out of bed early to get the shot. The luminance and hue of the colors also play an important role. Here I went into the “HSL/Color” panel and made adjustments to the hue, luminance and saturation levels of the red, orange, blue and magenta colors. I then went to bed, got up the next morning and proceeded to change everything I had done the night before. At some point you have to say enough! If you have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), this could be a real danger area.

Water

I first painted the water with the “Brush Tool” and then applied a “Color Range Mask” to complete a precise selection of the area. I then used the sliders in the “Brush Tool Panel” to make the following adjustments: Temperature (-13), Highlights (+36), Shadows (-30), Whites (+30), Blacks (-30), Texture (+30), Clarity (+20), Sharpness (-35). These were purely subjective choices ( “because it felt right”). If I started over afresh, I doubt the specific values would be exactly the same. On close inspection there were some objects in the water that were probably water fowl of some kind. Since these objects were not clear, and since this image is not about birds, I used the “Spot Removal Tool” to eliminate them.

Rocks

Coming up from the bottom, I applied a “Graduated Filter” to the rocks. Including all of the rocks in the selection meant that some areas of the water were also selected. I used the “Luminance Range Mask” to create a mask that precisely excluded the brighter water from the darker rocks. I was aggressive in applying “Texture” (+83) and “Clarity” (+43) to the rocks. I increased “Shadows” (+21) and decreased “Temperature” (-13). I did not want the reflected color in the rocks to compete with the color of the sky so I decided to completely desaturated them, moving the “Saturation” slider left to -100. I then added “Sharpness” (+30).

Finishing Adjustments

Sharpening

In the “Detail Panel” I set ‘Amount’ at 70, “Radius” at 1.0, “Detail” at 25, and “Masking” at 57. In “Noise Reduction” I set the “Luminance” at 10.

Vignette

In the “Effects Panel” I set the Amount at -11. Why? Because Scott Kelby told me to do that.

Richard’s Final edit

Bob Copeland’s edit in his words

Global Adjustments
I chose to work on the single normal exposure. After opening the image in Lightroom I decided that the sky should be darker and the foreground rocks lighter. I would also need to crop into the image for a tighter look.

Since I print my own images I knew I would need full coverage in the histogram with no clipping. I want printable details in both shadows and highlights. I adjusted the white and black points to eliminate clipped highlights or shadows. The image now looks light in the sky and still dark in the foreground.

I added 8 points of Clarity and 15 points of Dehaze to add contrast. I then added 11 points of sharpening.

Finally I cropped off the left side to remove most of the tree branches. I cropped both the top , bottom and right side moving the horizon to a 1/3 and eliminating some foreground and left side.

Local Adjustments

I used a graduated filter to darken the sky and a graduated filter to lighten the foreground.

Bob’s Final Edit

Some closing thoughts

We all edited this picture more consistently than the first, but you can see we all had a slightly different final look, and took different paths to get there.

January 1, 2021

Four Image Edits Part 1

by Mickey Rountree

It has always amazed me how several photographers can stand shoulder to shoulder and yet produce such different images. Of course lens choice and composition play a part, but a major part of a photographer’s style is in the processing of an image.

So for this four-part series I’ll have four different images (one from each photographer) processed by four photographers and ask them to describe what they did. My fellow photographers for this project are Bob Copeland, Bill Mueller, and Richard Smith.

For this first image, everyone is limited to editing in Lightroom only.

I provided the first image, and here it is exactly as it came out of the camera and into Lightroom. It is a raw image, so there is only minimal sharpening applied and no other changes. Notice that the histogram shows a well exposed image with exposure almost all the way to the right with no clipped highlights, and no blocked up shadows. The idea is to bring the best possible image file into Lightroom or Photoshop and improve them, not try to rescue a bad exposure. This was a cloudy day, so a single exposure was able to perfectly capture the whole range of tones. That makes it pretty easy to edit and may not produce a lot of variation, but we’ll see.

Original Image

My Edit

First I look for the things that bother me the most. I do this so they don’t keep distracting me as I edit. The crooked horizon bothered me, so I fixed that the level tool in the crop panel. I also cropped a bit from the left to remove the flag pole and from the right to remove the distant lighthouse and the small rock.

For my basic settings, I set the white and black points and decreased the highlights so there would be no blown out areas in the sky. I increased exposure to .36, and increased Contrast 60 +36. I increased clarity to +25, and because it was a flat, almost colorless day I increased vibrance to +20 and Saturation to +6. In the HSL panel I increased the saturation in the blue channel to add some color to the sky and water. I also turned on settings to remove chromatic aberration and lens profile to correct for lens distortion and vignetting.

For local adjustments I wanted to add drama to the clouds and pull attention to the lighthouse itself. So first I added a graduated filter to the sky with -.75 exposure and increased texture to +60 to bring out detail in the clouds. I used color masking to limit the graduated filter to the sky and not the buildings. Second I felt the light colored rocks in the foreground were too light, so I painted over them with a large soft adjustment brush with exposure set to -1.6 to darken them and texture cranked up to +84 to emphasize detail in the rocks. If I had been able to use Photoshop I would have removed the pointed rock coming in from the lower left. I tried, but the removal tool in Lightroom just wasn’t up to the task.

I really wanted to pull attention to the lighthouse, so using a small adjustment brush I painted over it with exposure at +.7.

My final step was sharpening with amount 40, radius .8 and detail 35, and no masking. Output sharpening would happen when I export the image, and depending on where it will be used I either select screen and amount high or the type of paper (matte or glossy) and amount high.

Overall this was a pretty mild edit for me, and not as wild as I’m used to going. But this image didn’t need wild, just a few basic and local adjustments. If I had been able to use Photoshop I would have cloned out the people at the lighthouse.

My final edit

Richard Smith’s Edit in his words

HOW I DID IT

First I identified the subject of the image, which in this case is clearly the lighthouse. I wanted to process the image in a way that drew attention to the lighthouse and avoided distractions that might draw the eye away from the lighthouse.

Step 1 White Balance

Using the eyedropper I selected the white on the lighthouse as the point to set the white balance.

Step 2 Lens Correction Panel

I checked the boxes for “Remove Chromatic Aberrations” and “Enable Profile Corrections.” Under “Lens Profile,” I used the drop down menu to select Cannon as the make of lens.

Step 3 Transform Panel

I clicked on “Auto” to level the horizon.

Step 4 Cropping

I cropped the image slightly to place the lighthouse at the upper left intersection of the tic-tac-toe overlay.

Step 5 Global Adjustments

I set my black and white points using the “Whites, Blacks, Shadows and Highlights” in the Basic Panel. Usually I move the “ Whites” slider to the right, but here I had to move it the the left to correct the highlights clipping in the original image. Because I considered this to be a complex image, that was the extent of my global adjustments.

Step 6 Local Adjustments

There were 4 areas to which I applied local adjustments: the sky, the water, the rocks and the buildings.

The Sky:

Using the Graduated Filter, I dragged the crosshairs downward to the intersection of the horizon and the water. I checked the “Show Mask Overlay” box beneath the image to be sure that that the water was excluded from the area to be adjusted. The horizontal line included the buildings within the adjustment area. This I did not want. I fixed this by using the luminosity mask within the Graduated filter. I could have just used the eraser brush, but I find that once you get used to it the Range Mask filters (color and luminosity) are faster and more precise and the eraser brush is still available if you need it. I then used the “Dehaze” and “Clarity” sliders to bring out details in the sky. Reducing “Highlights” and “Whites” can sometimes also help.

The Water:

I used the Brush Tool to paint the water. I then used the Color Range Mask within the Brush Tool to select 5 areas that I thought represented the color range of the water. I then moved the temperature slider to the blue side (the left) and added some Clarity, Dehaze and a little saturation to get the hint of blue I wanted.

The Rocks

I painted the rocks quickly with the Brush Tool and then used the Color Range Mask eyedropper to make a more precise selection. I moved the Temperature a little to the right (Yellow) to add some warmth. To me the rocks cried out for contrast and texture. Since the rocks were a midtone color, I used the Clarity Slider to increase the contrast. I then took the Texture Slider all the way to right (100). I think that worked. Finally, I added some Sharpness and just a touch of Saturation.

The Buildings:

I used the Brush Tool and the Color Range Mask to select the buildings. I increased the Temperature (just a little), Texture, Clarity, Dehaze , Saturation (just a little) and Sharpness.

Step 7 Final Adjustments

Tone Curve

I took the Highlights to +21 and the Shadows to -19 to help give a more 3D appearance to the image.

Sharpening (Detail Panel)

I considered this to be a high frequency image (one with lots of edges). I set the amount at 50, Radius at 0.8, Detail at .20, and holding down the Option key (Alt on PC) moved the Masking Slider to the right until it showed that the water and clear patches of sky were black (unaffected by sharpening).

Effects (Vignette)

I moved the Amount Slider to -11 to create a slight vignette. Why ? Because Scott Kelby once told me to do that!

Warmth

I increased the temperature justly slightly to add a little warmth to the overall image.

Richard’s Final Edit

Bill Mueller’s edit in his words

Global Adjustments

A couple of things to do before you start to edit any image is to make sure that the Remove Chromatic Aberration and the Enable Profile Corrections boxes are checked in the Lens Corrections panel so I checked those.

The next thing I always do is to check the Horizon line. Going to the Transform panel you have various options for straightening your image. In this case, the Auto button worked fine.

The next steps I take are to balance the exposure of the image

In the Basic panel, I used the eye dropper tool to get a reading on the image. The White Balance was fairly close and I made only minor adjustments raising the temperature from 5600 to 5800 and the tint from +5 to +7.

Right now, the image is fairly flat and is in desperate need of some contrast.

I added +60.

I reduced the Highlights by -100 and increased the blacks by +100

Next, I checked the White and Black points. Using the Alt key to determine the true White and Black points I added +17 to the Whites and -31 To the Blacks

The Presence sliders let you spice up the image. These are more a matter of personal taste and I ended up adding +26 of Texture, +21 of Clarity, +14 of Dehaze and +33 of Vibrance.

I moved to the Tone Curve and added a little more contrast by adjusting the Highlights to +21 and the darks to -18.

Next up was HSL panel or Hue, Saturation and Luminance. I wanted the red in the roof tops to stand out a little, so I dropped the Red Hue to -40. Carrying that into the Saturation, I upped the Red by +87. Moving on to the Luminance, I brightened the Reds up by +64. I thought the rocks in the foreground were too yellow, so I dropped the Yellow Saturation by -53. If you look closely, the trim on the building is green and there is also some green vegetation in the midground. I wanted these to stand out a little more, so I increased the green Saturation by +47.

Local Adjustments

I wanted a little more detail in the clouds, so I use the Graduated Filter adjustment and drew the filter about half-way down the image. I pumped the contrast up to +100. I also added +10 of dehaze to bring out a little touch of Blue in the clouds. These adjustments also seemed to add a little magenta into the clouds, so I adjusted the tint by -15 offsetting the magenta with a little green.

I wanted the Lighthouse to stand out a little more so using the adjustment brush, I painted the Lighthouse and buildings and increased the exposure by +.75.

The next step was some final sharpening. Going to the Detail panel and holding down the Alt button, I moved the Masking slider to the right to just sharpen the edges of the buildings and the crevices in the rocks. I slid the Sharpening slider up to 100. With the Mask adjustment, there’s no sharpening going on in the sky or in most of the water outside that little inlet.

That wraps it up for me. Here is my final edit.

Bob Copeland’s edit in his words

Global Adjustments
I wanted to create a very dramatic B&W image. A storm on the way. To accomplish this I first converted to B&W. I simply selected black and white, and did not use any of the profiles or presets. Then I adjusted exposure [-20], Contrast [+26], Highlights [-100], Shadows [+82], whites [-27] and blacks [-96].

Local Adjustments

The image was still a little flat so I used a radial filter set to invert (which affects the inside of the selection) on the lighthouse and building, to lighten by using exposure control. I also used a new radial filter [inverted] to lighten the water in the foreground. The foreground rocks still looked light so a third radial filter (inverted) was used to darken this area by using both exposure and contrast. Still not happy with the foreground so I used a graduated filter to darken the foreground to the current darkness. I then cropped the image to level the horizon and eliminate the flag on the left and the small lighthouse and rock on the right.

All in all this is the first time I have used Lightroom for a finished print.

Some closing thoughts

Everyone leveled the horizon, removed chromatic aberration and enabled lens profile correction. There must be a reason. One way or another, everyone increased contrast and did some overall sharpening of the image.

Notice how one of the major themes was identifying the main subject and making changes to draw the viewer’s eye toward it. Processing can actually be the final step in composition.

December 1, 2020

Creating and using a Develop Preset On Import

by Mickey Rountree

In an earlier article I explained how to create color profiles for your camera. Now I’ll show how to create develop presets that you can even use when you import your images into Lightroom.

Once you’ve created a camera profile, open an image shot with the same camera and go to the develop module. Choose the color profile you created for that camera and lighting. Now make any edits that you would normally apply to any image. So I selected my 5DM4 Daylight profile, and added some contrast, clarity and a bit of vibrance. I also added some sharpening, and selected “remove chromatic aberration” and “enable lens profile correction.” I use two different levels of sharpening depending on my subject. For scenics and objects I use amount 40, radius 0.8 and detail 35, and for portraits of females I use amount 35, radius 1.4 and detail 15. These are good starting points but I may make adjustments later.

$C:\Users\Mickey\Desktop\Import preset\Profile and basic.jpg$ $C:\Users\Mickey\Desktop\Import preset\Sharpening and lens profile.jpg$

Now to begin to automate this so that all of these steps are done as we import the image, we’ll save these settings as a develop preset. Still in the develop module go to the left hand panel, scroll down to presets, and click on the “+” sign. Select create preset.

Give your preset a name and which folder to place it in. I created a folder named Import Camera Profiles. I name my presets with the name of the camera, the light, and whether I used portrait or scenic sharpening. So for each of my cameras, I have eight presets, the four color profiles with scenic sharpening, and the four color profiles with portrait sharpening.

Check treatment and profile, basic tone, clarity, sharpening, color and lens correction. Click create.

$C:\Users\Mickey\Desktop\Import preset\Create preset 1.jpg$

$C:\Users\Mickey\Desktop\Import preset\Create preset 2.jpg$

While we’re at it, let’s create a metadata preset with our copyright information. Mine are specific for the year taken, so each year I make a new preset. Go to the metadata tab/edit metadata presets and enter your copyright information. Save it with a useful name like 2022 copyright. Under IPTC Copyright I enter the copyright symbol and the year, status=copyrighted, and under rights usage I enter ” All rights reserved. No Reproduction without Permission”. Under IPTC Creator I enter my name and email. Save this preset, and remember to make a new one each year. Now when you apply this preset anyone looking at your image should be able to check the data, see that it’s copyrighted and how to contact if they want to use your image.

$C:\Users\Mickey\Desktop\Import preset\Untitled.jpg$ $C:\Users\Mickey\Desktop\Import preset\Metadata copyright.jpg$

Now here’s how to use all of these steps to automate basic processing and add our copyright information when we import our images into Lightroom. Open Lightroom and go to file and import images. Select the images you want to import, and on the right hand side of the import panel click the down arrow beside develop settings and choose the appropriate preset. Remember that profiles can only be applied to the camera they were created for. Below that click the down arrow next to metadata, and select the preset you created for the year. Now when you import your pictures, they will have the right color profile, some basic editing and sharpening and current copyright info.

$C:\Users\Mickey\Desktop\Import preset\Import.jpg$