Hello, and welcome to creative captures part two.
My name is Sabine, and today's episode is a follow-up on a video that I
made a few weeks ago, in which I explained several techniques, on how
to take creative wildlife photographs.
If you haven't watched that video yet, I would strongly recommend you
do so, first by following the link in the top, and then head back to this
video...where I will walk you through a typical edit of a high-key, a low-key,
a silhouette and a panning shot.
Step-by-step, so that you can easily follow along.
So, no time to waste.
Let's get right into it
Before I get started, I just want to mention that I'm going to do all
the editing with Adobe Lightroom.
If you have perhaps another post-processing software,
don't switch off just yet.
I think that this video could still be helpful to you.
As most of the sliders really are very similar or identical
and other software too.
All right, let's hit it off with editing a typical high-key image in
my Lightroom catalogue, I have a few zebra images from a recent photo safari
in the beautiful Masai Mara in Kenya.
And if you look at these, you can see that they are all over exposed.
Purposely so for the high-key effect.
We had a bit of overcast weather that day, which we could use to
our advantage and a fairly bright background behind the zebras.
Exposing to the right by 3 EV, meant that we could get rid of most of the
background, but still keep enough visible detail on the zebra itself.
For the edit, I will use this portrait because I like to side profile, and I
think the tail in motion gives this image a bit more interest over the others.
My personal way of editing high-key images is pretty straight-forward
and almost the same every time.
I start with dragging the white slider to the right, while holding down ALT
key on a PC, or the OPTION key on a Mac.
This gives me a good visualization of where in the image I've reached a hundred
percent white, without any detail left.
I want most part of the background to become white and featureless
and because of the black and white pattern of the zebra, I can push
the white all the way up to +100.
Hovering over the show highlight clipping feature, will now show in a red color,
what has become a hundred percent white.
And even though we have lost all detail in the white stripes of the zebra.
The black stripes, which still contain enough detail, create a separation
we need to keep the zebra visible.
However, if you had another animal, like for example, these hippos
that have a uniform dark tone, you will only drag the whites to the
right until you see the first white speckles appear on the subject itself.
Otherwise you would simply lose too much detail.
Next.
I will basically do the same with the black slider.
Because I have taken the image overexposed, I now want to set
the black point and bring some definition back into the black parts.
To do this, I drag the black slider to the left this time.
While again, holding down the ALT or OPTION key, until I see the
first black speckles appearing.
To define the edges on the animal a little, I take the highlights
slider...most of the time down to - 100.
After that, I convert the image to black and white, which is what I do
with most of my high keys to give it a contemporary, fine art feel, and
then I'll tweak it further from there.
The zebra still looks pretty washed out.
So I will take the black slider a bit more to the left.
This time slowlylooking at the outcome instead of using the masking feature.
Then comes contrast and clarity.
There is absolutely no recipe here, and you can drag them according to your
own taste, of course...but see how, especially the clarity slider, brings
out the texture and definition nicely.
I often have both sliders increased values around plus 50, which
can be a good starting point.
Now having said that, it depends a lot on the original image quality...And
the format you've taken the image in.
For these creative captures, I would always recommend shooting
in raw as you have much more data and detail to work with.
And as far as the high key is concerned, Keeping the ISO as low as possible,
when you take the shot, will help tremendously with the detail that
you can bring out later in post.
A high ISO photograph, will unfortunately never give you the same detail and
sharpness as a lower ISO image.
After I've adjusted contrast and clarity, I would like to make some
more local adjustments to the zebra.
Now, this step very much depends on the situation and each image.
If the circumstances were absolutely perfect, you might not even need
it altogether...but in the case of the zebra, although it was overcast
weather, there was a bit of a sun glare coming through the clouds.
Which you can see in the areas around theears, the head and the back.
They lack this little bit of detail.
And to bring that back, I use an adjustment brush with the exposure
and highlights set to the minus side.
And then I'm going to brush only on these specific points to bring the detail back.
Make sure to have the auto mask feature enabled so that you don't brush over
the edges...and by accident, darken the background again...And to control
you can press O, for overlay on your keyboard, once you're done brushing.
To see if you need to do any clean-up.
If you do, hold down ALT on a PC or OPTION on a Mac, to switch the brush from
plus to minus...and erase any mistakes.
Now that the zebra looks pretty good, I want to give a bit more
attention to the background.
The first thing that grabs my attention is the dark area behind the tail,
which I found rather distracting and breaking the shape of the zebra.
If we look back at the original image, you can see that this was
simply a patch of green grass that was darker than rest, which is why it
breaks the uniform bright background.
So simply using another adjustment brush, with the exposure slider set to the
plus side, and painting over the dark area...will get rid of the distraction.
As you can see now, I've painted quite a bit over the tail and lost
some of the dark areas, there too.
But as long as the tail still looks like one, I'm not fussed
to be super accurate here.
I then evaluate the overall look once again, and I might make minor tweaks,
like brighten the exposure a little as I personally like a bright and airy look.
And after that as a last checkup, I used the spot removal tool and
enable a feature called visualized spots, with the strength set to 100.
Especially, if you intend to make a print, this is very useful as you can
see now...if there are any dark and distracting spots left in the background,
that aren't visible to your eye...but could very well show up in a print later.
As with any image, I do sharpening as a last step, by masking the
area I want to be sharpened, and increasing the amount to my liking.
In this case to about 60.
Again, this is very much image dependent.
The more pixels you have, the more sharpening you can apply without
having it look over sharpened.
Now you can see, side by side, before and after.
While I do convert most high keys to black and white - because of the natural
lack of colors in the image - because of the heavily overexposing, there are
times when keeping them in color looks great, especially with colorful birds.
You really want to bring out the beautiful tones.
If you're not sure you can always switch back between color and black
and white, right at the end, and then decide which version you like best.
So, what do you think?
I hope you liked the edit.
If you do, and you think this could make a beautiful print, leave me a comment down
below and give this video a thumbs up.
I thank you in advance.
Now let's do a low key image.
For a low key image, I want to edit this Nile crocodile that was sunbathing
on a tree log in The Chobe River.
And in camera, I already underexposed, and created with that, a very dramatic
contrast between the reptile - having the sunshine on it from the side - and
the deep shadow of the riverbank on the other side...and in the background.
All I want to do now in post, is to further enhance this effect once again.
So let me start by cropping the image.
I think I will go for a vertical crop here just because I like the reflection
and I want to include all of it.
Plus this also lets me get rid of the log on the right, which I
found a little bit distracting.
Now, I want to deepen the shadows further, to create more drama and
eliminate - once again - distractions that I can see in the background.
I will also deepen the blacks a bit, but not too much, as otherwise too much
detail would be lost on the crocodile.
By hovering over the 'show shadow clipping feature', you can always double check
that you didn't go overboard...meaning that you should try and avoid any
blue color on your main subject.
Since the crocodile skin is very reflective, I need
to check the highlights.
By holding down the ALT or OPTION key, and decreasing the highlight
slider to the left, until basically no more - or only a little - of
these bright speckles are visible.
Next up, I am going to add a dark vignette around the corners of the image.
I usually go as far as most elements that are still visible in the
background disappear, and my eye is drawn right onto the crocodile itself.
With the vignette at the outer edge of the crock also went darker...and
perhaps a little bit too dark.
To fix that, I use an adjustment brush with a bit of plus exposure and brush it
over the parts that I want to be brighter.
Right underneath the crocs chin, I would like to add a bit of
darker exposure, so I grab another brush, and darken just that area.
Heading over to the contrast slider.
There's really no standard here.
And I usually use it in either direction, as I see fit.
Because this photograph already has a dark and very moody feel to it, I do not
really want to increase more contrast and make it super grungy looking.
Instead, I actually slightly decreased the contrast.
If I look at a general color tone, I found that the image
has a bit of a green tint to it.
So I'm going to pull the tint slider a bit over to the magenta side.
And I feel that I also wanted a bit warmer in the color temperature.
To bring out some more detail and texture, in both the crocodile and the
tree - I increase clarity - and since I found whenever I use clarity, the
overall look gets a little darker again.
I will now use a radial filter over the main focal point in the image...and
increase the exposure again slightly.
Although the crocodile is brighter now, I feel that the eye and teeth
can do with a little more...and therefore I use an adjustment brush
with a preset called Iris enhance, which is native in Lightroom actually.
And this lets the eye, and sharp teeth, pop a bit more...and to make
the effect more subtle, I dial down the saturation and the exposure a bit.
But I do increase the vibrant slider for the entire image, to bring in a
little color...and then the same as any high edit, I will now double check my
background for any unwanted speckles that might not be visible to my eye.
To do this, I use once again, the spot removal tool with the
visualized spots feature enabled.
Now I can see where might need to brush a bit more darker exposure,
or, use the spot remover function, to clean up the background.
That looks good.
I think so.
So, let's mask and sharpen.
And here you can see the before and after.
Of course there are many low key techniques, as I covered in my previous
video, but it would be a bit time consuming going through all of them.
I think you got the basic idea.
It is just a bit more tweaking here and there...if you have a different
technique...and in the end, it is the kind of look that you want to go for.
So let's rather continue with a typical silhouette edit.
Silhouettes, if taken correctly in camera, are actually pretty straightforward
and don't need much editing at all.
I've chosen this image of a pied kingfisher, sitting on a tree
stump, silhouetted against a brighter water of The Chobe River.
And I took this photo on neutral exposure because most of the frame was filled with
the brightness of the sky and the water.
And therefore the bird came out naturally dark, but not
completely black and featureless.
So I'm going to deepen the blacks until I only recognize the animal by its shape.
After that I'm going to boost the contrast, because essentially that
is what a silhouette should be.
A stark contrast between bright and dark.
I'm also going to increase clarity to accentuate the shape a little more.
And after I increased the overall exposurea bit.
Since it is a sunset silhouette, I would like to enhance the beautiful colors.
And I do that with the vibrant slider, which affects the mid-tones only rather
than the saturation feature, which affects highlights, shadows, and mid-tones
equally...nd can often look over done.
With silhouettes, I often zoom in and have a closer look at image noise,
which can easily be visible in the ky.
To get rid of most of it, I make use of the graduated filter.
Selecting mostly just the sky, and reducing the noise by
dragging the slider to the right.
Since I do not need much detail in the background, I'm happy
to go quite extreme here...as I quite like the softening effect.
And as always, my last step is sharpening, while I am masking the parts that I
want to be sharper, and increasing the slider, until it looks good?
In addition to removing the noise from the sky, only with the graduated filter,
I will now also add a little bit of overall noise reduction by using the
luminance smoothing tool...and voila!
That is the final version...before, and after.
All right.
Looks like we're almost through all the techniques.
Last but not least, let me walk you through a typical panning shot edit.
In the image here, you see a lioness walking...and the different tones of
the vegetation and sand she was walking on, was really ideal for this technique.
Let me start off by cropping the image...and my idea, if I look at the
image, would be to have the lioness in the top third of the frame, giving
her some open room towards the right hand side, where she walks towards
us...And to include that bit of blue color right at the bottom here.
Since the image is a little bright, I bring the exposure
down...and then increase the whites.
Deepen the blacks, and adjust the shadows and highlights to the look I like.
I'll add contrast, texture and clarity...all to bring
out definition in the streaky background, as well as the lioness.
I'll add a bit of vibrance too, but I will do a bit more local adjustments in a bit.
The general color tone in the image seems again, quite green to me.
So I add in a bit of magenta and I'm also going to cool down the color temperature.
Especially with lions, I found that their sand colored fur, can easily
look too yellow and saturated.
So you really want to keep that in check.
Next, I will grab a radial filter, make a selection around the lioness.
Invert the mask.
And then darken all around her, which then leads the viewer to the main subject.
I will also decrease the sharpness within the same selection, to
slightly blur the corners...Making use of several adjustment brushes.
I first add extra saturation, brushing all around the lioness, to intensify
the colors of the background only.
And with another brush, I like to enhance details on the lioness.
For that, I use a bit of texture, clarity, and sharpness...and
then I'm going to brush only over the parts that are in focus.
The third brush will brighten the face a little more.
And then the last one...I use to emphasize the eyes, using the iris
enhance preset within the brush.
A bit of overall sharpening at the end, and I'm done.
Definitely quite an improvement over the original, I think, let me know if
you like it, and what was your favorite edit in the comments down below?
I'm always happy to receive some feedback from you guys.
Until next time, happy editing...And see you soon.
Bye-bye.