A Scenic World

Here you go, Pablo :)

This photo started out as a pretty boring, quick snap I took on the way to the supermarket. It was pouring on my walk, but this flower caught my eye. I used my body to protect my non-weather-resistant macro lens and took a couple of shots. I didn’t think I’d use it as my self-portrait for the day, but once I got home and started applying presets, I really liked it. And because it WAS raining all day and I had nothing else to do, I got a little extravagant with the post-processing. See for yourself below.

(I’m going to try a new layout that will hopefully benefit non-Lightroom users. I’m going to show how each edit changes the original, even though this is not the workflow I use in Lightroom. Please let me know if this is confusing or useless or whatever in the comments!)

Original:

The first major difference between the original and the final is the white balance. I almost ALWAYS change the white balance, because it’s an easy way to get a dramatic look. In this case, the white balance started at a temperature of 4950 and a tint of -11. It was changed to a warmer 7238 with a tint of -6. There isn’t a lot of difference that’s immediately apparent:

The next item in the Lightroom Develop Menu is Basic Tone. This includes Exposure, Recovery, Fill Light, Blacks, Brightness, and Contrast. All of these were adjusted to varying degrees: exposure was dropped to -.66, recovery was pushed to 100, some fill light was added, and blacks were pushed. Contrast was pushed all the way.

Next is the Tone Curve, which consists of Highlights, Lights, Darks, and Shadows. Normally all values are set to 0. In this case, to accentuate the drops, the Highlights were raised to +55. Lights were dropped to -14. Darks were increased to +34 to show texture in the dark areas. Shadows were decreased to -37 to keep the overall dark look.

Next is Color. Basically, every color was affected in this photo. The Reds were pushed toward an oranger hue, desaturated, and had the luminance pushed to the max. Oranges were completely desaturated and had their luminance pushed to the max. I left the yellow in at standard saturation and pushed the luminance to make it brighter. Greens, blues, and purples were all desaturated fully.

Next in Lightroom is Split Toning, Details, and Vignetting. Split Toning allows highlights and shadow lights to be added. Both were added. The highlights were an olive green to counteract the orangey-nature of the photo, and the lowlights were khaki. I’m not sure why I chose those colors, but they often add to the overall color scheme of the photo.

Details includes sharpening and chromatic aberration and noise reduction. I trust my camera enough that I never touch these, not even the sharpening. Apostasy, I know!

There are two kinds of vignetting in Lightroom. One is an overall vignette applied to the entire photo, regardless of the crop. This one was used heavily in this photo. The second kind is a localized vignette that can be customized regarding shape and size and feathering. This kind was not used.

Next up is camera calibration. I don’t think that most people ever mess with this, but I almost always do. I get my light-colored eyes to pop by adjusting the blue channel. I make my pink skin look less ruddy by adjusting the red channel. In this photo, all channels were adjusted to varying degrees, although I think I did this step before I decided to basically desaturate everything. Still, it effects how much the orange section (even desaturated) pops.

Finally, we put them all together before adding localized edits.

Lightroom 2 allows a neutral-density filter, which wasn’t used in this photo. It also allows cloning, which also wasn’t used. What WAS used was the paint brush. The brush allows you to dodge, burn, add or subtract color, add or subtract clarity, add or subtract sharpening…you get the idea. I used the brush to add color and clarity to the flower and then used a different instance of the brush to brighten my fingers. And with those final edits, we get to the final outcome:

This entry was posted on Monday, June 15th, 2009 at 1:31 pm and is filed under 365, Lightroom Tutorial. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.