| Joined: | Mon Apr 2nd, 2012 |
| Location: | South Lakeland, UK |
| Posts: | 4066 |
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D200, Sigma 10-20 wide zoom at Mallory park. The white balance is wrong... way too blue.
OK, well in Lightroom, on the right hand side in edit image mode is a list of adjustments. They are intended to be worked through in order downwards. Not every adjustment has to be altered, some I almost never touch, others I have a 'standard' setting which seems to suit the majority of my work. I just work down the list and make adjustments which gradually improve the image to my eye. Starting with cropping and ending with sharpening.
A couple of upgrades ago they introduced 'Auto adjustment' which adjusts the main exposure related adjustments pretty well, subduing highlights revealing detail, and enhances the shadow areas again evening the exposure and bringing the shadow areas up without overdoing it. This is only a suggestion and I usually reduce the brightness from the auto setting. The auto adjustment is said to utilise auto intelligence? Machine learning, I have noticed it does seem to learn from my re-adjustments that I don't like over bright images and I am finding I don't have to correct it to my taste as often as I used to when it was first introduced, perhaps it's learning from me, or from all the other users too, perhaps I am not alone in not liking over bright images???
The auto adjustment does not address the micro contrast settings like clarity, texture, de-haze or vibrance; I usually apply about 25% clarity and a little texture depending on the image, de-haze I usually limit to 2 or 3%. Very rarely any vibrance, more often than not reducing it slightly.
Reducing the contrast a little can sometimes help. The difficulty in describing this process is that every image is different, I fail to understand how people can run a batch process on anything other than identical pictures like star-scapes or identical portraits, like school photographs which have identical lighting etc. Not only that but everyone has their own idea of how they want their photograph to look, their 'style' if you like.
There are also some very useful filters like the NIK filters, which used to be free, were gobbled up by Google, then spat out again and are currently available again in a slightly enhanced form for what I believe is a reasonably modest fee. These filters don't make any 'magic' adjustments, they simply make adjustments using the available parameters which any user can make but they do it in a very simple way, which saves the user having to learn advanced techniques to achieve their goal.
One particular NIK filter I do use sometimes is 'Detail Extractor' which is a powerful tool to ...extract detail! LOL It's very effective, especially in slightly shadowy areas and things like stone walls suddenly stand out and come to life. NIK filters have a very powerful selection tool which means you can apply the filter to exactly to part of the image you want to adjust. You can increase or reduce the effect of the filter by clicking in an area and adjusting sliders which increase or reduce the area the filter affects very effectively. It can, for example adjust hair tone without adjusting the background or visa versa. That is probably NIK filters most powerful aspect, individual selective points.
BUT, much of this can be avoided with a good, well lit, NEF exposure out of the camera. Always check the histogram, take trial exposures until you hit the sweet spot. Eventually you will be able to 'read' the histogram and recognise a nice exposure at a glance. The histogram is probably the biggest single benefit of digital photography besides the free film!
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Robert.