Hi! My name is Charl. I am with Pangolin Photo Safaris. Today I would like to talk
to you about how I sharpen my images and do my noise reduction in Lightroom.
If you like our content, please don't forget to subscribe, and press the bell
button to be notified about our next video.
Okay, so let's get started...
I've selected this beautiful young leopard I took in Botswana.
So I am going to just indicate how I do my noise reduction and sharpening.
If you look at my readings - the settings - you can see that
I was shooting at quite high ISO - 4000 - and this is why I have a little bit of noise in the background.
I am going to show you how we get rid of this noise and then do
a bit of sharpening on my leopard.
So, let's start off...if you come into the detail...
so I've already done my editing on the picture.
I am just going to show you the noise reduction and the sharpening.
So let's start with the sharpening...if you come to the column here in 'Detail'.
If you press 'alt' on Mac or 'ctrl' on Windows - keep it in - then click on the slider...
and then you can move it left and right. If you move it to the left side you will
see the image is getting quite white. All the way will be completely white.
If you move it slowly to the right, you will see that the background becomes black.
So, Lightroom applies sharpening only where you see white.
So, I am moving my slider to the right until you can only see the profile of the leopard,
and some of the areas which I would like to sharpen.
The amount of sharpening I would like to apply
here is between 10 and 20. I don't want to do more than that, because
I am going to apply more sharpening later, which I'm going to show you.
So that is only the amount of sharpening that I want to do on this image - on the edges.
Now I am going go to my 'Adjustment Brush'. On the brush you will see sharpening.
I don't want to do sharpening now. We are going click on here,
and go to my texture slider. So I am going go on minus on my slider,
to make it nice and soft in the background
So here is my brush of colour in the background.
To maybe make it a little bit easier and to see where you've brushed. Not by pressing 'o' for overlay.
Or, you can underneath here your show selected mask overlay. Click on it,
and then you can also activate it or deactivate it. So, I am just going to quickly
brush the background. This is of course just for demonstration purposes,
so this will be quite quick. You can maybe just take a little more time to do a better job.
Also, make sure when you apply, or work with the brush, to make sure in
this case that your 'Auto Mask' is on.
Got to do the feather as well a little bit - bigger here. So auto masking
will help if there's a bit of contrast between your subject in the background.
That will help selecting the edges much easier.
If it goes over, it's not a problem. I am going to show you now how we can just get rid of that.
So, this is just quickly. If you press in 'alt' again, you can see on the
brush there now a +. If I press it in or keep it in as a - it will go to + again.
So, I am going to keep it in, and then just erase the edges.
There where you can see the pinkish colour/reddish colour where I went over on the leopard
to apply the texture or my noise reduction.
There we go.
Maybe just do this area a little bit more.
Here on the top of ear I can still see a little bit of pink. Let's erase that.
I am going to press 'o' again to get back to the main image.
So my 'Texture' is 80. If you zoom in you can see it is going soft.
I will also apply a little bit of noise on this side - noise reduction on a noise slider - going +.
Now you can see it is getting really nice and smooth...when I zoom in.
So, for the noise, I like between 70 and 80. Of course you can go a lot further if you want.
I like just around 70% to 80% percent...that's where I like to go.
To go quickly to sharpening. How I do my sharpening? I will go to 'New'.
Click on 'Texture' and select 'Sharpness'. My sharpness is about 60 at the moment.
I will select 60 as well. I like to use around 60 to 70. Just colour in the Leopard.
Again pressing 'o' for overlay, and it will show you exactly where you have
done your masking. Let's go over the ears as well. There we go.
There as well.
Press 'o' to see where it is. There we go.
You can of course - if you like to apply more -
you can just go to 'New' and maybe apply 30 in this case.
I would just like to sharpen the eyes a little bit more. There we go.
Okay, I am just gonna show you quickly the before and after.
On the left side is before, and the right side is after.
I am gonna click here so that you can see the noise. Quite a big difference
between left and right. Let's see the sharpening.
You can also see the before and after..
on the sharpening.
I am going to quickly show you another image that I have already edited....
with a high ISO.
So, in this image, you can see that my ISO is quite high - 40,000.
I know this is not really an ISO that is recommended, and what we shoot, but just to show you in this
image with high ISO, what can be done. I am going quickly zoom in on the
background, so you can see where I applied the same method.
I am going to go to the before and after, so you can see quickly how different it is before and after,
just by brushing out the background with the texture slider, if you go to the negative side.
So here is the before and after.
So, this is the way I do it. I hope this helped you?
Maybe you can try on some of your images, and see if it makes it different for you.
I hope these tips that I gave you, will help you in your Lightroom.
If you have any questions, please leave them in comments below...
and don't forget to subscribe!
Thank you for watching