start-up
photographer VOLUME 3
In depth look at adobe photoshop lightroom and editing your photos.
LeVai SongSki
photoshop lightroom |1
In this day and age, a photographer is also bound to edit and retouch their own photos to give it their own artistic look and feel. I believe there is no such thing as the perfect photo, but as we see the world in our own way our photos will represent how we edit our photos. In this issue I will go in depth with how I dissect a photo and how I apply adobe photoshop lightroom tools to bring my photos to life.
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Editing Landscape portrait
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I would describe my style as High Definition Technicolor. The photo seems to come alive with all the colors coming at your visual tastes. The photo was taken in A mode (aperture) with color style set to neutral and ISO set to 100. A Nikon D3200 with 18-55mm lens was used. By also shooting in RAW, you can increase settings way past its nominal and still maintain the photos quality. However, I have found that shooting in RAW requires a quad core 64-bit computer to be able to handle these High Quality files.
Another Aspect of this photo is the composition of the photo itself. When I take a photo, I look at the range of colors I can get from the environment. From the sky to the grass, by capturing both somewhat proportioned, it produces a dynamic range of different colors. I will dissect how I break down this photo with Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. The software is available on adobe’s website free to try.
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Editing Landscape portrait
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Step One | Basic Settings
Highlights all the way down will bring all the overexposed areas back in detail. Shadows all the way up to bring all the dark areas into detail. Increase whites and decrease blacks to make up for highlights and shadows. decrease clarity a little to blend colors.
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Editing Landscape portrait
individual colors intensity can be boosted or decreased under Saturation tab. I decreased red and green a little for they looked too much. Then I boost blue to inscrease the sky’s intensity and boost magenta to increase shirt’s intensity.
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Step Two | Playing with Colors
boosting colors with vibrance and saturation. I set a standard not to go over 50 on vibrance or the colors become overkill.
play with Hue to change the greeness of the grass or change colors into different colors.
luminance is the lightness or darkness of a color. I find that boosting orange and yellow’s luminance helps to clear the skin tone. Green is boosted to lighten up the grass.
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Editing Landscape portrait
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Step Three | Noise & Sharpness
Noise is the grainy-ness of a photo. This happens when there is not enough light that comes through the lens. However, I find that setting a standard of 20 for noise reduction, It blends the photos colors to make it look cleaner. Then I boost sharpening a little to increase the clearity of the photo.
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Editing Landscape portrait
I like to play with the dynamic range of a photo. Thus the graduated filter can be used to change a photo’s range of lightness or darkness. In this step Click on the rectangle icon representing the graduated filter. Since a picture is based on exposure, or the lightness and darkness, I want to apply a difference of exposure to the sky and grass. So decrease the exposure under the graduated filter tab.
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Step Four | Graduated Filter
I start at the top right side and click and pull down. A darker shade is filtered down according to how far you bring down the filter. This gives a different dynamic range of blue to the sky. I also like to apply the same from the bottom up. The idea is to have a dynamic range of colors to bring the photo to life.
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Editing Landscape portrait
Next to the graduated filter is the radial filter. I like to use this filter to play with spot lighting certain aspects of the photo. By clicking on the radial filter tab and increasing the exposure I can click and drag to create a circle that I can move around to lighten certain parts of the photograph.
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Step Five | Radial Filter
click on invert so the settings only apply to whats inside the circle. boost feather to 100 to increase the blending.
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Editing Landscape portrait
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Step Six | Final Export These steps are not set in stone but a process I use to acheieve a Highly Vibrant style of photo. play around with the settings and filters to achieve different looks.
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Retouching Portraits
In some cases where you don’t have ideal variables such as proper lighting, makeup, bad camera settings, then lightroom can help a bit to retouch and glamor up a portrait. I like to utilize the radial and graduated filters to help with this process.
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Retouching Portraits
After the similar 5 steps noted before, you can use the radial filter to clean up the skin tone. Its like putting on make up for the subject. create a radial filter with inverted mask and set exposure to .25 while decreasing clearity to about -50.
After a radial filter is crated, you can right click to duplicate it and move it around the face to blurr out and clean up the skin. Repeat duplication as needed
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Use a graduated filter with an increase in exposure from upper left side towards right. This will brighten up the left side. repeat for the right side.
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start-up
photographer
VOLUME 3
THANKS FOR READING LeVai SongSki
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photoshop lightroom
levai.songski@gmail.com
July | 2015 | facebook.com/leivaspage
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