﻿- Bonjour mesdames and messieurs. In this video, I'm gonna give you my best tips in Lightroom in
2021 to get the best out of your photography. To get this kind of result. And the last tips
are the best so stay all the way until the end. Bonjour mesdames and messieurs. My name is Serge
Ramelli, I'm a French photographer from the amazing, the incredible city of Paris, France
living in Florida USA. And today I wanted to sort of do a review video on Lightroom and really the
main trick that I use to get really, really, very colorful, very strong photos. I want to give you
an example to one of the most crazy sunset I've ever witnessed in 15 years I did photography
in Paris. So here I am sitting on the Pont Alexander III, and I sees this incredible sunsets.
And so I positioned myself so as to get the sun to be right under the armpit of that statue here. So
that's the normal exposure. I did an underexposure and I did a, sorry, that's an overexposure. And
that's an underexposure. I shot this years ago with like a Canon 5D Mark II. Yeah look at this,
the date is from 2013, eight years ago. And, but I want to show you, I love, I love to review my
old RAW files and to read the tricks that matters the most in Lightroom. So tip number one,
correct the exposure for the story you want to tell. Now what is this story I want to tell?
I was fascinated by that sunset. So there's two things I can do. I could, you know, because I've
got three exposures. What I can do is I can take my normal, my under my over story and my under
and I can right click and go to Photo Merge and go into HDR to make like a sort of a super RAW file.
I'm not looking for the HDR look, I'm just looking to get the best out of everything. So auto align.
One thing that's very important, I did some tests. It's good to have deghost amount on high
because when the sun is right in the frame, you can get some little effect. And I'll show you why
it's important in a minute. So I'm gonna merge this into one RAW file. I've actually already
done this. So you see the deghosting effect is on the right side and the no deghosting effect is on
the left side. And you have a little bit of like a halo around the nose and a statue? That's what
happened when you use, you don't use deghosting effect. You can, so with the ghosting effect, I
get a little more noise in the statue, but I don't get anything else there. And voila. So that's why
I use deghosting effects. So we're gonna use the HDR now. Now let's find the exposure. What story
do I want to tell? I want to tell the story of that sunset because it was a crazy sunset. And
all I want is to have this statue as a foreground element. If you ever go to Paris, you know, on a
night like this you will see thousand of people taking photos of the Eiffel Tower with the sunset,
but nobody's really working on the foreground element. And that's why it's, I think it's
very important when you do a cityscape to get a good foreground. And I really like that. And I
waited like at least 10 minutes to get the exact position of the sun right on the armpit here,
'cause I thought it was kind of a cool effect. So the look that I want to go for is I want,
I don't want to go for a very overexposed look. I want to go for a sort of an underexposed look.
I just want to get a bit of a silhouette of the statues. You know, I think it would be a mistake
to try to make the statues really bright like this, although it's an HDR and we can, because
that's not the star. The story I want to tell is a sunset. So I'm gonna put just a bit the shadows,
I'm gonna bring down a lot of the highlights because I can, and then very important. I'm gonna
press the Option key on my keyboard and that's gonna, and I'm gonna make my black points. So the
black point is what you see in red and blue here is points which are 100% black. This only works
if you hold down the Option key on a Mac or the Alt key on Windows, very important. The Alt key
or the Option key is probably the most important key in Lightroom. Okay? So now we got about two,
3% of black. I love that. We do the same thing with the white. I go all the way, but you see now
under the armpit here I'm starting to get the sun. What you see here in white is pixel, which
is a 100% white. I don't want that. So I'm gonna back that off. Okay. So that was step number one.
I it's still a little too bright to me. So I'm gonna underexpose this photo.
That's the exposure I want to tell it doesn't matter, the exposure is what the story you want to
tell. What is gonna look nice? I want to tell this incredible sunset. So it was a silhouette. So,
you know, I could even just do this whole thing just with the underexposed photo. And in fact,
I will, at the end, if you stay until the end, I'll show you. But for now I corrected the
exposure and I like it because that's the message I want to tell. Hey guys, I just want to tell you
that my new book, "Photography Essentials" is out. This book contains 100 of my best photographs in
the last 15 years. I tell you which camera I used, which setting I used, which ISO I used, which
shutter speed I use. I show some of the raw files. I'm gonna give you a lot of composition tricks.
You can get this for free, if you watched a master class, it comes with the book totally free,
the link is under this video. It's gonna change your photography forever, I promise. Just click,
watch if I'm live and you're gonna love this, all right? You can get the book for free if you stay
until the end. Next trick is adjust the white balance for aesthetics. Don't want to adjust it
based on, you know, presets that you have here. You know, like daylight or cloudy
or shade. This is just suggestion from the software. You know, sometime when I do sunset now
like to start in daylight and I just add a bit of magenta and maybe a little bit of warm. One thing
you gotta be very careful when you do your white balances, you don't want the sky to become gray.
You see, if I add more and more yellow, there's a point where the blue here is gonna become gray.
I don't want that. So I leave the blue until the blue is still a bit blue. And then maybe add a bit
of magenta because I love the magenta colors. But again, the white balance is an aesthetic decision.
Don't get fixed that it should be daylight, or shade or whatever. Do it, whatever you like,
try to remember the emotion you had, the colors that you had and try to replicate this using the
white balance. That's really the best advice I can give you. You know, some of the sunsets on
planet earth are crazy. There are, the other day I had a sunset here in Florida was so magenta,
that I don't think anybody would have believed me if I would have taken a photo.
You know, so I remember, this was eight years ago, but it was really, really, really magenta in my,
very reddish and magenta. The problem is that with the temp and the tint, which is the white balance,
sometimes you don't get the colors as you want them. So that's the white balance. Now
tip number three. And that's something I find is very important. I see so many people now
cracking up the clarity and the saturation on their photo and boom, they're done.
Don't do that. The fact that we did an HDR, the fact that we are opening up the shadows,
like we are, can give a bit of an unnatural look and sometimes just bring the clarity in minus,
I do that on almost every of my photos, brings just a little bit of natural look
that you want to create. Here's the idea is that if I over retouch this photo too much,
I mean this was a crazy sunset. It was a crazy sunset. So it's gotta be a crazy photo. But
if I do it too much, too much, too much people are gonna have the attention on the retouch and not on
the photo. The story I want to tell is a beautiful sunset in Paris. The story I want to tell is not,
oh, I made a crazy over retouching and I know how to use Photoshop kind of story. You know,
I don't like people to react to my photo is like, oh, you're good at Photoshop. You Photoshop this.
No, I want it to be a spectacular sunset. That's what we're gonna try to do. So doing a bit of
minus clarity and may be a little bit of plus texture can help because the minus clarity is
just gonna make the edge you know, sometime it can handle the edge, you know, the fringes around the
statue. It just can, it just gives a more natural look, it takes a little bit of the HDR age off.
If you see what I mean. Okay. Tip number three is the white balance. Didn't do exactly as the colors
that I remembered. So go to the hue section. Tip number four, I just use sliders to your liking.
Now the hue slider is, especially when you have a sunset like this is very important.
So what is the hue slider is actually gonna change the color. So what I do is I just take the hue and
I move it around. Like this, very fast to see what it does to the photo. See, it doesn't do much. The
red doesn't do much. Let's see the orange. Ooh. With the orange does a lot of things to the photo.
So if I go right it's gonna add some sort of green in my yellow. I don't like this.
And I remember it was more like that. Now try not to go over 40 on this sliders. I never go over 40,
but these look at the difference. This is so important that and the white balance is gonna
help you have this really nice color. It was very orange, more than magenta. So I think I'm gonna go
all the way like to minus 28 on this one. Let's check out the yellows. Yellows does influence
a little bit, on the right side is gonna add a little more green and on the left side is gonna
be just a fine. Check this out. Before the hue, after the hue. Changes everything, everything,
it looks like a lot more from what I remember. And tip number five and probably the most important
one is use the local tool to guide the eyes of the viewer. The promise is photo is that this is
kind of bright now and people are gonna look here. They're gonna look here. I maybe want to tweak the
color here even more. So what I do is I first take the gradient tool. I double-click on effect put
that gradient at zero. I do a little minus exposure and maybe add a little bit of blue and I
click and drag a little bit. I just want to make the top of the sky a little bit dark because I
want people to look at the Eiffel Tower. I want people to look here. I don't want people to look
too much up there and then I'm gonna click and drag and do the same thing. So that's,
you know, because by making this darker it just makes the whole thing a little more interesting.
Okay. And another local tool that I use a lot is the circle. The radial circle, same
thing I'm gonna double-click on Effect. I'm gonna click and drag, make a circle around the statue,
like where the sun is. I'm gonna make sure invert is on and feather is on, very important because if
it's not look at this, if I add some exposure and feather is not on, ooh, very natural,
very natural. But if you feather, boom, it gets a lot more natural because it's very feathered.
So I just want to add a bit of exposure around the statue, maybe a little more magenta,
you know just a tad like that. Check it out before, after. Yes. It's just, ooh. You know,
it just really helps the eyes going here. And so let's see your full screen. That's basically the
final result. That's really what I like. Now, bonus tip is, and this is completely up to you,
but bonus tip you can go to the new color gradient here and have fun. So basically what that is, this
is the shadows. This is the highlights and this mid-tones. What does that mean? So for example,
if I add some blue in the shadows it's just gonna add it in the darkest part of the photo.
Okay, I can add some orange I'm overdoing so you can see. But what I usually do is I
just neutralize the shadows. You see, it's, they're very warm. So I'm just gonna bring
this a little bit to the left. Ups, just a little touch to the left like this. and it's
gonna be neutralize those shadows, so it's not too much warmth in it. And I'm gonna do the opposite
into the highlights. I'm just gonna add a bit more warmth, but you have to go very gentle and
then you can go for an overall look. I can go and make this whole thing a lot warmer a lot bluer,
you know, I think a lot more, maybe a lot more orange, magenta. I don't need that,
'cause I got the white balance for it, but maybe a little more orange can be cool. And before,
after not a huge deal, but it's kind of okay. And there you can make another adjustment
in the shadows. So I can make the shadows darker, brighter. I don't think I'm gonna
change that. You can double click to put it back at zero. I'm guessing right?
Nope, oh. Yes, you can. And then the highlights I can make the, maybe I make the highlights a
bit brighter. Maybe I make the overall photo a little bit brighter here. Let's see before, after.
So when I'm happy with the photo, sometime what I do just for the fun is I take what I did here
and I press Command + Shift + C, copy everything that I did. And I take my underexposed photo and
press Command + V, okay? At first it looks really weird, but then I hold on the Option key to
do my black points, it's way too dark. And then I do my white point way brighter. You see, until
the sun comes up and I go back and then I boost the exposure because it's an underexposed photo
and I do it until it matches a bit what I did on the HDR. And then I take both, I press C,
and Shift + Tab to go in full-screen mode. So on the left side of you have the underexposed photo,
you can see it was very noisy. On the right side, you have the HDR and I compare both
results. And the underexposed sort of, which is this one, is actually even cleaner than HDR. So,
and so I think the one I'm gonna use at the end is gonna be the underexposed photo. So again,
yeah, it's just a little trick sometime the HDR is better quality sometime it's not, you know, the
way Lightroom does HDR is not the way like Aurora or other HDR software does it, it just adds up the
data, but sometimes when there's a crazy sunset, the underexposed photo actually turns out to be
better. So check it out for yourself. So again, this is the before. And this is the final photo.
I really love it. Don't forget to get my book for free, link under the video. It comes to the
masterclass, which is sometime live. So check it out and you will see the masterclass is really
cool. The book is really cool. You can get it for free if you stay until the end of the masterclass.
It may change your life as a photographer, it did for many people, check it out.