Walking The Tightrope Of High ISOs - Design Post 13

Introduction

    There are many genres of photography out there today such as landscape, wildlife, pet, street, travel photography and so much more. No matter what genre you choose to focus on, certain settings are used for each one. The exposure triangle plays a major role in taking a photograph, and the triangle's three parts (aperture, iso, and shutter speed) are instrumental in taking these photos, especially in different types of light sources.

    The article I have chosen is in the November 2023^rd edition of Photoshop User Magazine named Walking The Tightrope Of High ISOs – Visual Storytelling written by Ibarionex Perello.

    Perello has been a photographer for a substantial number of years. His favorite types of photography include street and travel photography. He also discusses tripods and how he has owned various types and whether they were expensive or cheap. He mentioned that the price didn’t matter. What mattered was that they were rarely used because they were something extra to carry on his journeys.

To help with this dilemma, he ended up purchasing a compact tripod just before his trip to France. Lo and behold, he opted out of carrying it around the city. Most of his photos had an abundance of light, but the reason I chose this is because some of his photos did not.

    When Perello snapped some shots of the astounding cathedrals that grace the cities of Paris and Bourdeaux, he ran into some challenges.

    The lighting can be tricky because of the way it sneaks through the stained-glass windows lighting up a small amount of the area leaving the remainder of it in darkness. Perello states that there was not enough light to set the ISO low and with a small aperture. This normally does the trick, but a smartphone could take a better picture at this point.

    Perello ended up snapping a handheld photo with his camera at an ISO of 6400 with a small aperture. The editing can be done to his liking, plus Adobe Lightroom has added some improved features, denoise, and noise reduction. Denoise is the first feature used when it comes to high ISOs of 3200 and up. As Perello began editing these were his steps:

STEP 1: Reduce the noise in the picture by selecting the Detail Panel in the develop module, and where it says Noise Reduction click Denoise. Lower the default to 40 instead of 50 and click the Enhance button.

STEP 2: Where it says Tone, increase the Exposure to +1.10, decrease the Highlights to -50, and increase the Shadows to +14.

STEP 3: Adjust the mid-tone contrast by Increasing the Texture to +24, the Clarity to +9, the Vibrance to +19, and decrease the Dehaze by -5.

STEP 4: Select the Tone Curve, and then select the Parametric Curve tool. Decrease the Highlights by -13, the Lights by -13, the Shadows by -10, and increase the Darks to +31.

STEP 5: Because the Cathedral has many colors, reflected lights, and stained-glass windows, the HSL/Color panel needs some attention. Select Saturation and increase Red to +5, Aqua to +11, Blue to +18, Purple to +9, Magenta to +7, and decrease the Orange by -40 and the Yellow by -10.

Select the Luminance. Increase the Orange to +10 and Magenta to +4, and decrease the Red to -18, Yellow to -15, Green to -16, Aqua to -7, and Blue to -10.

STEP 6: The camera caused a slight distortion. Select the Transform panel, and in the Upright control, click Auto. This will correct it.

STEP 7: Apply Grain to the image to mimic a high-ISO look. Select Controls and then Grain. Set Amount to 20, Size to 19, and Roughness to 26.

Conclusion

    The result of the Photo Edit was amazing. It is crazy with a little bit of help from Lightroom how much you can bring out pictures of natural beauty. It takes a great eye and a great understanding of what each tool in Lightroom does to manipulate a picture to look this way. Perello turned a dark-lit Cathedral in Paris or Bordeaux into a masterpiece.