- Bonjour mesdames and messieurs, in this video I wanna
show you the five mistakes I see most photographer do
when they use Lightroom.
Let's do it.
(dramatic vocalizing)
All right, madames and messieurs, so being able to avoid
these five mistakes can really help you as a photographer
to get more exposure on social media,
to get more exposure in the press, to be able to sell
your prints, it is vital that you stay until the end
of this video because I can tell you something.
I receive about 10 to 20 people per day writing me to review
their photos, in fact, I even have a private Facebook group
that every Wednesday people send me their RAW files as
they me how they retouched it
and then I do my own version of it.
For example, this photo was sent by one of my students,
and by the way if you want to know more about the private
Facebook group I have a whole lecture and webinar
that talks about it.
The link is below the video.
But anyway.
That's the RAW file that my friend sent me,
that's the photo how you retouched, it, I really like
the way they did, and that's how I did it.
On the left side you see that's how he retouched it,
on the right side that's how I did it.
It's very subtle but it's got more dodge and burns,
it's got more colors.
Anyways, because every Wednesday I have people sending
me their photos, I don't show other peoples' bad photo
but I want to show you the five mistakes I see
over and over and over for the last 10 to 15 years,
I wanna say.
So mistake number one.
Too much clarity, contrast or texture.
It's just too much, and especially when you have clouds,
everything is kinda very sharp, like look at the grass
it's super sharp, there's a lot of contrast in the clouds.
It's a great photo but it's too contrasty,
it's got too much sharpening and it's got too much clarity.
Let me show you how I would retouch this photo
so I'm going to go to the Develop Module
and you can see, and that's what a lot of people do,
if I look at the RAW file I can see that texture is 100%,
I'm gonna back this down all the way, Clarity I'm gonna
back this down, actually I even go minus clarity sometimes,
like minus 4 or minus 5 clarity.
And, I don't need so much vibrance on this photo.
Look how much more pleasing it is, you know?
There is now halo in the sky, there is no contrast,
it looks a lot more natural.
The problem is that if you do a photo and you add too much
clarity, it's just gonna scream this was retouched,
I'm good at using Lightroom
and I've over processed the photo
and you will get rejection by the press
and you get rejections by galleries or by, you know,
even on social media.
Social media usually is a little more nice, I would say,
but I work a lot with professionals and I work a lot
with the press and I send a photo that's got too much
clarity then they'll just reject it.
Why?
Because the first response to somebody seeing a photo like
this is oh, you retouched it, right?
I don't want people to respond like this to me photo.
I want people to say wow, what a beautiful Tuscany scene.
That's what I want people to say.
So let me show you another example of too much clarity.
This is another photo that I on purpose added too much
clarity, this was also shot in Tuscany.
I see that all the time.
Look at the clouds, how the clouds is got a lot of contrast,
there's a lot of darkness, the clouds are very like,
very defined and you don't wanna have, clouds are supposed
to be puffy.
They're supposed to be a little bit blurry, you know?
Also, you want to be able to play between blurry
and sharp and not have everything sharp.
So, what I would do on this photo is of course I would
get Texture down, Clarity which is plus 28 I would make it
down like minus, not, like maybe minus like 10 or something
and what you can do is you can add clarity on the buildings
so I would take the brush and I would go to Clarity,
add Clarity, I would make sure my brushes are on 80
and I would paint clarity just on the buildings.
Not on the water.
You don't wanna put clarity on water or clouds.
Biggest mistake that is.
It's probably the number one mistake that I see.
And now you've got puffy clouds, kind of silky water
and very sharp buildings.
Much nicer.
So, that's the number one mistake that I see.
By the way guys, like this video.
It really makes a difference, don't forget to slam that
Like button, don't forget to leave me a comment.
I will read and answer every single comment.
I wanna hear from you from what you wanna learn,
I make two videos per week.
The number two mistake that I see the most is
too obvious dodge and burn.
You see this photo for example?
It's got a lot of dodge and burn and when you can see
the stroke too much, it just kills it, you know?
So, let me go into the brush and let me show you
the different, I'm gonna erase that brush stroke
and that brush stroke.
And the two key things to avoid that your brush stroke
when you want make something brighter by dodging,
is you go to exposure so you make sure that
exposure's on one and you make sure that Flow and Density
is like maximum 80s and now I can brush over her.
I can, the sun was really up there
I can pretend that the sun was coming there and it's,
maybe makes little shrouds like this and even that
is too much.
So what I usually do is I go from 0.97 to 0.5.
It's kinda subtle, let me show you the before and after,
you wanna have somebody say, oh, you dodged and burned
the photo so that's the before and that's the after.
Let me show you another photo.
All right, so here is another example of a photo in Venice.
I mean, you can see,
and I see that so much in a photo I get,
you can see the dodging, and it's so obvious
and so obvious there.
I have a rule, which is when you do your dodge and burning,
you look at the photos the next day, and if you see
your brush strokes, you know you've gone too far.
So let show you how we can correct that,
I'm gonna take the brush here, I'm gonna select the brush
here and I'm just gonna press delete and I'm gonna re-do it,
but this time, remember 0.97 or one of exposure
and flow and density in the 80s and now I can sort of
dodge this and make this a little bit brighter
and I think the water needs to be a little bit brighter.
And don't get me wrong.
I love dodge and burn, I can make even this a little
bit brighter, I love it, but it's got to be subtle.
If it's too obvious, it's not good.
So, you can see before.
After.
When you do the before and after you go oh my gosh,
it's a big change.
And also one thing you can do is.
You see for example, I think this is too strong here,
so I can hold on the Option key and erase the brush stroke
that I did here and I can click New, now I'm doing a new
brush and this time instead of doing 0.97, I'm gonna put
it much lower, so maybe like 0.21
and every brush stroke's gonna have their own value
and you go, and you build it little,
by little by little by little.
Mistake number three.
Colors from another planet.
What I mean by that is, and this is something that changed
my life, years ago I heard about this amazing photographer
called Peter Link who apparently sold hundreds of million
dollars of fine art prints and I went to visit many
of his galleries and his photos were super saturated
but very nice and people that was in the room were all
saying oh what a nice photo, what a nice sunset,
what a nice beach, what a nice mountain and they were not
reacting like oh, it's Photoshopped but it was obviously
Photoshopped and I realized the reason why that is
because Peter Link basically does a lot of saturation,
does great retouching but respects the hue,
meaning when he does his sunsets, it's gonna be really red,
it's not gonna some kind of red that you only find on Mars.
For example, this photo, this is something that I get a lot.
And I have been guilty of this because I used to
be called Mr. Magenta and I used to have these crazy magenta
photos not like this, this is way too much,
you get the idea.
You want something that's gonna match the experience
that we have on planet Earth.
It's not about the saturation, it's about the hue.
The kind of color you're using.
So for example, a good way to prevent this is to use
some of the fixed white balance.
For example, I like to go on Daylight, then I did
a very common white balance, very experience on Earth,
see, it took out all the red out, I also have like a brush
stroke in there that's got a weird color, that I'm gonna
erase and I mean, I understand sometimes you wanna add
some warmth on the photo, but, I used to do it a lot
in the past, but I find if you add warmth to the photo
where there was no warmth, even hidden in a RAW file
it just looks fake.
So you're better off, you're better off just you know,
having a nice contrast.
You could add a bit of magenta you know to make it pop
a bit, but you're better off staying in the original
color of how it was than trying to add color that was not
there because it's really hard to do it in a way
that it doesn't look fake.
I can still make this a little but brighter and you know,
I don't wanna spend too much time on this one
but that's the idea that the best thing is, you know,
for example on this one I would probably take a brush
and maybe add a bit of yellow magenta
just on the tree for example.
Just to make them pop, make them a little warmer,
maybe add a bit of light on the tree.
But I would not touch the sky.
The sky was blue and there was no warmth in to it,
that's it, but now I have contrast between
the colors of the trees and the sky.
And let me show you the before and after.
Before.
And after.
Yeah, it's even a little too bright.
And, you know, I probably would do a little bit
of a gradient here on the sky to make it even darker.
So, I can double click here on Effect to put everything
down to zero and just add, and really get that blue
but you, again you don't wanna go too much
because if the blue becomes too saturated what's gonna
happen is that it's gonna look like a fake blue,
so what you can do, is you can, as you make it darker
you can take out some of the exposure, sorry,
some of the saturation so that it looks more reality.
Okay, very cool, mistake number four.
Not using the proper crop or not fixing the horizon.
This is a good example.
This is a photo I shot in New York and I on purpose
made the horizon a little bit like this,
this is also something I've been guilty of often,
I post photo where people say your horizon
is not exactly straight, so I'll show you two tricks.
The first trick is, you take the crop tool,
you've got this amazing angle thing and you can click
it's the angle tool and you can make it follow the horizon.
And it's gonna make the horizon perfectly straight.
But, that's trick number one.
The other trick is use standard cropping.
Most of the gallery that I work with, or the newspaper
magazine I work with, they either, either want,
four by three or 16 by nine format.
So, I like on this one to use a 16 by nine format,
which I think is really cool so now I made the horizon
straight and used the 16 by nine format.
That's actually the format I work the most with my galleries
and I find it's good because usually it enables
you to zoom in a bit more.
It gives like a more panoramic kind of view.
The other crop I wanna advise you to use
is the four by five.
Four by five is Instagram.
Instagram has become such a huge platform today
and if you post with a four by five in portrait mode
your exposure on Instagram will be a lot better.
So, I choose four by five and if you press X
on the keyboard, you see, you get into portrait mode
and you can position how you want it, find some kind
of cool framing and post that.
So try using more 16 by nine framing and making your
horizon very straight.
Last mistake, but not the least is too much saturation
and again, I am 100% guilty of this.
You see, that I find over the last 50 years I've been
doing photographing every time I learned kind of a new
trick like a new plug in, like Luminar or Photomatix
or Aurora or some kind slider somewhere I usually overuse
it all the time.
And often it looks an over processed
and over saturated photo.
Like this photo is really cool, but it's too saturated.
There's no way the colors could be
that much saturated in life.
So, I like very saturated colors, don't get me wrong,
but as I grow as a photographer I try to create the
maximum impact with the resemble the maximum possible
saturation that people can experience easily.
So on this one, I think it's a little too much
I on purpose pushed it so I will put the Vibrance on zero,
and you know, maybe just add a little bit but not that much.
If you just go, something like this, like this kind of blue
I see often on photos, it just is too much.
So you have to go at the threshold
of what people can experience.
Now the truth is, if you go on an amazing sunset,
and you see how red it is, try to retouch that in Lightroom,
it's gonna be really red, so some photos are truly
in nature very saturated.
You just have to make it to the point
where it still looks realistic.
For me, at plus 10 that's good enough.
It's still saturated but not too much.
All right, I hope you learned a thing or two,
check our my webinar, it's my entire life story,
I'm also gonna give you some free presets
and I want to talk to you about this private Facebook
group if you want me to re-touch your photographing.
Check it out, the link is below the video.