Hi guys, in my previous video
I showed you some practical 360 photography tips,
and now it’s time check out a very effective post production workflow.
And this is not only for 360 Photographers.
I think it can be useful for anyone
who wants to post better images on social media from smartphone.
I will show you the power of a free iOs application,
which is the portable version of the Photoshop Lightroom
you may know as a retouching software on desktop.
Originally I use this app vertically,
because I find it more comfortable that way,
but this time I will turn it horizontally
to record smartphone screen,
so you will see it better on YouTube.
In my previous video I created a poll,
so I’ve got feedback from you,
which image to show you this time.
And here is the winner – before-and after.
If you want the best result, you must be conscious
during the whole process,
even while you’re shooting.
This time it was a difficult situation
because of the wide contrast of shadow parts and the highlights.
In an automatic camera mode it’s unpredictable what would happen,
so I always take pictures with manual settings.
This time I was sure
that I need as many details as possible on the sky,
preserving information on the shades, too.
So finally I decided to underexpose it a little bit
- but not too much.
Anyhow, as you can see,
the result doesn’t look so fine at this point,
but I will help it.
There are four main retouching areas which I will use this time:
Light, Color, Effects and Details.
The order how they appear in the application is very reasonable,
because this is how you can go through the whole workflow.
The first step is bringing up the exposure a little bit.
Then I reduce highlights and bring up the shadows,
so this wide dynamic range will be better balanced.
Touching a little bit harder on the image
we can switch between before and after looks.
The next step is setting up the white points.
It means I can control those parts of the images
which will be totally white
without no details and information
– or I can say, totally burn out.
It’s a two-finger operation.
If you push the screen with one finger on the slider,
you can move it up and down with the other,
while you can see the parts which will be burn out.
It’s very useful.
It doesn’t matter how light or dark your smartphone screen is
during processing,
you don’t have to rely on your eyes.
It shows you what’s really going on with your image.
I repeat this step with the blacks too.
I don’t want to lose details in the shadows
so it’s very important.
In the other hand, setting up whites and blacks
helps us optimizing the basic contrast and saturation too.
Wider white and black point settings
lead to higher saturation and contrast,
and vice versa.
But at this point I’m just optimizing the image.
Then on the Color tab
I can go on with the Colors and Saturation.
First I refine Temperature and Tint,
then the Vibrance and Saturation.
The main difference between them
is that Vibrance doesn’t affect shadows and highlights so much
and it gives us a better way to increase “saturation”.
It’s a very similar situation like Contrast and Clarity.
Clarity increases contrast in the middle tones
without resulting too dark points in the shadows
or burning out the highlights.
This is my next step: setting up contrast,
modifying Clarity on the Effects tab,
and maybe I use a little Vignetting
to bring back some details on the sky.
But boosting Clarity usually leads to losing Saturation,
so after that we have to switch back to Colors and correct it.
And now let’s go even a little bit deeper.
On the right top corner of Color tab
you can see a menu called MIX.
There we can control all the colors separately.
It’s a very effective tool.
Reds and oranges are fine…
maybe I boost the saturation of the oranges a little bit.
But I want this orange appear mostly on the skin tones
to separate my skin better from the background.
Somehow in Lightroom (as on the desktop version too)
you can find plants’ color under the yellow tab.
I don’t know why, because you might think,
that plants are more green than yellow.
But to control grass and green leaves
we must go to the yellows.
So I change the Hue for yellow to be more greenish…
in the other direction it can be more orangish,
or even red.
But green is what I want this time
to separate grass and trees from my skin tones.
I also increase its Saturation and make it a little bit darker.
I make something opposite with the greens.
It’s an autumn scene, so I don’t want it to be so green,
so I set up Hue to a little bit yellow.
And I boost Saturation and decrease Luminance too,
to make more contrast.
Then the only color I’d like to modify, is blue...
This time, this is mostly in the highlights.
So to make the sky look better,
I go down with the Luminance.
Then I click DONE.
I like this result.
Now I finalize the image with sharpening and noise reduction.
These functions are on the Details tab.
Sharpening is also a two-finger technique.
Holding down the slider with one finger,
the image turns black and white
so you can see better the edges
and the effect of sharpening.
I don’t like to make it too sharp,
and I have rule, that the amount of sharpening and noise reduction
must be around 100.
So when I set sharpening around 90,
like this time,
I go with noise reduction around 10
or maybe just a little bit higher.
But the most important thing is masking.
Without masking sharpening brings a lot of noise to the image.
With the two-finger technique we can set it up.
Push that button on the slider and move it up.
Then push the slider line itself with your other finger.
Hold it down and then move the button on slider.
When you stop moving it, the images turns black and white,
howing which parts will be sharpened.
We have to mask out the sky, so it won’t be noisy.
Only myself, the grass and the trees will be sharpened.
Maybe I make a little correction on Temperature,
bringing the whole image towards a little bit colder
– and that’s all.
With this final step we are done.
Of course, we can set up things a little bit differently
to get different results.
There are so many creative ways to play around.
But this time I just wanted to show you my basics,
how to take a photo providently
and then retouch it, bringing it back to life,
or make it even better, than
automatic camera setting could do.
If you have any questions, write me in the comment section,
and if you liked this workflow,
please thumbs up and subscribe to my YouTube channel.
And if you are interested about littleplanet photography,
feel free to follow me on Instagram too.
See you soon, guys!