In the Moment:
Michael Frye's Landscape Photography Blog
by Michael Frye | Oct 19, 2023 | Digital Darkroom
Aspens and bigtooth maples, northern Utah. I used the new Point Color tool to tweak the originally dull-looking greens and yellows in this photo and make them more vibrant.
Last week Adobe launched major updates to Lightroom Classic (13.0), Lightroom Desktop (7.0), and Lightroom Mobile (9.0). The biggest new features are HDR editing, Point Color, and Lens Blur.
All of these new tools deserve their own post, but we just finished a workshop, and we’re still traveling, so for now I’m just going to explain a few of the salient features, and steer you to some more in-depth information.
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by Michael Frye | Aug 7, 2023 | Announcements
Sunbeams, mist, Half Dome, and the Merced River, Yosemite National Park, California
High-contrast images can be challenging to process. How do you both darken highlights and lighten shadows, without making the image look too flat, weird, or over-processed?
On August 26th I’ll present a live webinar where I’ll demonstrate how to tackle this challenge. I’ll take you step-by-step through processing one or more high-contrast photographs, where you’ll learn powerful yet simple techniques for balancing contrast, while keeping the image lively and natural-looking. Here’s a partial list of the topics we’ll cover:
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by Michael Frye | Apr 23, 2023 | Digital Darkroom, Video Tutorials
Lightroom’s Powerful New Denoise Tool
Adobe released major updates for Lightroom and Camera Raw last week (version 12.3 for Lightroom Classic, 6.3 for the cloud version or Lightroom, and 15.3 for Adobe Camera Raw). Lightroom Classic now has Curves in the Masking Panel, which I’ve been hoping to see for a long time. But I’ll talk about that later, because to me the most exciting news is the new AI-powered Denoise tool.
I’ve used most of the noise-reduction tools out there, but the new Denoise function in Lightroom and Camera Raw has quickly become my favorite. It’s not perfect, and it has limitations, but it’s performed minor miracles on some of my noisiest, most troublesome photos.
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by Michael Frye | Jan 9, 2023 | Announcements
Sunbeams, mist, Half Dome, and the Merced River, Yosemite National Park, California
Just a reminder that next Monday I’ll be doing a presentation about Lightroom Masking for Nature Photography Classes as part of of their Winter Speaker Series. (That’s Monday, January 16th, at 4:00 p.m. Pacific Time.) This winter series also includes online presentations by David Kingham, Nick Page, and Sean Bagshaw – all focused on image processing.
You can sign up for these talks individually for $27 each, or register for all four speakers for $87 (which seems like a great bargain). And 10% of the proceeds go to individual charities chosen by the speaker (I’ve chosen the Yosemite Conservancy):
Click here to register for the Winter Speaker Series.
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by Michael Frye | Nov 3, 2022 | Digital Darkroom
Hoodoos in reflected light, Grand Staircase-Escalante NM, Utah. The new Object selection tool helped me select just the hoodoos, then invert that selection and subtly darken their surroundings.
After coming back from New Zealand I spent a few days at home, then headed up to the Oregon Coast to scout for our upcoming workshop. It’s been a busy month, but before the workshop starts I want to share some thoughts about that latest Lightroom update.
On October 24th Adobe announced major updates to Lightroom, Lightroom Classic, and Adobe Camera Raw. (The new version of Lightroom Classic is 12.0.) And I think it’s a big upgrade. To me, the most exciting new features for landscape photographers are the addition of a Content-Aware mode for the Healing tool (formerly the Spot Removal tool), and the new Object Selection tool in the Masking Panel.
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