Bring Life To Your Photos In Lightroom Classic - Design Post 12

Introduction

    There is beauty in many places that we come across. Just yesterday we were driving down the road, and the sun was setting behind some grey and white clouds in the middle of a bright blue sky. You could see the sun's rays bursting out from behind the clouds, and the reflection of the water and other objects made the sky turn shades of pink and orange. It was beautiful, and I decided to snap a shot while we were driving down the road. It was a good picture, but I felt that it had much more potential.

    There is an article in Photoshop User’s magazine October 2023^rd edition titled “BRING LIFE TO YOUR PHOTOS IN LIGHTROOM CLASSIC” by Serge Ramelli this article made me think of this picture. This article explains how to take an ok/boring photo and bring out its full potential.

    The photo Serge Ramelli used was a picture taken in Paris, France capturing the Eiffel Tower in a distance lit up during the “blur hours”.

Bring Life To Your Photos In Lightroom Classic

STEP 1: When you take photos at specific times of the day, they can get noisy. This picture was taken during the “blur hours” so the ISO needed to be higher but as low as you can get it. The aperture was set at 1/40s.

To get rid of the noise you can right-click the thumbnail. Select Enhance, turn on Denoise, and set the amount of Denoise that is appropriate for your photo.

STEP 2: The exposure was off so you can correct this by adjusting the shadows, highlights, black and white points, and the contrast.

STEP 3: The picture was cropped using the Crop Overlay too. When you crop photos do not leave objects half in the picture and half out. The focus of the picture in the article is the Eiffel Tower. Ramelli likes to crop his photos to 16x9 for a more cinematic feel. In the Tool Panel you can set your Crop Aspect Ratio.

STEP 4: The sky is too bright in this picture, so if something is too bright you can correct the white balance. There are several preset options to choose from or you can select As Shot or Auto. These are found in the Basic Panel. Ramelli selected Auto, and he tweaked the Temperature to 7,795, and the Tint to +27.

STEP 5: In this step Ramelli used the HSL Panels. He selected the Hue tab and the Targeted Adjustment tool. You can pick a specific color in your photo and the Hue will change according to the colors. Then you can go in and adjust everything as you feel necessary.

Warmer colors are added to this photo so he set the Blue to +1, the Red to -6, and the Magenta to -2.

STEP 6: The saturation in the HSL Panel was adjusted to +32 for Red, +31 for Orange, and +34 for Yellow.

STEP 7: In the Luminance tab, the Blue’s were darkened by -30. You have to be careful with adjusting the Luminance. This is how light are dark the photo is, and the picture can change drastically very quickly.

STEP 8: The Dodge and Burn tool is a great tool to take this photo to the next level. This makes some areas darker and some areas lighter where there is light in the photo. Create a mask of the sky by selecting the circle with a dotted outline. Lower the Temperature to -4, and raise the Tint to +21.

STEP 9: Create a new mask, and select the Linear Gradient option. To darken the top of the photo. Draw a gradient from the top of the photo to the end of the sky. Lower the Exposure to -0.60 and the Temperature to -28.

STEP 10: Create a new mask, and select the Brush Tool. Set the exposure to 0.60 and the Clarity to -53. Using your bush in dodge and burn paint over the brighter highlights to make the glow. You can change the size of your brush by pressing the Bracket keys.

STEP 11: Create another Brush. Press k to do this. Set the Exposure to 1.93 and the Clarity to -23. Paint over some of the highlights that aren’t as bright.

STEP 12: Create another Brush Mask. Set the Flow and Density to 100. Brush over the bottom portion of the photo. Click Curves to add Contrast and Color to the photo. You will see 4 circles at the top. The first circle is the Point Curve (the white circle). This changes the colors of the whole image. To change the contrast 2 points will be added to this curve. Click on the lower part of the curve to add a point, and set the Input to 64 and the Output to 59. Click on the upper part of the curve to add a point, and set the Input to 167 and the Output to 177.

Select to Red Channel. This is the Red Channel. A point this cure that is 121/125. The higher you move the point the redder it will get. The lower you go, the greener it will get.

Select the Green Channel. Add a point at 125/131, and then Select the Blue Channel and add a point at 133/131.

These settings are all subjective to the photo that was taken.

STEP 13: To bring the viewer’s attention to the main subject more, create two more Linear Gradients one to the top right corner and one to the top left corner. The exposure will be set to -0.58 for both, and the Temperature will be set to -44 for the left side and -17 for the right side.

STEP 14: For the overall image, set the Texture to +21, and the Clarity to +14. This is also subjective.

STEP 15: In the last step, Ramelli sharpens the photo. He says one way to check if you have noise is to look at the sky. He sets the Sharpening Amount to 75 and Masking to 70. By holding down option while masking, your image will turn black and white. The black parts will not be sharpened, and the white parts will. Don’t sharpen the sky or water elements.

Conclusion

    The effects that these edits had on this photo were astounding. I love how this pretty bland image transformed into a breathtaking photo. It is incredible to see how these features in Lightroom can be manipulated to make beautiful pieces. Some of the effects and tools I have used, but some of them I have not. Something I find myself doing is sticking to the natural colors of the picture. I am trying to venture out more. I believe this also comes with a bit more experience using these tools. I need to become more comfortable using them. These articles are also very helpful in learning how to manipulate tools in Lightroom to create amazing works of art.