Essential Development 20 Great Techniques For Lightroom 4

Sen McCormack
ESSENTIAL DEVELOPMENT
20 GREAT TECHNIQUES FOR LIGHTROOM 4
Sen McCormack
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INTRODUCTION. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1 UNDERSTANDING THE HISTOGRAM. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2 BACK TO BASICS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3 CAMERA PROFILES. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
4 MAKING WHITE WHITE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
5 BEAUTY RETOUCHING. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
6 DODGE AND BURN FOR BEAUTY. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
7 CROSS PROCESSING.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
8 ACHIEVING A FILMIC LOOK.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
9 IMAGE TONING. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
10 CROPPING INSIDE AND OUTSIDE THE IMAGE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
11 STRAIGHTENING PHOTOS.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
12 FIXING SKIES IN LIGHTROOM. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
13 TILT SHIFT. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
14 EFFECTIVE SHARPENING. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
15 REDUCING IMAGE NOISE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
16 CORRECTING LENS ISSUES. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
17 DRAWING US IN: VIGNETTE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
18 PRESETS: MAKING, USING AND SAVING, PRESETS AS BUILDING BLOCKS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
19 FIXING MORE THAN ONE PHOTO.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
20 EDIT IN PHOTOSHOP. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
CONCLUSION.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
INTRODUCTION
Adobe Lightroom has been my favourite photo software for over six years now, right from when it was
a day old as a public beta. Back then you couldnt even crop with it. Still, it had one thing going for it.
Lightroom could manage and work with
internally as a series of instructions. Imagine
look of the photo. Together they make a re-
your raw files, just as if they were any other
the original file being the block of marble,
ally powerful tool to draw the very best from
photo file, like a JPG or TIFF. You have to
with the settings being the instructions on
your photos. Develop itself is directly tied
consider that back then youd practically
where to chisel to make your statue of David.
to Adobe Camera Raw. In fact the version
need to open each file in a raw convertor
Due to this methodology, you can easily
numbers have a general correspondence.
and then in Adobe Photoshop before you
change settings at any time. Its only when
Lightroom 3.6 matches Camera Raw 6.6, 4.0
could work on it. If you messed up, youd
you go to the output modules, or export/pub-
matches 7.0, and so on. Occasionally a bug fix
have to start from scratch. Batch processing?
lish that Lightroom takes the original file, adds
may require a temporary version jump, but
If youd a few spare years, maybe! If you
the settings, and chisels a new file from them.
it gets back in line quickly. They also share
wanted to manage your photos, youd need
Photoshop, on the other hand, destructively
common code, so any settings you can apply
an additional DAM program (thats digital
changes pixels, making it hard to go back. Yes,
in Develop can be applied in Camera Raw.
asset management), like iView or Portfolio.
you can use Smart Objects and Smart Filters,
In this eBook, my aim is not to have a
Lightroom helped change that environment,
but there comes a point when doing this to
rundown of what a tool does, but rather
allowing you to process and manage your
a batch of images becomes unwieldy, not to
what we can use it for. Obviously there
raw files (and other photo formats)in one
mention the massive files sizes involved.
needs to be some explanation, so there is
program. To work efficiently and allow a high
Develop is the heart of Lightroom. Its where
some of that. Even if you do understand
degree of versatility, Lightroom uses a type
the photos come to life. The left panel is
a tool, there will be additional things like
of editing called parametric editing. What
more about management: Presets, Snapshots,
shortcuts that arent commonly known,
this means is that settings you make are ap-
History and, of course, Collections. The right
so youll still pick up something as a
plied to a fresh preview of the file and saved
panel is about the settings that control the
more experienced user. So lets begin!
1 UNDERSTANDING THE HISTOGRAM

At the top of the right panel in Develop is the histogram. Youve possibly seen one on the back of your camera in
the preview modes. What does it all mean?
If there are a lot of tones to the
left of the image, and few to the
right, its probable that the image is
underexposed (of course, if all the
colours in the image are mid grey and
below in tone, then it may be okay!).
Our second image has a histogram
like this, but the image is correctly
Well, the histogram is a graphical view of
exposed. If the tones are mostly to
all the colours and tones in your photo. It
the right, with few on the left, the
moves from the darkest tones on the left,
image is probably overexposed.
to the brightest tones on the right. The

distribution of the tones and colours can
tell us a lot about the photo. For example,
if we shot against a grey background as
in our first shot, we should see a spike in
the middle of the photo that looks grey.
If there are three spikes of red, green, and
blue there, instead of one solid spike, we
know that the white balance is off, because
grey is equal parts red, green, and blue.

This night shot might appear underexposed as
we look at the histogram, but its exactly right.
On average, most correctly exposed histograms

will have tones that go from left to right
with a concentration in the middle.

Develop goes one step further with the
Process Version refers to the method Lightroom
histogramit allows you to drag sec-
uses to convert the raw information into the
tions to change how the image looks.
rendered photo. The year of the Process Version
There are five sections that correspond
indicates when it was introduced. The original
to blacks, shadows, exposure, highlights,
rendering had no name, but became Process Ver-
and whites, from left to right. This is
sion 2003 when a new version was introduced in
for the new Process Version 2012.
2010. Process Version 2010 had the same controls

as 2003, but had more control with better image quality. Process Version 2012 is a complete
departure offering far more control! If youve
upgraded from an older version of Lightroom,
any files youve worked on in Develop will be
an older Process Version. If youre happy with
the look of these files, do NOT update them. The
translation between Process Version 2012 and
older versions is not exact and may radically
alter the photo. Usually its fine, but if youre
making an edition of 25 gallery prints, best to
keep them identical! The quickest way to update
your image to the new process version is to click
on the warning near the bottom right of the image and press Update. You can also find it in the
Camera Calibration panel, or the Settings menu.

In addition to the five
What does this mean for our
control areas, there are also
photo? Well, often highlights are
two triangles on the top left
more important than shadows, so
and right of the histogram.
a little shadow clipping might be
Hovering over the left
okay. If the shot is a face against a
triangle will show where
sky on a dull day, its probably fine
the blacks are clipping in
to clip the highlight detail in the
blue (i.e. going to full black
sky to correctly expose the face.
with no detail), and the

right triangle shows where
the whites are clipping in
red (this time full white
with no detail). You can
make them stay on by
clicking on the triangle, or
use the shortcut key J to
toggle both on and off.
2 BACK TO BASICS
Armed with our histogram knowledge, we can now use it to fix and enhance our photos.
The Basic panel is designed to be used with a top-down approach, working in pairs of sliders.
Here were discussing the Tone section in the middle of the panel. Before we start, you may want to increase the size of the panel, which gives more precision
in the sliders. Go to the left edge of the right panel. The cursor will change to a double-headed arrow. Click and drag the panel over to the left. If youre totally
mad and want an even bigger panel, hold down the Alt key on PC, Option key on Mac and then drag; you can get past the halfway mark of the screen with this.
THE SLIDERS
Highlights controls the brighter areas in the
that overlapping I talked about earlier. Blacks
pulling back that final bit of dark, or for
Exposure is the key slider to correcting
photo, all the way from above the midtones
and Shadows overlap a bit, but Shadows
blocking up to create a darker mood.
images in Lightroom. Its not a digital copy
to the brightest parts of the images. There
has a wider range. For this reason, you
Because of the overlap in controls, once
of camera exposure, which will hard clip
is overlap with both Exposure and Whites.
should aim to use Shadows before Blacks.
youve done a pass-through, you may need
highlights if you go too far. Its much gen-
In fact the whole set of controls is adaptive,
tler than that. As you increase exposure,
meaning that changes in one slider will alter
Whites is next and covers the extreme
ous settings. This is absolutely normal, it
it will try to protect highlights as much as
the range of another slider. Changing expo-
lightest part of your image. Generally,
doesnt mean you did anything wrong.
it can. Think of Exposure as your midtone
sure means that the Highlights controls work
Whites should be used after the overall
One key point about the Tone sliders (barring
control and you wont go far wrong. Where
on a different range of the image. This is what
balance of the image has been set using
Contrast) is that they all darken their part of
Exposure is set does influence the rest of the
makes Lightroom so powerful. If you have a
the previous controls. Its great for pulling
the image when moved to the left, and light-
controls, and there is overlap between them.
small amount of highlight clipping that you
back that last bit of clipping, or just push-
en it when moved to the right. Older versions
want to fix, try Highlights before Whites.
ing the last bit of range into a photo.
of Camera Raw and Lightroom, along with
to go back and tweak some of the previ-
Contrast controls the depth of tone in the
most other raw convertors, have varying slid-
photo. Increasing contrast will make the
Shadows controls the darkest parts of the
Blacks is the final slider for basic image
ers, so I feel this adds greatly to the intuitive
blacks darker and the whites lighter. Decreas-
image right down to the blacks. You can even
control. It works on the absolute dark-
feel Lightroom now has for raw processing.
ing it will make the photo more grey and flat.
clip the image with it. Again, this is part of
est parts of the image, and is great for
2 BACK TO BASICS
GETTING THE MOST FROM TONE
Even if youve nailed the correct exposure, the limited dynamic range of most digital SLR cameras means that you can
still tweak your photo to bring it closer to what you saw, or
closer to how you visualized the image as you shot.
First lets look at fixing exposures using a mechanical method

rather than visually guessing. Weve already seen that dragging in the histogram will alter settings (and move sliders).
If you hold down the Alt key (Option on Mac) and aim for either
the Blacks or Shadows in the histogram (or grab their sliders),
the main image area will go white. If theres nothing clipping in
the darker parts, the whole area should be white. Any other visible colours indicate the shadows are clipping at those points. By
dragging Blacks or Shadows to the right, these will lessen until
the whole image becomes white. Depending on the photo, there
may still be a few small sections that never become white. Usually these are areas of deep shadow that we would never expect
to see with our eyes. And like I mentioned before, the eye is
more forgiving of blocked shadows than clipped highlights.
2 BACK TO BASICS
Speaking of highlights, the Alt/Option
trick works on Exposure, Highlights, and
Whites too, except that the image goes
black, with clipped areas appearing white,
or whatever colour mix is clipping. If there
is a lot of clipping, begin with reducing
Exposure, then Highlights, then Whites.
Why this order? If the image is very overexposed, then reducing the overall exposure
should be the first step. If you eliminate
the clipping using only Exposure, often
the rest of the image is too dark. Better to
have Exposure do the heavy lifting, then
finesse with Highlights and Whites.
A final trick for the speedsters out there.

Using the period (.) and comma (,) shortcuts
in the Basic panel will move you from slider
to slider forward and backward respectively,
while + and - will decrease or increase
them. A bezel (screen message overlay)
will appear as you change between sliders
to let you know which one youve moved
onto. Finally, semicolon (;) will reset the
current value to zero. This goes for all the
sliders in Basic, not just the Tone section.
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2 BACK TO BASICS
FA K I N G H D R
High dynamic range
photography is really
popular, and well look
at it more in our bonus
section on Photoshop.
Lightroom does offer
a way to get that look
without the added need
for a series of bracketed
photos. The trick is
simple. Set your exposure
as required, then put
Shadows to +100 and
Highlights to -100.
Then tweak the Blacks
and Whites to suit!
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3 CAMERA PROFILES
The Profile options are Lightrooms equivalent to the Picture Styles or Modes you get in camera.
They allow a specific rendering to be applied to your photo, giving it a one-click look.
Theyre designed to emulate the Picture Styles and Modes with similar names, at their default settings.
The Profile menu is tucked away
Here we see the Canon profiles, including Adobe Standard.
in the forbidden zone (i.e. the
Simply click on the one you want to use and thats it!
Camera Calibration panel).
Heres a before and after with Adobe Standard as the

before, and Camera Landscape as the after.
You can make your own profile using a tool like the ColorChecker Passport
from X-Rite. Basically you shoot the Passport under the lighting you want
the profile for, then run the plug-in that comes with the Passport. It creates
a new profile, which becomes available when you restart Lightroom.
Hard-core fans can play with the DNG Profile Editor
(http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/DNG_Profiles).
For instance, if you have an infrared converted camera, Lightrooms white

balance doesnt go low enough. By creating a DNG of an infrared file, you can
set the white balance much lower in the DNG Profile Editor and save it as a
profile. Ive posted a video explaining the process on my blog :
http://www.pixiq.com/article/creating-an-ir-camera-profile.
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4 MAKING WHITE WHITE

Back in the days of film, you had two options. You could have tungsten film for indoors and daylight film for
outdoors. Anything else required carrying gels to change the colours of lights, or even filters for when you had the
wrong type of film in the camera.
So what is white balance, and why should we care? After
If you used an auto white balance setting, or an
The second method is an eyedropper tool and finally,
all, white is white, isnt it? Well, it is and it isnt. Its
inappropriate setting (like tungsten after moving from
there is also a set of temperature and tint controls.
influenced by the light we see our white object in. White
inside to outside), its okay, we can still correct that.
paper in tungsten light is actually yellow, while in shade

its blue. Under fluorescent lights it can even be green.
Lightroom has three ways to set white balance in
Even though our eyes and brain see it as white, the camera
the white balance section of the Basic panel. You can
will see it with these different tints and temperatures.
use the shortcut W to access this section. The first

method is a drop-down menu of preset colour.
Before Camera Raw and Lightroom, fixing colour

issues could be complex, so lets look at strategies for
getting good colour. The first place to start with white
balance is in camera. In addition to lighting presets
like daylight, flash, tungsten, etc., theres also a custom
setting. To use this, shoot a grey card and use this to
set the custom white balance in the camera. You can
also use tools like the X-Rite ColorChecker Passport to
set white balance and have a colour record. It can even
make camera profiles, but which we mentioned earlier.
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To use the presets, click on the name that most accurately
To use the eyedropper tool, select part of the image
example. If youve used a grey card or a colour checker,
represents the light you shot in: As Shot, Auto, Daylight,
that you know to be neutral grey (anywhere from black
you can click on the grey to set the right balance,
Flash, Fluorescent, Shade, Cloudy, and Custom. As Shot
to white). Be warned that some things that appear
which can be copied or synced to other photos.
is the camera setting. A quick word on this: different
white may not be white. Paper usually has bleaching
cameras use slightly different numbers for the same colour
agents and colorants that make it slightly blue, for
temperature. The camera might say

5000k, but Lightroom might say
5200k for the same photo. Whats
happening is Lightroom is matching
the camera colour to Lightrooms
colour. Its not actually changing
the file. Also, when you try and
sync white balance across files, As
Shot wont change the files at all
(assuming they havent already
been changed manually) because
theyre already at their as-shot
values. Simply change the preset to
Custom, and then they will sync.
If the preset settings arent close

enough, click on the eyedropper
icon. To get the best out of the
tool, turn the toolbar on (either
from the View menu, or with
the shortcut T). This is where
the eyedropper settings live.
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By default, a single click will apply the new white balance and release the eyedropper. Great if you got exactly the right colour on the first go, but not so much if you need a few clicks.
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This is where the toolbar comes in. The first option is
Show Loupe, gives a grid that zooms in on the area at the
size of the area Lightroom uses to calculate the white
Auto Dismiss. Clearing this checkbox means you can try
cursor tip, so you can see at the pixel level what youre
balance. At the bottom, RGB percentages show the colour
a few target areas to find the right one. The next option,
actually choosing. The Scale slider lets you change the
balance. For any neutral colour, all three should match.

If you dont have any neutral colour in the photo, then
works the same way but with green and magenta. Tint
the left and right arrow keys to make sure the image
the sliders in the Basic panel are your final option.
is more subtle, so you need to be careful with it.
thats been corrected has focusit will be lighter.
The sliders colours provide a visual representation of
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how they work: to make a photo cooler in tone, move
When youve got the white balance right, you can copy
the Temperature slider into the blue area (i.e. left) and
the settings easily. In the filmstrip, select the photos to
to warm it, move to the yellow area (i.e. right). Tint
which you want to copy the white balance settings. Use

Then click the Sync button, choose only White Balance, and all the other files will have the new white balance.
One cool addition to Lightroom 4 is that the Brush tool (in the tool strip under the histogram) now has
Temperature and Tint sliders; well discuss the Brush tool in fuller detail in the next section. This means in
mixed colour situations (for example a shot near a window indoors mixing yellow tungsten light and blue
daylight), you can correct the overall white balance and then fix the areas with different lighting.
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For example, heres the Martin Tea-House Folly, lit by an LED torch. The colour of the sky is way off, so we correct it using the Temperature and Tint sliders.
We could try clicking on the stones in the building, but then wed have to correct the sky with the Brush tool, and its much larger.
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After weve fixed the overall white balance, the Tea-House Folly is now a rather bad shade of green. The grass has changed too, but it still looks natural. Click the Brush icon under the
histogram, or use the shortcut K to open the brush. By setting the brush to roughly the opposite temperature and tint as the main white balance, we have a starting point to fix this.
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Paint precisely along the edge of the monument with a small hard brush, which you can set by decreasing both the Size slider and the Feather slider. Ive done it without Auto Mask,
but you may find it helps. Auto Mask is designed to find edges and only allow the brush to paint areas similar to where you start painting with the brush. A large brush will do for the
rest, use Size to increase. Where the monument meets the grass isnt as critical, so a soft edge will do for this. Set the Feather Slider to 100 to soften it. Here we have the final look.
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By pressing O, we can see the mask. Even from here we could also brighten the Tea Folly and perhaps even warm it up more.
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5 BEAUTY RETOUCHING
While high-end retouching is primarily the domain of pixel editors like Photoshop, there are still loads of things
that can be done in Lightroom for beauty retouching. Blemish removal, skin softening, and even digital makeup
are all possible. In this section well look at most of these, and in the next well look at using dodge and burn
for face shaping.
B L E M I S H R E M O VA L
Spot removal works by sampling a local area when you

click on a point to be fixed. You can also manually choose
The first thing that needs to be done in a beauty retouch is blemish
the area it samples from. The spot removal panel contains
removal. The Spot Removal tool works very well for this, although it
only a few options: Clone or Heal, Size and Opacity. Clone
wasnt originally designed for it. Its located in the tool strip under
copies the sampled area and feathers it over the point
the histogram, and has the shortcut Q to toggle it on and off.
you click. Heal blends the point and the sampled area.
Size controls how large the spot removal is, while Opacity sets the level of transparency of the corrected area.
22
5 BEAUTY RETOUCHING
And now in English. If you click

anywhere in the image, the Spot
Removal tool automatically picks an
area to copy from. Sometimes it gets
it wrong, but you can simply drag the
source circle (the thicker of the two
visible circles) to somewhere better.
23
5 BEAUTY RETOUCHING
If you want to choose the point

yourself, when you click, hold the
mouse button down and drag to the
point you want. If you need a larger
And now in English. If you click anywhere in the
spot, use the Size slider (or use the
image, the Spot Removal tool automatically picks an
square bracket keys [ and ] to change
area to copy from. Sometimes it gets it wrong, but
size). If you want to make an exist-
you can simply drag the source circle (the thicker
ing spot larger or smaller, hover at
of the two visible circles) to somewhere better.
the edge of the spot until the cursor

becomes a double headed arrow, then
click and drag in or out as required.
24
5 BEAUTY RETOUCHING
My favourite trick is one I
For blemish removal, I always select
havent seen mentioned any-
Heal rather than Clone and I always
where. I found it by accident, but
leave Opacity at 100. Start at the top
Ive tweeted it and blogged it, so
of the screen at 1:1, and use the Page
I thought I might see it more.
Down button to move down the
Spots come in all sizes, so rather
screen. When you hit the bottom of
than constantly changing size, I
the image, pressing Page Down will
hold the Command key on Mac,
then move across to the next section
Ctrl key on PC, then drag across
at the top, and so on. Page Up does
my spot. The size changes dy-
the reverse. I wish Photoshop did
namically as you do this. Finally,
this! This way we can systematically
you can also change the spot
go through the whole photo to fix
size using a mouse scroll wheel.
blemishes (and dust spots toothey

still happen in studio!). How long
should you spend? That depends on
the value of the image. If its a quick
snap, not long. If its a magazine
cover, then perhaps much longer. If
its an average retouch, set yourself
a time limit and work with more
obvious blemishes first, then smaller
ones if time allows. Retouching is a
time sink and you have to manage it.
25
5 BEAUTY RETOUCHING
You can hide the spot removal circles without turning off the Spot Removal tooluse the shortcut H. Using it again toggles the circles back on.
Sometimes people use H and forget, wondering why the tool seems broken! This also works for brush and graduated filter pins.
26
5 BEAUTY RETOUCHING
THE BRUSH TOOL AND
SKIN SOFTENING
There are three sections in the brush panel: Mask, Effect, and Brush.
The brush effectively paints a mask of the effect. Mask controls
whether youre editing the current mask, or making a new one.
Perhaps one of the most versatile tools in Lightroom is the Brush tool. We touched on it lightly
Effect can be set in two ways, either with a preset that con-
in the last section, but well look at it in detail
tains a combination of settings from the effect sliders, or by
here before progressing to skin softening.
manually setting the sliders. If you change a slider when youre

painting the mask, clicking New in Mask will revert the settings to what they were when you started the previous mask.
Well come back to the actual sliders shortly. Youve

seen the white balance sliders already, but the coming sections deal with various ones anyway. Right now
its more important to talk about the brush itself.
Right at the top of the Brush section are two brushes: A and
B. These can be entirely different. A could be large and soft,
The Brush (or Adjustment Brush to be precise) is located on the right of the tool strip. As mentioned before,
the shortcut toggle key is K. The brush panel is quite
large, so generally I keep it closed unless Im using it.
27
B small and hard, for example. Use the shortcut key / to alternate between them for speed. Theres also an Erase brush,
which can have different settings again. The easiest way to
erase is to hold down the Option (Mac) or Alt (PC) key to
temporarily make your A or B brush into an erase brush.
5 BEAUTY RETOUCHING
You can
The Size slider changes the size of the brush. As with
smaller, harder brushes (my B brush). For erasing
combine these
the Spot Removal tool, the square bracket keys [ and ]
I usually use a medium, slightly soft brush, unless
also change the brush size. Feather sets the hardness of
I need to erase back a hard edge, then I make
the brush. Shift+[ and Shift+] also adjust the feather. 0
it smaller and harder for more precision.
sliders in any
way you like.
Thats why
theres the
drop-down
menu at the top
of the Effect
inner circle represents the size, and the outer circle repre-
Now that weve seen how to set the mechanics of
sents the feather. At 0 feather, the circles come together.
the brush, lets go back and talk about the effects.
Flow controls the rate at which the effect is applied
Weve seen Temperature and Tint already. Exposure,
with each brush stroke. With low flow, you can brush
Contrast, Highlights, and Shadows are local versions of
over an area to build up the effect. Personally I prefer to
the Basic panel controls. Well look at using Exposure for
leave this at 100 and add an additional mask if needed.
dodging and burning in the next section. Clarity controls
Theres nothing wrong with using low flow, though.
the softening or punch in the midtones, while Saturation controls local colour boost. Sharpness can add or
Auto Mask attempts to keep the brush to areas of similar
remove sharpness in an area, or even add lens blur. Noise
colour. Its good for edges, but very processer intensive.
controls local noise reduction, rather than noise! Moir
help you make
I prefer to leave it off and use it only for tricky edges.
removes pattern-based noise caused by digital capture.
and manage
Finally, theres Density. This sets the maximum level
presets of these
an effect can get too. I prefer to keep Density at 100.
You can combine these sliders in any way you like.
Imagine you have Clarity at 100 and Density at 50.
Thats why theres the drop-down menu at the top of
When you paint, you get the effect of Clarity at 50.
the Effect section, to help you make and manage presets
Id rather leave Density at 100, and set my Clarity
of these settings. Heres a mix of default presets, some
to 50. Again, theres no wrong or right with this.
of my own presets, and some presets Ive downloaded.
In terms of working, I use large soft brushes (my
To make your own, simply select Save Current Settings
A brush) mostly, except on edges where I use
as New Preset.
section, to
settings.
28
is hard, while 100 is soft. As you look at the brush, the
And finally, Defringe lets you work locally on fringes.
5 BEAUTY RETOUCHING
To soften skin, well use the default Soften Skin
strong, but thats fine, we can dial it back after
features like eyes, eyebrows, lips, nostrils,
cycle through pink, green, white, and
preset. This sets Clarity to -100 and Sharpening
in one move, even though two sliders are used.
and even the edge of the cheek. If you do,
black. I prefer to leave it on pink, unless
simply use the Erase brush to remove it.
Im working on a pink object, like a dress.
to 25. The negative clarity removes contrast
29
from the skin, while the sharpness retains
To soften the skin, use a big soft brush all
To see what Im doing, I press O to show
texture. Personally I find this preset a little too
over the skin. Avoid brushing into facial
the mask that Im painting, Shift+O will
5 BEAUTY RETOUCHING
Once the mask is complete, I press O again to turn
off the mask view, and show the finished effect.
If the settings are too much, hover over the control pin (press H if you cant see it!) until it looks
like the double-headed arrow you saw in the Spot
Removal tool. Now click and drag to the left. Both
clarity and sharpness reduce proportionately.
Dragging right will bring them back again.
30
6 DODGE AND BURN FOR BEAUTY

Back in the film days, you could cheat the exposure you made on film by varying
the amount of time sections of the paper were exposed to the enlarger lamp.
To dodge, you would cut out cardboard roughly the size of the
area you wanted lighter, then move it up and down as you
ran the lamp. To burn, you would use a larger card that hid
areas with enough exposure, allowed the remaining areas to
Take a look at our face example to see

standard contour areas. Yes, this is
an exaggerated version. In reality the
edges are much softer and the shading
is far more subtle! To make an area
become darker. It was a time-consuming process that meant
slimmer, we darken it, to highlight it,
only the most persistent could ever be called Print Masters.
we lighten it. In makeup, this is called

contouring. In retouching, its referred
Lightroom has dodge and burn built in as part of the

Brush tool. From a technical standpoint, dodging is
a reduction in exposure, and burning is an increase
in exposure, both localised in the photo.
to as face carving. Settings-wise,

start with +/- 0.2 on the Exposure
slider with a small-medium soft brush.
These settings are good for most of
this work. Once youve clicked to start
a mask, hover over the pin to get the
Dodging and burning can be used to darken areas that you
double-headed arrow to change the
want to draw attention from, and lighten areas that you want to
settings by dragging, and to see the
draw attention to. To be more precise, darkening an area makes
area thats been painted. You can also
it recede, while lightening an area will highlight it. Lightroom

doesnt have a liquify tool, but we can change shape by
darkening and lightening the face, for example. In fact dodge and
burn is probably the most-used technique of high-end retouchers.
use smaller amounts and add more

layers by clicking New. Some prefer
to use lower flow and build up that
way. I find that it creates bumps where
strokes overlap, so I prefer to work
with lower exposure and 100 flow.
31
To slim a nose, darken the sides and highlight the centre. You can widen it by doing the opposite, but Im not sure people prefer that!
32
For the eyes, darken close to the nose, and highlight the area under the brow. The darkening will push the socket back, and the highlight brings the brow bone forward.
33
For cheeks, lighten below the eye to make them strong. If youre working on a wider face, you can thin the cheeks by darkening below the cheek bone. Imagine a line between top of where
the ear meets the face and the corner of the lips. Use a large soft brush along this line to pull the cheeks in and thin the face.
34
Dodging and burning works for lips too. Dodge the top of the bottom lip lightly and darken underneath to plump it up.
35
For wider foreheads, you can reduce the impact by darkening the edges along the hairline and lightening the centre. A larger brush will help here. Its like a vignette for the forehead!
36
Necks can also be worked this way.
37
Our whole aim here is to be subtle. Theres a good chance that you wont see the differences as you work, but switching the brush on and off from the bottom left of the panel will quickly
reveal the differences.
Note, theres no skin softening applied to this version of the image, just to help make the dodge and burn adjustments clearer.
38

In addition to the
face carving weve
just shown, you
can also dodge
the iris and the
white just outside
it to highlight the
eyes even more.
Set the brush to
around 0.5 and
paint semicircles
in the iris, away
from the inside
and outside edge.
For the whites

of the eyes, only
paint the white
parts around
the edge of the
Iris. Start with
a setting of
0.2 exposure
and tweak to
taste when
youre done.
39
And heres
the completed
dodge and burn
for our image.
7 CROSS PROCESSING
Retro is big right now. Maybe were all nostalgic for the summer of 76 or something, but the faded
and toned looks of the past are really in. Instagram bagged a fortune when it sold, so somebody
somewhere thinks its worth a packet. Lightroom offers a few ways to get these awesome looks.
Prior to Lightroom 4 you only had one tool for
while the highlight range is yellow-green. Cross processing
There are five sliders. One pair on top to control
this: the Split Toning panel. With Lightroom 4
also tends to increase contrast, so a little tone curve work
highlight colour, one pair on the bottom to
we now have RGB curves to play with too.
will be in order as well as using the RGB tone curves.
control shadow colour, and a balance control to

change which one has priority in the photo.
Before we delve into the how tos, we should look at the
SPLIT TONING
whys! Cross processing comes from the old film technique
Each pair in Highlights and Shadows has a Hue and a
of using the wrong chemicals to develop your film.
Split toning allows you to add a colour to both the
Saturation control. Hue controls the base colour, while
Negative chemicals (C41) and slide chemicals (E6) perform
highlights and the shadows of an image. The Saturation
Saturation controls the strength. A great speed trick
differently, so can have unpredictable effects when you
slider controls the strength of the colour, while balance
is to hold down the Option key on Mac, Alt key on
use them on the wrong film type. I know my local lab will
controls which slider set is dominant in the photo.
PC, then move the Hue slider. As you do this, it acts
still allow me to process slide film in negative chemicals,

but its much harder the other way around. In fact, its
quite hard to find labs that process slide film (and even
more so with medium format film). With a film like Fuji
Velvia, you end up with strong green shadows and yellow
highlights. You also need to overexpose the shot to get a
proper exposure. Other films have a more cyan shadow,
but generally speaking the shadow range is green-blue,
40
as though Saturation is at 100, and you can see the

Lets create a Velvia preset. First, open the Split Toning panel.
effect more vividly. In reality the final tone will be far

more subtle, but it helps in selecting the base hue.
7 CROSS PROCESSING
Holding down Option or Alt, we move the Highlights Hue slider until we find a yellowish tone.
41
7 CROSS PROCESSING
Repeat for the Shadows Hue, this time with a strong green.
42
7 CROSS PROCESSING
Next, we need to increase the saturation on each to taste. In this case
Finally, I go to the Tone Curve panel, and choose Strong
its slightly over 50, but it depends on how strong you want it. I want the
Contrast from the Point Curve drop-down menu.
highlights to have a slight priority, so I push the Balance slider to +13.

43
7 CROSS PROCESSING
To save the preset, I click the + beside Preset and call it Velvia XP in
the Preset dialog box. Because I only want the settings that create the
look, I select only Tone Curve and Split Toning, then click Create.
44
7 CROSS PROCESSING
USING THE TONE CURVE
With Lightroom 4, we can also change
the colour of our image using RGB
curves. Reset the Split Tone panel by
double-clicking each slider name to
reset it. Then go back to Tone Curve.
At the bottom right is a tiny icon
highlighted in the capture to the right.
Click on it to bring up the point

curve control. Initially you have the
RGB curve, which controls contrast
in the photo. Click on the Channel
drop-down menu to reveal the red,
green, and blue channel curves.
A good starting point for your own custom split tones is to choose a cool colour for
shadows, and a warm one for highlights. Take this screen shot as an example.
45
7 CROSS PROCESSING
Lets start with the red channel. Pushing the curve up at any point increases the red in the photo,
Now lets go for the green channel. Here, increasing adds green and
pulling it down increases the opposite colour, in this case, cyan. So lets go for a cyan tone in the
decreasing adds magenta. Lightly lift the midtone in the greens.
shadows. First click a point in the middle, then pull down another point in the shadows. Finally
add a third point in the highlights and use it to flatten the top part of the curve.
46
7 CROSS PROCESSING
Finally, the blue channel. Youve probably guessed that its blue for the increase and yellow for
FA D I N G A W AY
the decrease. Click a point in the midtone. This time click and drag a point in the highlights
down to make yellow highlights. Finally, even off the shadows with another point.
The final thing we can do with

the Tone Curve here is to fade the
Voil. You can make as many points as you like and drag them all over the place for funky effects.
image a little. Go back to the RGB

curve and double-click to make a
linear curve; dont select the Linear
Curve preset, itll wipe the settings
you have selected so far! Now drag
the leftmost point up from the
corner, and the image will fade.
If you want to save the look as

a preset, you only need to select
Tone Curve in the preset dialog.
47
8 ACHIEVING A FILMIC LOOK

Theres nothing quite like a black-and-white
photo to concentrate the viewer on form
and subject. And of course, traditionally
it was the only film for a long time.
Even though our cameras can shoot with black-and-white presets,

the raw file always shows up as colour image. Fortunately, Lightroom
gives us a few ways to convert our photos. It also helps give them a
more film-like look with the Grain control in the Effects panel.
48

B L AC K-A N D -W H I T E CO N V E R S I O N
49
I sat in a Scott Kelby seminar a long time ago, agreeing with what he said, so Ill repeat it.
I use that for loads of my black-and-white conversions and it forms the basis of some
The simplest black-and-white conversion is to remove saturation and boost contrast.
of my presets. But lets move on the Lightrooms dedicated black-and-white tools. To
Desaturation gets criticism as a conversion method, but try this before you move on.
get a black-and-white photo, press V. This changes the Treatment setting from Color
It really works. In the Basic panel, put Saturation at -100 and boost Contrast.
to Black & White, and activates the B&W section of the HSL/Color/B&W panel.

By default, this applies an auto black-and-white mix, but I prefer to turn this setting off. You need to go to the
Each slider represents colour in the unconverted
Presets tab in Preferences (Mac: Lightroom > Preferences, PC: Edit > Preferences) and clear the second check box
image. As you move them left and right, you can
(Apply auto mix when first converting to black and white). Why? I find it more miss than hit, and if I have to
start to darken to remove attention from a section,
move sliders anyway, then Ill just do it from scratch myself.
or lighten to bring emphasis to it. Theres a far

more visual way of doing it though. Notice the
tiny target icon on the top left? Thats the Target
Adjustment tool. Click on it to activate the tool.
50

By clicking and dragging the shirt, I can make it black by pulling down. I
can also darken the makeup around the eyes the same way. Note that its not
just the colour Im dragging thats affected, all similar colours are affected.
51

GRAIN
The grain sliders are aptly named: Amount is the quantity of grain, Size controls how large the grain particles are, and
Roughness controls how fine or rough the grain is. I find it better to view zoomed in to see whats happening. Grain will
To finish off the look, lets add grain. Its

at the bottom the Effects panel.
52
have an effect on the apparent sharpness of an image, but it can equally help smooth banding and hide blemishes.
9 IMAGE TONING
In addition to straight black and white, its
also possible to create toned and duotoned
images in Lightroom. Popular looks include
sepia toning and selenium toning. These are
done in the Split Toning panel, which weve
already seen as part of cross processing.
SEPIA
For single colour tones, I prefer to colour the shadows only.
53
9 IMAGE TONING
Using our trick from cross processing, hold down the Alt or Option key and start to drag
the slider in the warm tones. I find somewhere in the 30-40 region for shadow hue provides
the best results. Remember that the final colour will be far more subtle. Here, 38 looks good.
Bring up the saturation slowly. 15 will give a subtle tone, while 35 is far more pronounced.
Sometimes that subtle tone is just enough. Ive split the difference here.
54
9 IMAGE TONING
SELENIUM
Selenium was used to help stop fading and can vary from a reddish brown to a purple.
55
By setting the shadow hue to 360, and Saturation to 15, we can get this effect.
9 IMAGE TONING
C YA N O T Y P E
To get enough of the blue you do need to use both shadows
Cyanotype is a blue toning. Usually its a heavy cyan blue, but can be lighter too.
56
and highlights. Here the settings are evenly matched.
9 IMAGE TONING
DUOTONE
Duotone simply means two tones. Historically it came from cyanotype, and were going to do just that.
With our previous photo, make the highlights warmer by setting them to Hue 44. Next set the Balance
towards the shadows, say -14. This reinforces the blues to give a nice complement to the warm highlights.
57
10 CROPPING INSIDE AND OUTSIDE THE IMAGE

To the uninitiated, Lightrooms Crop tool might feel a little backwards. You see the crop
window stays in place, but you zoom and rotate the photo behind it. It helps to think
of the aperture window on a mount. Basically youre making the photo suit the crop.
WHY CROP?
Traditionally headshots and portraits are
Inside Develop you can click on the crop icon
While there are purists that never want
printed at 8 x 10 inches, so need a crop to
in the toolbar under the histogram. You can
to crop, there are numerous good reasons
fit from a DSLR. You may need a widescreen
also apply crop ratios in Quick Develop, but
for cropping photos. First up, a lot of
shot for a video youre making at a 16:9 ratio.
this is very basic, applying a centred crop to
cameras dont have a 100% view through
You may also want to emulate other crops,
the image. Well talk more about this shortly.
the viewfinder, so what you see as you
like 6 x 4.5 or 6 x 6 from medium format.
frame isnt the full photo. You may find

things at the edge of the frame that dis-
G E T T I N G S TA R T E D
tract from your original viewpoint.

The quickest way to get to crop, espeIt may also be the case that the crop ratio
cially from outside Develop is to use the
of the camera (3:2 for DSLRs for example)
shortcut R. C was already taken with
doesnt suit your final output or frame.
Compare, so they went with cRop.
Once in crop, there are a number of options available. As

you hover over the photo, the cursor changes to the crop
cursor and you can drag out any crop you like immediately.
58

To constrain to the current ratio, click the lock icon to lock it
To select an alternative crop ratio to the original, choose one
or use the shortcut A. If the lock is open, you can temporar-
from the Aspect drop-down menu. If you need one thats
ily lock aspect by holding down the Shift key and dragging.
not available, click Enter Custom in the list. Enter any ratio,
You can also drag from the corner or sides. Note that Light-
even screen resolutions, and Lightroom will distil it down
room will keep the crop within the bounds of the image.
to a ratio. The menu will remember your last five custom

ratios. Examples of ratios that are not default include 2:1
panorama, 851 x 315 for Facebook, and 20 x 8 panorama.
59

Here are two useful tricks before we look at batch cropping. First, if you want to have the sides,
To have the entire image crop in towards the centre, make sure the lock
or top and bottom, move in evenly, make sure the lock is off (shortcut A) and hold the Alt or
is on, or hold Shift+Alt or Option and drag a corner or side.
Option key, then drag in from a side or top/bottom.
60

The second trick is useful when you want to change a vertical image to a horizontal, or vice versa. Originally you
B AT C H C R O P P I N G
had to pull off to the side away from the photo until it flipped, but fortunately all you need to do now is press X.
Photoshop has started to allow cropping like Lightroom, but the place that
Lightroom shines is cropping more than one photo at a time. We mentioned using the Quick Develop crop ratio for centred crops. The best way
to use this is to compose for that centred crop. For example, when shooting
headshots, remember to leave room at the top and bottom of each shot.
Lets say youve batch applied a crop in Quick Develop and want to refine it.
Press R to go to crop and
refine the crop. Instead of
pressing Enter to apply the
crop and going to the next
photo, where you need to
start crop again, simply
press Command+> (Mac)
or Ctrl+> (PC) to move
to the next photo. The
crop will be applied, and
itll speed your refining.
61
62
Lightroom does try to protect us from ourselves when we
that the opposite part of the photo can easily be repaired
Lens Correction panel. The bottom slider in the Trans-
crop by keeping the crop inside the bounds of the image.
in Photoshop, so we may not mind cropping outside the
form section is Scale. This lets you zoom into the photo,
Sometimes when we rotate a photo, we end up cutting
bounds of the photo. This can be done, but not in the
or zoom out past the image bounds. Once you go below
into an important part of the composition. It may be
Crop tool. To do this, go to the Manual section of the
100%, the extra space gets filled in with a grey border.
11 STRAIGHTENING PHOTOS
63
Another thing you can do with the Crop tool is straighten. If you hover close to a corner, the
cursor will change to a curved, double-headed, arrow, allowing you to rotate the image.
As you click to start rotating the photo, the grid will change to a set of small squares,
You can also rotate the image using the Angle slider. By clicking on the ruler icon in the
to aid in lining up parts of the photo that you know should be level.
Crop panel, you can also draw a line along something you know is vertical or horizontal
in the photo (like the horizon) and Lightroom will apply that as the angle.
64
One downside of Lightroom crop is
that it only works as a screen view,
not 100%. To get around this I often
drag my horizon line up to the edge
to the module picker to see how far
from straight it is, while zoomed into
100% in Loupe view. I then go into
crop and straighten. Once the crop is
applied, our view should go back to
a 100% view allowing us to see how
close we are. I find this helps accuracy.
To make it even quicker I use another

shortcut. By holding the Command
key on Mac, or the Ctrl key on PC, the
crop cursor changes to the ruler, so
you can straighten without needing to
activate the ruler icon from the panel.
As well as the ruler in crop, you

can also rotate your photo inside
the Lens Correction panel. In
the Manual section of the panel,
theres a Rotate slider. Its different
than the ruler in that its aware of
whatever lens corrections youve set,
and rotates with these in mind.
65
12 FIXING SKIES IN LIGHTROOM

Blue skies, grey skies, everyday skies. Its hard to take a landscape or location shot without them.
I love skies so much I included them in my landscapes
website name: http://skywaterland.com. Of course
balancing skies can be troubling for most photographers.
In a nutshell, most skies are brighter that the landscape.
This makes choosing the best exposure in camera
harder. Its not all doom and gloom though.
In the field, photographers use resin filters called graduated

neutral density filters. These look grey at the top and
clear at the bottom. How gradually these go from clear
to grey determines whether they are a hard line or
soft line filter. My preferred filter in the field is the
0.6 hard graduated neutral density filter. The 0.6 means
its a two-stop filter. 0.3 means one stop and 0.9 means
three stops. Dont ask me why they pick that naming
convention. Good graduated filters are not cheap. And
because theyre plastic, theyre prone to scratching.
66

Fortunately Lightroom also has a graduated
filter that can be used to perform the same
task in software. Its also impossible to scratch!
67

To use the graduated filter, click the gradient
rectangle in the tool strip under the histogram
(Shortcut M). Click on the horizon to drop
the filter in place. The graduated filter has
three lines: the centre line, which is what
you drag to move or rotate the filter, and
two outer lines that define how quickly the
effect happens. If you dont see these lines,
press H to show and hide the lines. The
top line shows where the effect is full, and
the bottom shows where the effect stops.
The distance between determines how
hard or soft the change is. The closer the
lines are, the harder the effect. A final trick
that can help setting the graduated filters
position is holding the Shift key to keep
the filter edge straight when dragging.
Of course, to see any effect you need to have

something set. If you want to emulate the
commercial filters, simply use the Exposure
control to reduce the brightness of the sky.
Here Ive dragged a -1 Exposure graduated

filter down to just over the horizon. Ive kept
it hard because were right at the horizon.
For a more natural look, a lower value might
work better, but I like the drama in this.
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In addition, you can also apply a colour from the colour swatch at the bottom of
the graduated filter panel, like blue to help a sky, or a yellow to give a warmer tone,
reminiscent of CSI: Miami. Other settings that can help a weak sky are increasing the
Contrast, Saturation, and Clarity sliders.
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Lightroom 4 does also offer local white balance, so you could change
the sky colour using these settings instead of using a colour swatch. I
think these look more natural than the swatches. Heres a version using
a cooler white balance vs. the swatch in the previous image.
And heres a warmer version. The graduated filter has been extended over
the water to give the feel that the water is reflecting the warmth in the sky.
70
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Alternatively, you can use the Brush
the Beauty Retouching section, but the
You can also mix the gradated filter with
tool to bring back areas that have been
tool (Shortcut K) to paint in the effect
controls apply to darkening skies and
the Brush tool. Often the horizon isnt
over darkened by the graduated filter.
you need. Weve looked at the brush in
creating contours in landscapes too.
exactly straight, so you can use the brush
13 TILT SHIFT
Reducing exposure in skies is not the only thing you can do with graduated filters.
You can also control sharpness or even use lens blur.
The Sharpness slider in the graduated
filter (and in the Brush tool) runs
from -100 to +100. Above 0 increases
sharpness, but below 0 has two
methods of operation. From 0 to -50,
the slider is removing sharpness that
already exists in the photo. From
-51 to -100, the operation changes
to that of lens blur. This means
we can blur edges, for example by
putting a graduated filter on each
edge set to -100 sharpening.
The other thing we can do is have

selective sharpening in a photo.
Tilt-shift lenses are generally
used to either adjust perspective
when photographing architecture,
or to extend depth of field at a
given aperture. More recently,
people have been using the tilt function to
reverse this, giving a miniaturized look.
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Tilt-shift lenses are very expensive, so being
onOne Software has FocalPoint, and Alien Skin
extensive control over lens blur, but we can still
able to replicate their effects using software is
has a product called Bokeh. All of these give
get more than adequate results from Lightroom.
a boon. Photoshop CS6 now has a Blur tool,
13 TILT SHIFT
First, decide what area of the photo is going to be the focal point of our tilted image. Here I want the people at the dock edge and the boats at the bottom to remain sharp. Set the graduated filter
to -100 Sharpening, with all other sliders and swatch at 0. From the top of the image, drag down to above the focal point, our boats. The transition on blurring is a little tight, so spread it a bit.
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13 TILT SHIFT
Repeat for the bottom of the photo.
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13 TILT SHIFT
Now, add two more graduated filters, one top and one bottom, this time with the centre line further away, and with a much larger gap. The reason for doing it this way is that with tilting, the further
away you go from the focus point, the greater the amount of lens blur, more so than normal out of focus blur. You may even want to add a third pair of very soft graduated filters to finish off the look.
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13 TILT SHIFT
Once you are done, save the result as a preset. That way you only need to move the centre lines on each new image.
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13 TILT SHIFT
This look can also be used on people. A photographer named Mark
Tucker was one of the people who popularized this look in film with
his plunger cam (http://199.237.236.200/plungercam/).
Now its much easier in post-processing!
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13 TILT SHIFT
Again, start with the Sharpening slider in graduated filter set
to -100. Draw as many pairs of filters, top and bottom as you feel
you need. Ive used four here.
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13 TILT SHIFT
Makes sure the eyes remain in focus.
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14 EFFECTIVE SHARPENING
For a long time Lightroom had nothing more than a simple sharpening slider, meaning that if you didnt like
how it worked, you had no choice but to go to an external editor like Photoshop to sharpen your photos.
Fortunately thats no longer the case, and Lightroom has no less than three different sharpening options.
When you shoot a photo on most cameras, the light passes through a filter called
an anti-aliasing filter. When you remove dust from the sensor, the anti-aliasing
filter is what gets cleaned, not the sensor itself (there are some cameras where
this isnt true, though). This filter reduces moir, which is a distracting patternbased noise. It has the side effect of blurring the photo, so all photos need some
kind of sharpening to overcome this. This is called capture sharpening.
The main tool for sharpening in Lightroom is contained in the Detail panel. The
four main sliders are: Amount, Radius, Detail, and Masking. To use these, it really
helps to have an understanding of what each one does. Theres also a preview box
to show whats happening at 100%. You can drag around inside the box to position
it, or click the targeting icon and drag it to the area you want in the box and click.
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Amount seems pretty obvious, but
theres a little more to it than that.
First up, the raw default is 25, which
by and large is perfect for capture
sharpening on most photos. In fact,
the default on all four sliders is good
for basic capture sharpening. It also
means that sharpening has been applied whether you intended it or not.
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Originally this was conceived
as a 0100 scale, but because
people wanted the option of oversharpening, it was increased to 150.
Up to 100, Lightroom will try and
protect the image from sharpening
artefacts, but above it, the image
degrades. Not good for capture
sharpening, but useful for grungy
creative sharpening. Realistically, I
dont really go over 70 in normal use,
and this is normally combined with
masking to make it more selective.
The type of sharpening Lightroom

applies here is akin to luminance
masking. That means that the
sharpening works on the luminance
channel, and doesnt affect the
colour. To see how this works,
hold down the Alt key on PC,
or the Option key on Mac, then
move the Amount slider. The
image will appear black and white,
showing only the luminance in
the image as you sharpen.
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The next slider is Radius. Radius
determines the area outside the
edge being sharpened that gets
affected as you sharpen. Generally
speaking, sharpening works by
increasing contrast at an edge to
make the edge more pronounced.
Radius determines how far it
extends. As with Amount, you can
hold down the Alt or Option key
to see the effect. As you move the
Radius slider to the right, the visual
effect becomes more pronounced.
Radius defaults at 1; sometimes a
lower value is good, but I rarely go
above 1.5 unless its for effect.
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If Radius, Detail, and Masking are not
active, chances are youre looking at
a rendered file like a JPG or TIFF. On
these files, the default Amount is 0,
so you need to increase it (even to
1) to make the other sliders active.
Detail is obvious. As you push to

the right more high-frequency
detail gets sharpened. Whats high
frequency? Think leaves on trees,
or houses in a wide city scene. Any
photo that has loads of small edges
has high-frequency detail. But Detail
has another use: reducing halos.
So whats a halo? Well sometimes
when you sharpen, edges with a
light/dark transition get increased
lightness on the lighter edge. This
bright line looks unnatural and is
reminiscent of the halo around saints
in old icons. Pushing Detail to the
left reduces these. Sometimes that
means having to choose between
detail and halos. To see the Detail
slider in operation, hold down the
Alt or Option key. As you move right
youll see the increase in detail.
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The final control for capture
sharpening is Masking. Masking
allows us to select which edges are
sharpened. By default everything is
sharpened. Masking is also the only
slider where its hard to be accurate
without using the Alt or Option
key. Hold this down as you drag the
Masking slider. Initially you will see
only white, but as you move left,
more and more black is introduced.
Eventually you see only an outline
of the features of your photo. In
this case, all the white areas get the
sharpening applied. None of the
black areas have any sharpening.
This means you can prevent skies, or
even just skin from being sharpened.
To me, masking is probably the most
important slider after Amount.
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The second type of sharpening
in Lightroom is more creative
sharpening. Weve already seen the
tool for this before: the Brush tool.
The beauty here is you can select
the amount of sharpening and
paint in specific areasgreat for
sharpening eyes or your focal point.
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15 REDUCING IMAGE NOISE

Low-light situations like churches, concerts
or even just late-evening shots often require
the use of higher ISO values. With higher ISO
comes higher image noise from the signal
being amplified to get the exposure.
Of course, as camera technology improves, noise is becoming
less of an issue. There are still times when we need to deal with
it, though. Originally, Lightroom had very basic controls and
required the use of external applications for noise reduction, but
fortunately it now handles all but the most extreme of cases.
There are two distinct types of noise that can be fixed: colour (also called
Chroma) and luminance. Colour noise is most readily visible as a mixed
red, green, and blue in areas that are supposed to be one colour. Luminance
noise is unevenness in the brightness of sections of the image. By default,
Lightroom applies a default of 25 to the colour noise. This setting isnt a
fixed setting per ISO. In fact, 25 is designed to be the optimum at each
ISO. I rarely find a need to change it, but we will look at how it works for
those times that require it. No luminance noise is applied by default.
Noise reduction is part of the Detail panel.
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While Id prefer to use concert photos to show this, its much

harder to get permission to use those images, so well use a
landscape that was accidentally shot at ISO3200. Despite
this, its not terrible. Because 25 is the default for raw files,
and therefore noise reduction is applied, set Color to 0.
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Colour noise is easily visible in the rock and sand. Slowly bring the
Noise slider to the right. Look for the point where the colour noise
is gone. In this, around 20 gets rid of the pixel colour noise. Theres
still additional green in the grey of the rock, so we need to go further.
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Up at 45 theres still colour bleed, but going further

starts to take colour out of the clouds.
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Check at 100 and all the colour noise is gone, but colour
gets lost in other parts of the photo. Detail will help
bring back places where the noise was along edges.
Bring Luminance up to 100 to see what it does. It effectively
blurs the image trying to make areas a similar brightness.
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Bringing it back to 50, theres still some edge blur, but

the sky is nice and smooth. Use the Detail slider to bring
back lost detailits like a threshold control for the
noise reduction and contrast to bring back edges.
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The final part of noise reduction is sharpening. You have to

sharpen to bring back edge detail. Use masking to ensure
only edges are being sharpened, then increase the amount to
taste. By comparing with the pre-noise-reduction history step
(right-click on the step and select Copy History Settings Step
to Before), we can ascertain whether weve gone too far.
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Here less luminance and masking helps bring back detail in

the sand, along with an increase in luminance contrast.
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16 CORRECTING LENS ISSUES

One thing that the switch to digital has done is make us really aware of the limits of our lenses.
With film, there was some forgiveness, but digital really shows us the flaws in intimate detail.
Barrel and pincushion distortion, coloured fringes, and even the bizarrely named moustache distortion all serve
to spoil our masterpieces. Fortunately all is not lost. The distortions in a lens are easy to map and store in a
dedicated file. Originally all the distortion was in these files, called lens profiles, but with Lightroom 4, chromatic
aberration has a separate section in the Lens Corrections panel. Theres also control over lens vignetting, which is
the darkening that happens at the lens edges. Lets jump over to the Lens Corrections panel and get started. With
the panel open, there are three section headers, each revealing a different panel view: Profile, Color, and Manual.
PROFILE
This is the section where you apply lens profiles, that correction mapping Ive mentioned. There are three sources
for these files: Adobe, lens manufacturers (usually via Adobe), and users. You can actually make and download your
own lens profiles via the Lens Profile Creator at http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/lensprofile_creator/
(this also contains the Lens Profile Downloader).
Adobe keeps a list of compatible lenses, along with some notes on their usage, at
http://helpx.adobe.com/x-productkb/multi/lens-profile-support-lightroom-4.html.
To apply a profile, simply select the Enable Lens Profile Corrections checkbox. Most of the time, Lightroom will
read the lens data from the embedded camera data and match it to a profile. Here, our before shot is from a Canon
15mm fisheye lens, which the lens profile will de-fish. Im using it because the difference is immediately obvious.
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If Lightroom doesnt apply a lens profile
Then choose the model. Older cameras often
You can make life easier by going to the Setup
automatically, there are a series of
didnt write metadata from lenses correctly,
drop-down menu and choosing Save New
options for setting one up. First go to
so sometimes Lightroom needs a hint.
Lens Profile Defaults. Every time you open
Make, and choose the lens make.
up a file with matching lens data, Lightroom

will now apply the saved defaults.
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If a profile doesnt show up, there could be another reason.
then into a folder called Downloaded. This folder was there
of light dont all focus to exactly the same point, either on the
Most of the available profiles are for raw files and you may
because I had actually downloaded another profile from the
focal plane, or along it. Most lenses contain additional glass
be trying to apply them to a non-raw file. You could simply
Lens Profile Downloader. If its not, create it yourself.
to try and correct this, and some are better than others.
around this that requires a little hacking of text files. If you
On PC, create a folder called Downloaded in the folder
There are two forms of chromatic aberration, Axial or
dont like delving around inside the Library or ProgramData
mentioned above and save your file there. Restart Lightroom.
Longitudinal, and Transverse or Lateral. Big words, but they
go to Manual and try to fix it manually. There is a way
simply refer to purple/green fringing and the blue/yellow or red/
folders, this is not for you!As per the Lightroom help file:
Now Adobe does say that there will be some problems with
cyan edges you see in photos. The latter is really easy to fix, and
cameras that apply lens corrections to JPG files. However, there
has been in Lightroom for a long time. In our case, you simply
are many cases where this isnt true. And if it is true for your
select the Remove Chromatic Aberration checkbox. Nothing
Mac OS: /Library/Application Support/Adobe/
lens, simply dont use this profile. Ive edited the Raw profiles
further required. If you want more detail on chromatic aberration,
CameraRaw/LensProfiles/1.0/
for my Mamiya lenses, because I shoot film on them and scan
check out http://toothwalker.org/optics/chromatic.html
Lens profiles are saved in the following locations:
the results. Hence needing JPG versions of these profiles.

Windows XP: C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\
Application Data\Adobe\CameraRaw\LensProfiles\1.0\
In the case of lenses from companies like Olympus,

you may simply have to make your own. Personally,
Windows Vista or Windows 7: C:\ProgramData\
I do, and I will be uploading them shortly.
Adobe\CameraRaw\LensProfiles\1.0\
The final controls in this panel are the Distortion and
Go to the folder and find the raw version of your lens
Vignette sliders. Set in the middle (which is 100%)
profile. Its usually in a folder matching the lens maker.
by default, you can add or remove either to taste.
Open the file in a text editor. Using the Find & Replace
These settings are also saved in the Setup preset.
tool, search for the expression stCamera:CameraRawProfile=

True. With Replace All, replace this with stCamera:Camer
CO LO U R
aRawProfile=False. Now save the file with a new name by
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replacing RAW in the original filename with JPEG. On Mac,
Chromatic aberration is the name given to the fringes of colour
I had to save to my user Library: /Users/[User Name]/Library/
you see along the edges in a shot. This occurs because light gets
Application Support/Adobe/CameraRaw/LensProfiles/1.0/ and
bent as it passes through a lens, and the different wavelengths

Purple fringing (and its
rarer brother green fringing)
is a different matter. To
solve this we now have
a new tool: Defringe.
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To use it, click the eyedropper
and zoom into the offending
photo near a highlight edge.
Make sure youve selected the
Remove Chromatic Aberration
checkbox firstyou dont want
to be trying to fix the wrong
fringing! The eyedropper has a
loupe similar to that of the White
Balance tool. Click on the centre
area of the fringe. Lightroom will
then calculate the width of the
fringe, and remove it from all
edges in the photo. Sometimes
it may overestimate, and youll
see additional colour on the
darker edge. In that case, tweak
the points on the Hue slider. For
example, when removing a purple
fringe, you may need to tighten
the first Green Hue point away
from the green. Even having
afternoon tea in a five-star hotel
didnt save this shot from terrible
fringing. Clicking the eyedropper
on a purple edge, then a green
edge, recovered it quickly.
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I did have to manually
tweak the Green Hue
slider slightly to remove
a slight desaturation on
the green edges. The final
image looks much better.
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MANUAL
This set of controls allow you to visually fix lens distortion/vignetting, as
well as vertical and horizontal distortion caused by having your camera at an
angle. In addition, you can scale the image (which we mentioned in the Crop
section) and rotate it (mentioned in the Straighten section). Lets get fixing.
If theres no profile for your lens, the first slider, Distortion, is a real boon.
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Moving it to the left fixes pincushion distortion, and to the right, barrel distortion. A
In fact, most of the sliders here will do this. Fortunately theres the
grid appears onscreen to help line up items as you make a fix. Fixing barrel distortion
Constrain Crop checkbox, which will crop down past the grey.
introduces new edges to the photo. These appear as areas of grey around the photo.
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The Vertical and Horizontal sliders fix perspective in that direction. For the example shot, heres a scene in Alcudia with the camera pointing upwards.
103

To fix it, drag the Vertical slider to the left, watching the side edges of the towers along the grid.
104

To remove the extra grey edges, click on Constrain Crop.
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For the next part, scale out to 87 to bring the sky back in. You can also use the Rotate slider to fix a slight angle and apply some distortion correction.
Just a final note on Constrain Crop: Turning it off doesnt reset the crop, you need to go back to the Crop tool to do that.
106

LENS VIGNETTE
The Lens Vignetting tool lightens or darkens the edges of the photo. Moving
the Amount Slider to the left darkens the edge, and is good for creative
effectbut only on uncropped photos. You need to go to Post-Crop Vignetting
in the Effects panel for cropped photos. To correct the vignette in an
uncropped photo, move the Amount Slider to the right, to lighten the edge.
The Midpoint slider controls how far in from the edge the effect occurs,
and only becomes active when the Amount slider is moved from zero.
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17 DRAWING US IN: VIGNETTE

In the last section we looked at fixing darkened corners caused by deficiencies in lenses.
Heres the rub thoughdarker corners look great and help focus attention to the centre of the shot.
Originally the manual Lens Vignetting tool in Lens

Correction panel was used for this, but it only worked with
uncropped images. Adobe added a Post-Crop Vignette tool.
But to be honest, it sucked. Badly. They fixed it though,
and gave us an even more sophisticated tool to work with.
The Post-Crop Vignette tool is part of the Effects panel,

along with the Grain tool. There are three styles available
in the Style drop-down menu: Highlight Priority, Color
Priority, and Paint Overlay. Paint Overlay is Lightrooms
original Post-Crop Vignette. Its ugly and looks fake. Avoid.
The other two are variations on the normal lens vignette.
Highlight Priority protects highlights along the vignette
edge, whereas Color Priority protects colour along the edge.
Lets play with our other controls. Amount and

Midpoint are the same as in the Lens Correction panel.
Roundness controls the shape of the vignette, but its
easier to see it if Feather is set to 0 first. In fact, with
Feather at 0, Roundness at -100, Midpoint at 0 and
Amount at 100, you get a cool rounded white border.
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Changing Roundness to +100 will give a small circle in the centre of the photo.
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Setting Feather to 100 will completely soften the edge of the vignette.

Setting Roundness back
to -100 gives a soft edge.
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To draw attention to the
centre of a photo, bring
the Amount slider down
to taste, then play with the
midpoint to change the
depth of the vignette from
the edge. Use Roundness
to control whether the
vignette holds to the edges,
or fills in more. Feather
the edge to make it look
reasonably natural (unless
you really want an effect!).
Finally, use the Highlights
slider to bring back lost
highlight detail in the
darkness of the vignette.
Im going to fess up here.

For years I hated vignettes
on photos. I thought they
were tacky, clich, and way
too 70s. Which they can be.
But Ive learned to love how
they can hold a scene in. So
much so that many photos
in my first exhibition on
canvas featured vignettes.
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18 PRESETS: MAKING, USING AND SAVING PRESETS AS BUILDING BLOCKS

One of the biggest benefits of how Lightroom stores and applies settings is the ability
to turn them into presets. Presets are looks that can be applied by simply clicking on the
preset name in the Presets panel in Develop. As you can see to the left, I have quite a lot.
In Library they can be accessed from the Saved
Lightroom ships with quite a large
Presets drop-down menu in the Quick Develop panel.
variety of presets, so you can get working
They can also be applied automatically on import.
with them right away. To me the most

useful feature of presets is preview. As
you hover over a preset in Develop,
the photo preview in the Navigator
window will change to reflect the settings
contained in the preset. This means you
can quickly run through a list of presets
to see which ones suit your image.
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The factory presets are quite
Firstly, making a preset is
PC. If youre making a bunch,
So what can we do instead? Easycreate your presets to target the
basic, so lets look at how to
easyclick the + on the right on
definitely learn the shortcut!
specific changes you need done in the photo. For the most part,
create practical presets which
the Preset panel header, or use
avoid adding the whole Basic panel to your preset. If you want
can be used as building blocks
the shortcut Shift+Command+
to create a preset to pop colours, only add Vibrance or Saturation
to a range of different looks.
N on Mac or Shift+Ctrl+N on
to it. Why? Well not all photos are correctly exposed, so adding
Exposure in a preset can overwrite work you might have done
to correct this, or with the Highlights/Shadows/Darks/Lights for
This will open the
that matter. Instead, build incremental presets that only have the
New Preset dialog
minimum settings required to achieve your aim. Take Exposure.
box. Give the preset
Build a series of presets with Exposure at 1/3 stop intervals. That way
a name, decide on
you can preview the change Exposure will make in the Navigator,
a folder for it, and
rather than taking guesses by randomly moving the slider.
choose what settings
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are applied by the
So heres your homework. Create a presets folder called Toolbox-Basic.
preset. Most people
Set your Exposure to -2 stops and create a preset called Exposure -2
leave it at the default
in the Toolbox-Basic folder, with the Exposure checkbox selected.
of all settings, but
Make sure the other settings, except Process Version, are not selected.
this is really only
Repeat at -1.67, -1.33, -1, -.67, -.33, 0, .33, .67, 1, 1.33, 1.67, and 2 with
good for total looks,
corresponding names.
and not for creating
As you make them,
useful tools. In fact
ensure that only
Id go so far as to say
Exposure is selected
that presets made
in the Presets dialog.
this way only look
When youre done,
good on images
hover along the preset
similar to the ones
list, to check that
they were made on.
theyre all working.

Next up, create some Contrast presets
a set of dedicated grain presets to
at intervals of 33 from -100 to +100,
add to my black-and-white presets.
this time with only Contrast and

Process Version selected. Repeat for
Now this doesnt mean that I dont also
Clarity, Vibrance, and Saturation.
have presets that include everything

but the kitchen sink. I do, but as
This will give a great start to getting
an addition to the building blocks.
your image finished in Lightroom,
In fact, by combining the building
because you can see the results in the
blocks, you can build more presets.
Navigator, without having to go to each

and every slider. It also means that looks
There are also many good presets
are repeatable without being based on
available online. Sometimes you
the original image used to create them.
have to weigh the costs and benefits,

though. There good free ones, and
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For other sections of Develop, e.g.
sometimes the cheap preset packs
Tone Curve, Split Toning, and B&W,
can be excellent. If there are specific
make a variety of presets based on
looks you prefer, create a new folder
these. In the case of toned black-and-
in the New Preset dialog and call it 00
white images, make sure to include
Favourites. This puts it on the top of
the black-and-white conversion with
the list in Develop. Drag your favourite
the split toning. With grain, Id create
presets into it for quickest access.
19 FIXING MORE THAN ONE PHOTO

Weve seen how to use the Sync control in Making White White, but its not the only tool for getting settings from
one image to another, or to multiple images. Presets, Auto Sync, Copy and Paste settings, and Previous are the
other tools that can do this.
PRESETS
Presets can hold all the settings from a photo, as weve seen. You can make a preset and then apply it to many other photos. The problem with this is that
often were only going to use a preset for a given set of photos. Repeatedly using this method will clutter up the Presets panel with temporary settings.
AUTO SYNC
C O P Y A N D PA S T E S E T T I N G S
With more than one photo selected (either in Grid view or in the filmstrip),
The Copy Settings dialog box looks similar to the New Presets dialog, and works in much the same way.
click on the little switch beside Sync. The button will become Auto Sync.
Now as you change settings on the main photograph, all other selected
images will have the same changes made. Be warned that large numbers
of selected photos will slow the computer down, so this is best for smaller
numbers of photos. Also, if you paint a mask on and the photos arent quite
lined up, it can be a bit messy fixing this. Another problem that can occur is
you can forget that Auto Sync is on and end up making a mess of the other
selected photos. Ive done it and I know loads of people that have too.
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19 FIXING MORE THAN ONE PHOTO

Select the checkboxes for the information you want to copy across to other
To paste, select the photos you want the settings applied to and
files. To get the dialog up, either go to the Settings menu and choose Copy
choose Paste Settings from the Settings menu, or use the shortcut
Settings or use the shortcut Shift+Command+C on Mac, or Shift+Ctrl+C on PC.
Shift+Command+P on Mac, or Shift+Ctrl+P on PC.
PREVIOUS
With only one image selected, theres no Sync button, instead theres the Previous
button. This copies every setting from the last viewed photo onto the current one.
By using the filmstrip or grid, you can select non-consecutive photos.
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20 EDIT IN PHOTOSHOP
Okay, so Lightroom cant do everything. It can process HDR TIFF files, but it cant make them.
It also cant make panorama photos either, so lets look at how the Edit In menu can help.
L I G H T R O O M - R E A DY H D R
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the entire process pipeline on a HDR file, giving
In Grid view, select the files youve shot to make the HDR.
more options than with traditional HDR programs.
For our example, we have three photos shot at -2, 0, and
With Lightroom 4.1 came the ability to process
But you need an external program like Photoshop
+2 EV via auto exposure bracketing on a Canon. Other
HDR TIFF files. This means that you can now use
or Photomatix Pro to create these files.
cameras let you do more, so just select the range for that set.
Go to the Photo menu in Library, then from the Edit In menu, choose Merge to HDR Pro in Photoshop.
Have a cup of tea, and put your feet up. When the
process is done, and the Merge to HDR Pro dialog is
open, change the Mode from 16 bit to 32 bit.
Youll now have the 32-bit file with the full dynamic range visible.
118
The whites look blown out, so

move the white point all the
way to the right. Youll need to
do this for all files to have the
full range inside Lightroom.
Finally, click OK to open the file

in Photoshop. Save the file and
close Photoshop. The new 32-bit
TIFF will automatically open
in Lightroom where you can
apply any Lightroom tool to it.
These files are not small. Our

example file is 240 MB. But
this is offset by not having to
wait to render the file again if
you want to make changes.
119
PA N O R A M A
Sometimes the beauty in a location is in the width. The sky or the foreground adds little. Times like these call for a panorama.
120
121
Select the photos in Grid view. Go to the Photo menu in Library, then
Generally I keep the horizon in the centre when creating a panorama set. For this reason I usually
from the Edit In menu, choose Merge to Panorama in Photoshop.
select Cylindrical layout. You can of course choose Auto too. I select all the checkboxes and click OK.
Now its time for more tea and maybe some social media!
After the processing is done, you should have something like our Photoshop capture.
122
I prefer to do my crop here in Photoshop and to make any fixes needed. The file is rendered at this point, so it should be at its best when we save it. Cropping
here also gives the benefit of Content Aware Fill should you need to fill in edges. When finished, save the file and it will automatically appear in Lightroom.
123
CONCLUSION
Hopefully youll have gleaned some new tricks
and a deeper understanding of Lightrooms
Develop module through this eBook.
With each new version, the software matures more and more, requiring
less and less need to go to Photoshop to finalize our photos.
One thing you should definitely do with all of the tools here
is set them to extremes. Usually Lightroom will try to prevent
horrible things, but its more than possible to deliberately mess
up, knowing that Undo (Ctrl/Command+Z) is there to save us.
Enjoy.
124
If you liked this eBook, youll love our library!

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craft & vision

Pixelated Image Communications Inc.
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20 GREAT TECHNIQUES FOR LIGHTROOM 4

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Lightroom could manage and work with

internally as a series of instructions. Imagine

look of the photo. Together they make a re-

your raw files, just as if they were any other

the original file being the block of marble,

ally powerful tool to draw the very best from

photo file, like a JPG or TIFF. You have to

with the settings being the instructions on

your photos. Develop itself is directly tied

consider that back then youd practically

where to chisel to make your statue of David.

to Adobe Camera Raw. In fact the version

need to open each file in a raw convertor

Due to this methodology, you can easily

numbers have a general correspondence.

and then in Adobe Photoshop before you

change settings at any time. Its only when

Lightroom 3.6 matches Camera Raw 6.6, 4.0

could work on it. If you messed up, youd

you go to the output modules, or export/pub-

matches 7.0, and so on. Occasionally a bug fix

have to start from scratch. Batch processing?

lish that Lightroom takes the original file, adds

may require a temporary version jump, but

If youd a few spare years, maybe! If you

the settings, and chisels a new file from them.

it gets back in line quickly. They also share

wanted to manage your photos, youd need

Photoshop, on the other hand, destructively

common code, so any settings you can apply

an additional DAM program (thats digital

changes pixels, making it hard to go back. Yes,

in Develop can be applied in Camera Raw.

asset management), like iView or Portfolio.

you can use Smart Objects and Smart Filters,

In this eBook, my aim is not to have a

Lightroom helped change that environment,

but there comes a point when doing this to

rundown of what a tool does, but rather

allowing you to process and manage your

a batch of images becomes unwieldy, not to

what we can use it for. Obviously there

raw files (and other photo formats)in one

mention the massive files sizes involved.

needs to be some explanation, so there is

program. To work efficiently and allow a high

Develop is the heart of Lightroom. Its where

some of that. Even if you do understand

degree of versatility, Lightroom uses a type

the photos come to life. The left panel is

a tool, there will be additional things like

of editing called parametric editing. What

more about management: Presets, Snapshots,

shortcuts that arent commonly known,

this means is that settings you make are ap-

History and, of course, Collections. The right

so youll still pick up something as a

plied to a fresh preview of the file and saved

panel is about the settings that control the

more experienced user. So lets begin!