Post-processing is, in many ways, deeper and more complex than taking the photograph itself. While that provides greater creative control and room to maneuver, it also creates more pitfalls. Here are some crucial tips for post processing your images.
The tone curve is by far one of the most versatile, efficient, and powerful adjustment tools in Lightroom, and mastering it can take you a long way to better image edits and more creative control. If you are unfamiliar with the tool, this fantastic video will show you not only you can use it to adjust things like shadows and highlights, but how it can also be used to color grade an image.
Luminar 4 has brought with it some advanced AI features that can save a lot of time in edits and enable new creative avenues. How does it hold up against Lightroom when it comes to editing? This great video shows a photographer processing the same image in both apps and what you can expect from each.
As someone who shoots regularly with a wide-angle lens and seems to have a complete inability to hold a camera level, knowing how to straighten photographs in Lightroom and Photoshop is essential. This short tutorial runs you through some fundamental skills.
How essential is sharpening to your editing workflow? Do you actually know how the sharpening sliders work?
The more time you spend as a photographer, the bigger your image collection will become, and if you do not put good effort into keeping things organized, it can become difficult to navigate through all your photos. This great video will show you how to use star ratings and keywords to keep everything organized and easy to find.
Polarizing filters are one of the last camera filters that cannot be replicated by software. But is a polarizing filter better to reduce haze in landscapes than Adobe Lightroom's Dehaze tool?
For many years now, I have religiously bracketed all my landscape images and macro images of flowers. This is why you should give serious consideration to always doing the same.
While Lightroom is generally used for cataloging, global edits, and basic local edits and Photoshop is used for more advanced post-processing, there is a definite overlap between the features and capabilities of the two applications. This great video details when you should use Photoshop versus when you can afford to stay in Lightroom.
Whether you need to edit on the fly or you can't justify dropping a large wad of cash on a editing machine, making adjustments on Lightroom mobile could be an option for you. But can it handle 100 megapixel raw files, and if so, how well?
You might think that Photoshop is the place for more advanced edits, and while that is generally true, it often surprises people just how much you can get done using only Lightroom. This excellent video will show you five great editing tricks to take your images further when working in Lightroom.
Last week, I sat down to do four portrait retouching courses from Chris Orwig. This enormous bundle of informative and accessible tutorials is packed with easily digested information. My confidence when it comes to editing portraits is now significantly higher.
The newly announced Microsoft Surface Book 3 is reportedly their most powerful laptop ever. So could it be good enough to destroy the competition? Namely, the new Apple Macbook Pro 2020. Photographers and creatives alike love Apple products for editing workflows, but could this be the beginning of the end for Apple's domination of the creative market?
Watching how others work is one way to improve. Watching how extremely successful people work is an even faster, better way to improve. In this video, watch how a very popular photographer edits images sent to him.
Lightroom is an intricate program with a wide variety of functions, and it can be easy to overlook some of its features. This fantastic video will show you three lesser-known Lightroom tricks that are really useful in a variety of scenarios.
Recent updates to Lightroom Classic have brought a new level of control over local adjustments: Range Masks. Within this, the Color Range Mask allows you to be clumsy with your adjustment brushes while targeting very specific parts of your image. Here’s a detailed look at how it works.
Most of the time, we think of Lightroom as a place for cataloging and global edits, but it also has some great local adjustment capabilities that can really put the finishing touches on an image. This excellent video will show you how to take advantage of those local adjustment features to improve your landscape images.
There is no doubt that a lot of photographers have strong opinions about Lightroom, but it remains the standard application for cataloging photos and performing basic global edits for a lot of creatives. This great video discusses three things one photographer loves about the program and three things he hates.
There is a bit of trend toward heavy post-processing in landscape photography these days, with advanced techniques like luminosity masks and focus stacking prevailing in lots of images. And while there is certainly nothing inherently wrong with those techniques, sometimes, it is satisfying to use simple, straightforward techniques to finish a photo. This great video will show you a range of simple methods in Lightroom for creating compelling landscape images.
If you are someone who frequently finds themselves coming home with large collections of very similar images, batch editing can save you loads of time and help you ensure more consistency in your edits. This excellent video will show you the power of batch editing in Lightroom.
We all know about Luminar. The post-processing software from the company Skylum is quite popular amongst a lot of amateur photographers. Perhaps professional photographers also. It is said to be an alternative for Lightroom, but I don’t agree.
Adobe introduced the Range Mask to Lightroom Classic a few years ago, and it’s a useful means for targeting an adjustment when the local tools — Adjustment Brush, Gradient Filter, and Radial Filter — are simply too clumsy. If you want a deeper understanding of how it functions in relation to Luminance, read on.
Lightroom is an intricate program, and for many photographers, it serves as the central hub for their images, making it crucial that you develop good habits in how you use the application. This excellent video discusses five common mistakes beginners make when using Lightroom and what you can do to improve your workflow.
RAW Power 3.0 gives Mac-based photographers a solid way to handle raw file editing that nicely syncs up with a version that runs on iOS.
Stockpiling makes some people feel secure against unexpected disasters and crises. Which crisis justifies stockpiling photographs? Let’s take a look at how we can reduce our amount of unnecessary data.
Lightroom's color brush is an odd tool, but paired with a range mask, it can be a fantastic means of making water look far more appealing. Here's how I transformed the muddy brown of this lake into water so blue that you'll want to jump in and go for a swim.
Late last year, Really Nice Images released their latest Lightroom preset pack, All Films 5. I've spent the last couple of months experimenting with it and will share my experience with it so far. I'll dig into the flagship features of creative profiles, native fading, and highlight protection to see if they are all they're cracked up to be.
The final step of any Lightroom session is the export process, and while it might seem like a simple thing, the application actually provides you with a wide range of options that allow you to customize the output to your needs. This excellent video will show you everything you need to know about exporting photos from Lightroom.
Capture One is multifaceted image processing and asset management software. As a raw processor, it is considered the gold standard, supporting over 500+ cameras, and with it comes a uniquely powerful tool-set for developing, color grading, and tethering. But that is just the tip of the technological iceberg that is Capture One. With a focus on user experience, its mountain of capability and complexity is hidden under a veneer of simplicity so as to make working with your images fast, focused, and easy. What we'll address today should help in understanding how the software works and how to bend it to your liking, hopefully resulting in an even better experience.
Color is one of the most powerful triggers in life, and in photography, it is no different. We are irresistibly drawn to warm colors, sunrises and sunsets, the golden haze of dawn in a fall woodland, or the luster of summer strawberries.
Lightroom has a lot of great tools for editing your photos and putting your creative touch on your work, but one that gets a little less attention than some of the more common functions is the split toning panel. Nonetheless, it is a great way to add a personal touch to your images and develop your own style. This great video will show you how to take advantage of the split toning panel in Lightroom for your landscape images.
Would you throw 10,000 printed photographs in a bathtub to search for an image of your child’s first steps? No! So, why should you do it with digital files?
The raw versus JPEG debate is one of my favorite topics. As a software developer and photo nerd, I tend to gravitate towards the technical side of things.
There are a number of ways to get creative with color in Lightroom. I just learned a new one and have a feeling you might too.
Not all of us were born with our preferred eye color, and given that we can't change genetics, you will sometimes have clients who want to change their eye color. It is a pretty straightforward process, and this excellent video tutorial will show you how you can do it without even having to leave Lightroom.
