hi i'm robin whalley welcome to lenscraft today we'll be using some advanced lightroom
editing techniques whilst editing this photo with thors well in cape perpetua
now what i mean by advanced lightroom editing techniques isn't that they're really difficult
it's that they take a little more refinement and effort and that they aren't always obvious
and because they aren't always obvious lots of photographers miss out on using them the image i'm
using to demonstrate this is a long exposure shot during the day using a 10 stop filter even though
the exposure was around 5 seconds i tried to time the shot so that the c is running back down into
the blowhole the conditions weren't easy to work in safely and i didn't manage to get the horizon
level so let's correct that first i'm using the level tool for that in the crop overlay to click
and drag along the horizon then when i release the mouse button the image rotates to level the
horizon a useful feature that's often overlooked with the level tool is that you can use it with
verticals as well and not just horizontals now most photographers who edit raw files in lightroom
use the default adobe color profile without giving it a second thought this is the profile lightroom
uses to assign how it controls the raw file and converts that to color and tone for lightroom
photos i don't personally like to use the adobe color profile i'll therefore change it to one
of the color profiles for my camera when i click on the icon showing the four rectangles it opens
the profile browser the top section displays the different adobe profiles but then below this are
the camera matching profiles these are the camera manufacturer profiles and differ depending on the
camera make and model used you probably won't see the same camera matching profiles as i do because
you're probably using a different camera despite this it's worth checking the profiles for your
camera in this section for this image i'll use the natural profile because i know the colours are
subdued after editing the next thing to address is the colour balance which is a strong blue
colour cast caused by the long exposure filter i used i'll correct that by manually adjusting the
temp and tint sliders i'm trying to create a color balance where the white still looks slightly cool
now let's look at the lens calibration panel the camera i used to shoot this image was an olympus
em5 which embeds the lens correction data into the raw file if i turn on the enable profile
correction you'll see that it says built in at the bottom left of the panel there's a
small icon click this and you'll see the dialog displaying the lens profile used and saying that
it's embedded in the raw file the other option i'm going to use is to remove chromatic aberration
next i want to improve the saturation of the image to achieve a stronger but still natural colour the
way i'll achieve that is by using the calibration panel here we have saturation and hue sliders we
can use to adjust the red green and blue colour channels independently we can then use these
sliders to increase or reduce the saturation of one or more of the channels it's a good idea to
check the effect of each but most of the time i find increasing the blues channel saturation
works well i'm going to increase this to plus 50 as a starting point because i haven't made
any other edits yet i may need to return to it later to adjust it further though the temptation
at this point is to use the controls in the basic panel to recover the highlights and shadows if we
did this though the image would look okay but the adjustments would be applied globally to the image
this means we could easily end up applying changes to areas where we don't want them
a better strategy can sometimes be to start by making selective adjustments to some areas
of the image in this shot we can see the exposure isn't balanced across the frame
the top of the frame is a little bit too light once the bottom area is too dark
i can easily use the gradient filter to select the sky and i'll also include some of the rocks
the first adjustment is to the highlight which i'll reduce to around -70 to recover
the highlights in the sea i'll also reduce the exposure slightly by minus 0.20 i'll increase
contrast to around 20. finally i'll add a small amount of dehaze with a setting of around 10.
i like to use the dehaze slider to emphasize areas like the sky and water in an image
where it's lacking detail because it's become too light notice the adjustment
has also recovered the highlight areas in the water where it's draining into the blowhole
but my selection is causing a problem where the adjustment is affecting the rock and making it too
dark the way i'll fix this is using the luminance range mask to only select the light areas
if i turn on the show luminance mask you can see the selected areas of the gradient with a
red overlay i can now use the range sliders to control which tones to include in the selection
the left slider sets the darkest tones to include when i move this to the right it excludes the
darker tones when i move it to the middle you can see the selection now only includes the brighter
tones in the image let's turn off the mask and i'll check the effect of the adjustments
we can now see plenty of detail in the water highlights but the rocks aren't becoming too dark
this has left the image though looking a little bit flat but we'll correct that later now i'll add
a second gradient selection to lighten the area at the bottom of the frame i'll draw in my selection
as before and apply the adjustments i'll start with an exposure increase of 0.4 to lighten the
entire area i then want to highlight the movement of the bubbles on the surface of the water further
a good trick i've found to help bring out highlights in areas like this is to use
the clarity slider if i had a small amount of clarity with a setting of say 10 it makes the
highlights pop a little i'll then increase the white slider to 20 to emphasize this further
with this adjustment i'm in danger of affecting some of the other water highlights around the
edge of the blowhole if i turn on the red overlay you can see what's being selected by the gradient
this time i'll use the gradient brush tool to refine the selection
i can use the erase brush to paint over the areas i want to remove from the selection
the two gradient adjustments have balanced the exposure across the frame and i'm happy now to
go to the basic panel adjustments as the image is now looking a little dull and flat i'm going to
increase the exposure by around 0.3 i'll pull the highlight slider down to -40 though to protect the
detail in the lighter areas but i'll also increase the whites to plus 15 to help emphasize the very
lightest tones i'll then add a clarity of plus 10 to help bring back some sparkle to the image
finally i want to adjust the blacks because despite the rock being dark
there isn't a black point in the image before i make my adjustments though i'll turn on the
shadow clipping warning so that i can see any areas as they turn black when i move the black
slider far enough to the left you'll see the areas turn blue to show where they're clipping
with the black slider set to -30 i can see some warnings appearing in the darkest areas
but not too much now the final area that i want to adjust is the center of the blowhole
i want to bring out more shadow detail and highlight the draining water
to do this i'll increase the shadow slider to 40 and the white slider to 20. i then want to
emphasize some of the rock texture which i can do with a texture setting of 15. another
trick that i sometimes use in situations like this is to set a small negative dehaze setting
in this example -10 lightens the area further but without losing shadow detail
if i toggle the panel off and on you can see the effect of these adjustments
but i can also see that they're spilling over into surrounding areas so i want to remove them
from those with the filter erase brush this time i'll use a low flow setting that i'll
need to use with multiple brush strokes which will help to blend the adjustment
i'm happy now with my adjustments so i'll return to the basic panel where i want to increase the
vibrancy slightly this will saturate some of the less saturated colors but still produce a natural
image that's probably as far as i want to take the image adjustments in lightroom so let's compare
the starting image with the finished image i'm sure you'll agree that it's a substantial change
i'm also hoping some of the techniques i've used have given you new ideas for your own work
if you would like to learn more about photo editing in lightroom sign up for my monthly
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courses available i hope you've enjoyed today's video if you have please share it with other
lightroom users i'm robin whalley you've been watching lenscraft i'll see you soon for another
video