SOOC Sunday: NYC Night Photo

I was going to post this Friday but time got away from me.

You have seen this photo already


But would you like to know how it got here? From this zeroed out LR SOOC?


(First can I say that I am pretty impressed with myself for that SOOC? Especially never having done night shots like this before? I think it is pretty spot on.)

First basic edits

I played with the white balance a bit to mess with the light colors

Add some contrast


Add some more fun color


A little vignette


And don't forget the camera profile

I have this set to change on import

I didn't even need any noise reduction. Shooting at ISO 100, my shutter speed was only 30 seconds so that didn't add too much noise, the key I think was that I didn't need to adjust my exposure at all in post.

Photography Tips 22: Lightroom Graduated Filter

In my blog post yesterday I included a couple of photos I used Lightroom's graduated filter (which I always want to call gradient filter so I might say that by mistake sometimes) option on, and one that I didn't but could have. I am sure this is one of those things that is used more often in landscapes/macros then in portraits but it is worth trying it out sometimes, you might be surprised what it can do for you.

I mainly use this tool on the sky, to balance out a bright sky with a darker foreground so I mostly use the exposure slider. You have all the other sliders available as well that you do for the adjustment brush (well other than the ones that adjust the brush since you don't need those) so you could easily get a LOT more creative than I do most of the time.

1) This first image, I wanted to add back detail to the sky that I had lost during my editing process (probably from increased contrast, and a little bit of brightness), here is my final edit with the filter applied


20110618-IMG_8653 by MicheleLouise, on Flickr

and here is a before/after of just the SOOC, and the edit BEFORE the filter was applied

Link to full size

There was originally more texture in the sky in the SOOC than in my edit, a perfect time to used the exposure slider with the gradient mask to bring down the exposure on the sky and bring back some of that detail instead of having the appearance of a blown out sky.

2) This next image is a little different. The cabbage in the front was in the shade and MUCH darker than the house in the background in full sun. On the left is my SOOC and the right is my edit without the filter. To me the house, which I wanted in the background and to be part of the "story" of the image, was too bright and calling too much attention


Link to full size

I added a negative exposure adjustment to the upper part of the image (down to the top of the cabbage) to help balance the two parts of the image, the image below is my final edit with the filter applied.


20110618-IMG_8642 by MicheleLouise, on Flickr

3) This photo I didn't use it on, but could have. Here is the edit that was on my blog:


20110618-IMG_8638 by MicheleLouise, on Flickr

and here is the before after with the filter applied.


link to full size

You can see that you can even put the filter on an angle if you want to, here that was helpful to allow it to blend in more, the roofline of the house was a good natural breaking point. My goal was to add back some texture to the sky that I lost with my other edits, since I knew that information was there in the original file, so I wasn't stuck with a blown sky.
1) This first image, I wanted to add back detail to the sky that I had lost during my editing process (probably from increased contrast, and a little bit of brightness), here is my final edit with the filter applied


20110618-IMG_8653 by MicheleLouise, on Flickr

and here is a before/after of just the SOOC, and the edit BEFORE the filter was applied

Link to full size

There was originally more texture in the sky in the SOOC than in my edit, a perfect time to used the exposure slider with the gradient mask to bring down the exposure on the sky and bring back some of that detail instead of having the appearance of a blown out sky.

2) This next image is a little different. The cabbage in the front was in the shade and MUCH darker than the house in the background in full sun. On the left is my SOOC and the right is my edit without the filter. To me the house, which I wanted in the background and to be part of the "story" of the image, was too bright and calling too much attention


Link to full size

I added a negative exposure adjustment to the upper part of the image (down to the top of the cabbage) to help balance the two parts of the image, the image below is my final edit with the filter applied.


20110618-IMG_8642 by MicheleLouise, on Flickr

3) This photo I didn't use it on, but could have. Here is the edit that was on my blog:


20110618-IMG_8638 by MicheleLouise, on Flickr

and here is the before after with the filter applied.


link to full size

You can see that you can even put the filter on an angle if you want to, here that was helpful to allow it to blend in more, the roofline of the house was a good natural breaking point. My goal was to add back some texture to the sky that I lost with my other edits, since I knew that information was there in the original file, so I wasn't stuck with a blown sky.

Blue Poppy Edit

The colors in the blue poppy photos I shared yesterday came out a lot less saturated in camera than they appear in my final edits. Part of that is from shooting to the right (overexposing) and part of it is from using really neutral camera profiles etc. I like to be able to be the one to decide how much color I want to add back.

Here you can see the SOOC on the left and my final edit on the right, the SOOC is cool and flat and dull.

click for larger

So how did I get to the final edit?


I used my white balance target to do a custom white balance, added in a bit of brightness to the midtones, and a decent amount of black. I then added some clarity (ie midtone contrast), vibrance and a little saturation (I usually don't touch this slider but once in a while it can be very handy).


Added contrast using the tone curve


Used the split toning to add more color, a bit of warmth to the highlights and some blue to the shadows. (I have a couple of presets like this that I have made for myself)


Added some sharpening, I also should probably add some noise reduction to, but for sharing on the web it wasn't really noticeable.

That is it, nothing too major but it brought the colors back in line with what they had looked like in real life.

Photography Tips 20: Lightroom Split Toning on Black and Whites

I generally like to keep my black and white images just straight up black and white with no color toning.


I did go for a bit of an infrared conversion.

Playing around with the split toning I came up with an interesting finding. I read a discussion the other day on sepia versus chocolate black and white images. Here is my idea of what is a chocolate black and white.



I applied the split toning Highlights hue 0 saturation 0 Shadows hue 37 Sat 22. Notice that I applied nothing to the high lights, I just warmed up the shadows or the black part of the black and white.

As for the sepia, I did two edits that looked "sepia" to me. I applied the same hue and saturation settings as above to just the highlights (and nothing to the shadows)


And then to both the highlights and shadows,

This one looks the most like sepia to me. The key to me then to keep your image to chocolate black and white over sepia is to keep the warmth more to the shadows.

Then just for fun I did this one

Highlights hue 52 Sat 20
Shadows hue 211 saturation 25
I applied a little warmth to the highlights and coolness to the shadows. I like it.

Photography Tips 18: Basic Lightroom Edits

Most of my editing in the Develop module in Lightroom is pretty basic and clean. It starts with my import preset that is applied on import of RAW images into LR. I went over that a bit in this post Import Preset. The basic settings for mine are +3 blacks, +25 brightness, +40 clarity, +14 highlights, -9 shadows, medium contrast point curve, and the camera profile set to camera neutral.

I start where I left off with the import/organizing workflow, with a group of picked images in a folder, though a different group.

(click for larger image)

Then we move over to the develop module where we can see the import preset settings already applied.

(click for larger image)

Looking at this image I can see that it is a little cool, needs a white balance adjustment and it also is a little blown out in spots. I changed the white balance to cloudy (Temp from 6350 to 6500 and tint from +14 to +10). To deal with the blown areas I pulled up the recovery slider to +20, I pull it up to where I stop to see any recovery in the important areas (here on the flower) and then I pull it back just a bit. You can see in the image blow all that is blown now is the background. I pulled up the blacks to +10 and increased the brightness from +25 to +35 so it didn't look so flat. Since this is a flower and I wanted it to be a little colorful I also pulled the vibrance up to +20 (note that I never use the saturation slider, it is too heavy handed for how I like to edit, but I am sure it works for some people.


After that I thought it still looked a bit flat so I played around with the tone curve a little bit. Mainly I pulled down the left part of the curve just a bit to darken the shadows even more.


Next since I shot this at ISO 800 I needed to do a little bit of noise reduction just to clean up the images. I set the lumiance to +10 and the color to +10 as well. I start with the color slider and move it until nearly all of it is gone, and then I back off a little bit, I don't want it over-smooth, then I repeat with the luminance slider. Since 10 is a pretty low number for both of these I didn't use the other sliders to add back in detail at all.


Once I am happy with this image, since these are all pretty much the same I sync my edits.


To see how little editing it really is, let's compare a true SOOC image (with even my import preset settings removed other than the camera profile).


to my final edit


You can see that really it doesn't look a lot different, just a little more polished. Some images require a bit more work that this, and some I edit more just for fun. I will cover that in a future post.

Photography Tips 17: My Lightroom Import/Organization Workflow

I wrote up this post for a message board I am on, a lot of questions were being asked about how to use Lightroom so a couple of us wrote up our workflows. This first post is about how I import my images into Lightroom and how I use it to organize my files. Just because something works for me doesn't mean you have to do it that way or the way you have done it before is wrong. It is just how I do things, take what you will from it.

I working in Lightroom 3, some things will be different if you have an older version of Lightroom.

I choose to download my images myself to my harddrive in a specific folder structure.

you can see that step here and my folder structure. 2010>08 August>0817 Kitties and I place my RAW files in that folder. If I have multiple things from the same day that I want to have in different folders I do this now (like on our vacations I make a folder (starting with the date) for each main sight we see that day (pyramids, sphinx, step pyramid)). The reason that I organize like this is that I am pretty good at remembering approximately when something happened, and a single photo can't be taken on more than one day though it can include more than one subject. To deal with that I use the keywords which will help me find an image later if I know what was in it and keyworded it correctly.

Next I import the images into LR.

I click on the import button you see at the bottom of the left panel in the library module

This brings up the import dialog box.

In the source area I browse to the new folder of images I just made (or folders if there is more than one), then I confirm the images are correct in the preview and that I am Adding them to the catalog without moving them (at the top). I have the preview rendering set to minimal (on the right) and I apply my import develop preset and my copyright preset on import. I discussed my import preset in this post. When I do posts on my workflow in the develop module I will go over why I use those settings and how they have changed since that post. I normally also add keywords that apply to all the images during import. Then I import.

Then in the library module the images come up in grid (g) view, I switch to the expanded view (e) and scroll through the images marking my picks (p) and rejects to be deleted (x). Then I come back to grid view (g)

From here I will go up to the menu and remove the rejects from my hard drive and then filter to the picks to move to the develop module for editing (which will be covered in the next work flow post.

One of my new loves in the library module is collections. I have a collection set up that automatically pulls in any video files I import so that I can find them all quickly

I also have collections set up of images I want to print, and what size. I have one for macros, though this is generally my best macros. I have a few other collections I want to start, images for etsy shop, one for each nephew and my niece, one of blogged images, a portfolio one etc. This would be great for anyone in business to have one for each gallery area on their website and then they can use it to update that with new images.

Another of my favorite parts of the library module is the search bar at the top.

You can see on the right all the options you have to search by, which are super handy. I have used this before to see how much I use a certain lens, and how that changed when I went full frame for example.

Next time we will move on to the Develop module.

What a difference some sliders can make

We interrupt this longwood recap to share some lightroom fun. I rarely (if ever) make flower photos into black and white, but while I was playing with this one I realized it would make a great example of what a difference the black and white sliders can make in lightroom.

Here is the edited color image


And without playing with the sliders

Looks kind of flat and boring to me, even though the histogram is well spread across the tonal range.

and playing around with the sliders

It looks very different.

Before and After Monday: Potential Presets

It's only the second week in and already I want to try something a little different. I have been toying with making some presets for myself using the split toning part of lightroom. They don't work on all my images (and I really am only intending them for macros anyway) but I wanted to see if anyone else thought they looked good.

I realize the white flower is a little blown in these, but I noticed that after I exporting, labeled and uploaded into flickr. It was an easy fix with the recovery slider in LR once I noticed it.







And a different image with 2 other presets