{"id":2887,"date":"2013-03-02T10:44:00","date_gmt":"2013-03-02T18:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/?p=2887"},"modified":"2019-11-29T10:02:53","modified_gmt":"2019-11-29T18:02:53","slug":"lightroom-tutorial-workflow-easy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/2013\/03\/02\/lightroom-tutorial-workflow-easy\/","title":{"rendered":"Lightroom Tutorial – Workflow Made Easy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lightroom is a great tool. It\u2019s quick and easy to use \u2013 once you get the hang of it. But sometimes mastering the workflow, the steps you go through to take a raw file to a \u2018final\u2019 image, can be a bit daunting.<\/p>\n

Let me say up front that Lightroom is an important part of my workflow but it\u2019s not the only part.\u00a0 Every photograph I work on starts in Lightroom but is completed in Photoshop.\u00a0 Nevertheless, Lightroom gets a photograph to about 80% of the final product.\u00a0 I know many people who use Lightroom exclusively and Photoshop only in rare circumstances if at all.<\/p>\n

So back to the workflow.\u00a0 Can it really be made easy?\u00a0 Yes it can.\u00a0 There are four major steps (not counting import \u2013 see Lightroom Tutorial \u2013 Importing Photographs<\/a>):<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Mechanical adjustments like dust spot removal and cropping<\/span><\/li>\n
  2. Tonality adjustments<\/span><\/li>\n
  3. Hue adjustments<\/span><\/li>\n
  4. Saturation adjustments<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Let\u2019s skip the first step and start with the second.\u00a0 The example will be in Lightroom 4.<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    Tonality Adjustments<\/h2>\n

    Just so we\u2019re on the same page, tonality is the lightness and darkness of the image, also referred to as luminosity.\u00a0 It has nothing to do with color.\u00a0 This is the best place to start the workflow.<\/p>\n

    Let\u2019s take an image I captured at Zabriskie Point in Death Valley National Park during our workshop in February, 2013.<\/p>\n

    \"lr_death_valley_130212__SM35423\"<\/a><\/p>\n

    This is a vignette of the wonderful eroded mud stone at Zabriskie Point.\u00a0 The photograph was captured in the beautiful pre-dawn light.\u00a0 It\u2019s one of my favorite types of light because of its soft quality.\u00a0 As you can see from the histogram in the Lightroom screen shot above it has a limited dynamic range and looks quite flat and uninteresting.<\/p>\n

    I generally start by creating a black point and a white point ( Making a Photograph \u2013 Black and White Points<\/a> ).\u00a0 Let\u2019s start with the black point.\u00a0 Use the Blacks<\/strong> adjustment in the Basic<\/strong> group.\u00a0 Move the slider to the left (negative numbers) until you start to see a tiny amount of shadow clipping.\u00a0 You can watch the triangle in the upper left corner of the histogram and when it turns white you have clipping.\u00a0 Back off just a little.\u00a0 (You can click on these images to see them more clearly.)<\/p>\n

    \"lr_death_valley_130212__SM35423-2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

    Notice how the image already looks better.\u00a0 By creating a black point we\u2019ve expanded the dynamic range (added contrast) on the shadow end of the histogram.<\/p>\n

    But we want to take advantage of the full dynamic range.\u00a0 So the next step is to set a white point which will stretch the histogram toward the right.\u00a0 And for that we use the Whites <\/strong>adjustment, also in the Basic <\/strong>group.\u00a0 Move the slider to the right (positive values) until you start to see white clipping (watch the triangle in the upper right hand corner of the histogram) and back off a little.<\/p>\n

    \"lr_death_valley_130212__SM35423-3\"<\/a><\/p>\n

    Often the image looks washed out at this point.\u00a0 In fact, color images do not benefit near as much from white points as do black and white images.\u00a0 We\u2019re going to fix the washed out look but not with the Whites <\/strong>adjustment.\u00a0 We\u2019ll adjust mid-tones with the Exposure <\/strong>adjustment.\u00a0 Move the slider to the left.\u00a0 I watch the bright parts of the image to judge how much of an Exposure <\/strong>adjustment to apply.\u00a0 I like to get the bright parts of the image looking just about right.<\/p>\n

    \"lr_death_valley_130212__SM35423-4\"<\/a><\/p>\n

    Yes, that\u2019s nice.\u00a0 But the shadows are a bit blocked up, a bit muddy.\u00a0 So I turn to the Shadows <\/strong>adjustment to open them up.\u00a0 Shadow detail is very important.<\/p>\n

    \"lr_death_valley_130212__SM35423-5\"<\/a><\/p>\n

    The tonalities now look pretty good so it\u2019s time to turn to Hue adjustments.<\/p>\n

    Hue Adjustments<\/h2>\n

    Hue is color.\u00a0 Hue adjustments are intended to remove color casts and have nothing to do with the purity or intensity of the color.\u00a0 That\u2019s saturation.<\/p>\n

    Because this photograph was taken before sunrise the source of light is the blue sky. So the light is very cool; that is, blue.\u00a0 While there are other ways to adjust hue in Lightroom, we will use Temperature <\/strong>and Tint <\/strong>for this example.\u00a0 These are also found in the Basic <\/strong>group.\u00a0 Temperature <\/strong>adjusts the hue from blue to yellow.\u00a0 Decreasing Temperature <\/strong>moves the hue towards blue while increasing moves it towards yellow.\u00a0 Tint <\/strong>adjusts hue from green to magenta.\u00a0 Moving Tint <\/strong>to the left adds green and to the right adds magenta.<\/p>\n

    The hue you choose for your photograph will have a powerful impact on the emotion it communicates.\u00a0 I\u2019m going to warm this up a bit but not too much.<\/p>\n

    \"lr_death_valley_130212__SM35423-6\"<\/a><\/p>\n

    This warms up the mud stone to it\u2019s familiar tan color while still preserving some of the subtle blues.\u00a0 If I increased the Temperature <\/strong>even more this subtlety would be lost.<\/p>\n

    The best way to use these two adjustments is to slide them from left to right, back and forth, going to the point where the image definitely looks bad (yucky is the technical term).\u00a0 Go back and forth from one yuck extreme to the other and slowly zero in on the hue you want.\u00a0 You can do that with both adjustments \u2013 Temperature <\/strong>and Tint<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

    Saturation Adjustments<\/h2>\n

    Lightroom also offers numerous ways to adjust saturation.\u00a0 But one very powerful adjustment is Vibrance <\/strong>(see Color Saturation in Lightroom<\/a>).\u00a0 It\u2019s powerful because of its subtlety.\u00a0 It can produce very believable results.\u00a0 So with the addition of some Vibrance <\/strong>we get the following.<\/p>\n

    \"lr_death_valley_130212__SM35423-7\"<\/a><\/p>\n

    You can see that this brings out the blues, greens and yellows very nicely.<\/p>\n

    <\/h2>\n

    <\/h2>\n

    Bonus Adjustments<\/h2>\n

    The image is looking very nice now but there are a couple more adjustments I like to do at this point.<\/p>\n

    Clarity <\/strong>is an adjustment that can really make the image pop.\u00a0 A little Clarity <\/strong>brings it to life.<\/p>\n

    \"lr_death_valley_130212__SM35423-8\"<\/a><\/p>\n

    You can see that the contrast is affected.\u00a0 Clarity does in fact adjust contrast but in a very sophisticated way.\u00a0 First, it does Local Contrast Enhancements rather than global contrast enhancements, looking for and adjusting contrast in smaller, localized areas.\u00a0 And second, it only performs the local contrast enhancement on mid-tones.\u00a0 The shadows and highlights are not affected.\u00a0 Before Lightroom introduced Clarity <\/strong>in version 1.1 the only way to get a similar effect was with Photoshop Unsharp Mask <\/strong>with a small Amount and large Radius.\u00a0 I used that technique a lot before Lightroom came along with Clarity<\/strong>.\u00a0 You want to use Clarity <\/strong>judiciously though.\u00a0 Too much of a good thing can result in harsh looking images.\u00a0 And a little known secret about Clarity is you can do some very nice smoothing with negative adjustments (ah, a topic for a future blog post).<\/p>\n

    The other bonus adjustment is Post-Crop Vignetting<\/strong>.\u00a0 This used to be a pretty useless adjustment when it was simple Vignetting.\u00a0 But in Lightroom 3 Adobe added \u201cPost-Crop\u201d to Vignetting so that it would work correctly on cropped images.<\/p>\n

    Post-Crop Vignetting <\/strong>is found in the Effects<\/strong> group along with Grain<\/strong>.\u00a0 A little negative value will slightly darken the corners.<\/p>\n

    \"lr_death_valley_130212__SM35423-9\"<\/a><\/p>\n

    Vignetting is an important technique for focusing the viewer\u2019s attention on the subject in the center of the image.\u00a0 Our eyes are naturally drawn to the brighter elements in the image and away from the dark.\u00a0 So darkening the corners helps keep the viewer\u2019s eye away from the edges and thereby escaping from the frame.<\/p>\n

    <\/h2>\n

    Summary<\/h2>\n

    Let\u2019s summarize the steps and adjustments we\u2019ve demonstrated.<\/p>\n

    1,\u00a0 Mechanical adjustments<\/strong> (we skipped that part)<\/p>\n

    2.\u00a0 Tonality Adjustments
    \nA.\u00a0 Set black point with Blacks<\/strong>
    \nB.\u00a0 Set white point with Whites<\/strong>
    \nC.\u00a0 Adjust mid-tones with Exposure<\/strong>
    \nD.\u00a0 Open up shadows with Shadows<\/strong><\/p>\n

    3.\u00a0 Hue Adjustments<\/strong>
    \nA.\u00a0 Temperature<\/strong> (blue\/yellow) and Tint <\/strong>(green\/magenta)<\/p>\n

    4.\u00a0 Saturation Adjustments<\/strong>
    \nA.\u00a0 Vibrance<\/strong> for subtle saturation<\/p>\n

    5.\u00a0 Bonus Adjustments<\/strong>
    \nA.\u00a0 Clarity<\/strong> for local contrast enhancement
    \nB.\u00a0 Post-Crop Vignetting<\/strong> to imprison the eye within the frame<\/p>\n

    Let\u2019s take a look at the before and after.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
    \n

    \"death_valley_130212__SM35423\"<\/a><\/p>\n<\/td>\n

    		\n

    \"death_valley_130212__SM35423-9\"<\/a><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

    One of the nice things about this simple workflow is how quickly it can be.\u00a0 I use it to quickly evaluate an image to see if it\u2019s worth spending more time on, if there\u2019s a reasonable possible it will end up in the final selection.\u00a0 These steps can be run through in a matter of minutes.<\/p>\n

    So, if you\u2019re workflow is still a bit helter skelter give this a try.\u00a0 It\u2019s good to put a little structure around your workflow, even though post processing is a key part of the creative process.\u00a0 And the outline above is by no means intended to be the complete picture.\u00a0 There is usually lot more that needs to be done to create a successful image.\u00a0 But this outline is a great place to start.<\/p>\n

    \n

    Join the conversation and leave a comment.\u00a0 We would like to hear from you, your experiences and reaction.<\/p>\n

    If you enjoyed this post why not share it with a friend or on Facebook.\u00a0 We have links for that at the top for that purpose.\u00a0 And we would appreciate the exposure.<\/p>\n

    We do photography workshops.\u00a0 Come on out and join us.\u00a0 Click here to check us out.<\/a><\/p>\n

    You can also check out our photography.\u00a0 Click here.<\/a><\/p>\n

    (7190)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Simplify your Lightroom workflow with these easy steps.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,273],"tags":[563,572,58,1005,865,371,373,509,670,1003,672,128,367,475,1011,1012,991,993,87,992,297,859,1010,999,1007,266,879,1009,813,1001,996,635,279,365,543,376,776,47,880,994,998,506,13,48,163,1008,1006,81,366,995,473,1000,650,931,897,127,1004,873,898,474,372,867,46,93,997,1002,89],"class_list":["post-2887","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-how-to-articles","category-lightroom-how-to-articles-articles","tag-adjustment","tag-adjustments","tag-adobe","tag-amount","tag-basic","tag-black-point","tag-blacks","tag-blue","tag-brighter","tag-clarity","tag-clipping","tag-color","tag-contrast","tag-cool","tag-corners","tag-creative-process","tag-crop","tag-cropping","tag-death-valley","tag-dust-spot","tag-dynamic-range","tag-edges","tag-elements","tag-emotion","tag-enhancement","tag-exposure","tag-global","tag-grain","tag-green","tag-greens","tag-highlight","tag-highlights","tag-histogram","tag-hue","tag-image","tag-images","tag-impact","tag-lightroom","tag-local","tag-luminosity","tag-magenta","tag-photo","tag-photography","tag-photoshop","tag-post-processing","tag-post-crop-vignette","tag-radius","tag-raw","tag-saturation","tag-shadow","tag-shadows","tag-tan","tag-temperature","tag-tint","tag-tonal","tag-tonality","tag-unsharp-mask","tag-vibrance","tag-vignette","tag-warm","tag-white-point","tag-whites","tag-workflow","tag-workshop","tag-yellow","tag-yellows","tag-zabriskie-point"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Nl7-Kz","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2887","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2887"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2887\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4692,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2887\/revisions\/4692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}