In the Moment:
Michael Frye's Landscape Photography Blog
by Michael Frye | Apr 22, 2013 | Digital Darkroom
As many of you know, Adobe released Lightroom 5 Beta last week. Now that I’ve had a chance to give it a thorough test drive, here are my thoughts about the new features:
Advanced Healing Brush
The Spot Removal tool has received a major upgrade – finally! You can now brush over an area you want to retouch, instead of being confined to using only discrete spots.
I’ve tried this new feature on several images, and it works pretty well. It makes short work of relatively simple jobs, like getting rid of a jet trail in the sky, that used to require tediously placing a series of cloning or healing spots. Now it usually takes just one brush stroke to make a jet trail disappear.
Photoshop still has easier and more efficient options for difficult retouching jobs. But the new Advanced Healing Brush will make it possible to do more retouching in Lightroom, allowing you to keep a completely flexible, non-destructive workflow. I think that’s a big improvement; I’ll say more about that further down.
(more…)
by Michael Frye | Nov 21, 2012 | Announcements, Reviews
Even if you know a program well it helps to have a comprehensive guide, a book that covers everything from A-Z, so you can look up a keyboard shortcut, remember how to do that thing that you only do once a year, or learn some new tricks.
My favorite Lightroom bible has been Martin Evening’s The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4 Book. I still think that’s a great resource, but I might have a new favorite: Piet Van den Eynde’s new ebook called Lightroom 4 Unmasked.
This is a truly comprehensive guide to Lightroom 4, from setting up and importing, to organizing in the Library Module, processing images, mapping them, exporting them or publishing them to Flickr or Facebook, and printing.
If you’re new to Lightroom there’s a lot of great information here to help you get started. For example, the Lightroom Do’s and Don’ts (page 20) offers some invaluable advice to help you make the most of the program and avoid some common pitfalls.
Even if you know Lightroom well you’ll undoubtedly discover some new tips. One that I’m anxious to try is on page 238 — using Lightroom’s Publish Services to automatically put images on my iPhone and iPad. Cool — I didn’t know you could do that.
This is another ebook by Craft & Vision, the publisher of my two previous ebooks. But this one is different. Craft & Vision is calling this a “big book,” and it is that: a full 312 spreads. Because this is roughly four times the size of their typical ebooks, the price for Lightroom 4 Unmasked is higher than normal — $20. But until midnight on Tuesday, November 27th you can get it for only $15. Just use the code LR4FIVE on checkout.
(more…)
by Michael Frye | Jun 15, 2012 | Digital Darkroom
Path through foggy redwoods
I meant to post this earlier, but if you haven’t heard, Lightroom 4.1 was officially released about two weeks ago. So if you’ve been waiting to upgrade to Lightroom 4 until Adobe fixed the bugs, I think your wait is over, as the major problems should have been addressed. I know the point curve bug was fixed with the 4.1 RC (“release candidate”), so that shouldn’t be an issue any more.
Lightroom 4 is a big step forward in Raw image processing, but the advancements require a lot of horsepower to work properly. So check the system requirements before you take the plunge. Many people have had to upgrade their operating system to run Lightroom 4, and upgrading your OS can be a big undertaking, requiring that you update other applications as well.
Earlier I posted two videos about Lightroom 4, so if you haven’t watched those yet they can help you get up to speed in the new process. Here are links to Part 1 and Part 2.
The first image here, as well as all of the images from Monday’s post—including some pretty high-contrast scenes—were processed exclusively in Lightroom 4. In the comments for that last post JayM asked if I could make a tutorial on how I processed the first image. That’s a great suggestion, but for now you’ll find a screen shot below that shows the Basic Panel settings for that photograph. (I didn’t use the Tone Curve, which is not unusual for me these days with high-contrast images in Lightroom 4.)
(more…)
by Michael Frye | Apr 20, 2012 | Uncategorized
(If you’re getting this post through email, click here to view the video.)
Here it is, my second video about the new process in Lightroom 4. In Part One I explained how the new tone controls work; here in Part Two I talk about how to use these new tools to process both low- and high-contrast images. Here are some of the main points:
– Where to begin? If you’ve read my eBook Light and Land, or watched one of my previous videos about curves, you know that in the old process I preferred starting with all the Basic tone controls set at zero, and the point curve linear. Does this still apply in the new process? (1:10)
– Curves or sliders? The new Basic Tone sliders are much better than the old ones; are they good enough to replace the Point Curve? (10:30)
– Does the order matter? Adobe suggests using the Basic tools in order from top to bottom, starting with Exposure, then Contrast, and working down to Highlights, Shadows, Whites, and Blacks—essentially working from the midtones out to the black point and white point. But this contradicts a long-standing tradition in digital imaging of setting the black point and white point first. Should you stand with tradition, or embrace the new order? (13:02)
– Processing a high-contrast image. (21:04)
This video is about 27 minutes long, so, as I said with Part 1, grab your favorite beverage, sit back, relax, and enjoy the show. Spending a little time with this video now will save time later when you’re processing photos. More importantly, I hope that this video will help you get the most out of your images so that they convey what you saw and felt when you pressed the shutter.
As I mention in the video, the best way to learn more about processing images in Lightroom is to take a workshop. There’s are still a couple of spots available in my October workshop, The Digital Landscape: Autumn in Yosemite. This is a comprehensive course covering the entire process from capture to print, with field sessions covering exposure, composition, and everything you do before pressing the shutter, and lab sessions where we process and print the images with Lightroom.
I hope you enjoy Part 2!
—Michael Frye
Related Posts: Lightroom 4: The New Tone Controls; Using Curves in Lightroom and Camera Raw
Michael Frye is a professional photographer specializing in landscapes and nature. He is the author and photographer of The Photographer’s Guide to Yosemite, Yosemite Meditations, and Digital Landscape Photography: In the Footsteps of Ansel Adams and the Great Masters, plus the eBooks Light & Land: Landscapes in the Digital Darkroom, and Exposure for Outdoor Photography. He has written numerous magazine articles on the art and technique of photography, and his images have been published in over thirty countries around the world. Michael has lived either in or near Yosemite National Park since 1983, currently residing just outside the park in Mariposa, California.
by Michael Frye | Apr 13, 2012 | Uncategorized
(If you’re getting this post through email, click here to view the video.)
As I wrote last week, Lightroom 4 represents a big change—the biggest change to Adobe’s Raw processing engine since Adobe Camera Raw was introduced in 2003. They’ve completely revamped the underlying algorithms for all of the tonal controls, and changed the behavior, and in some cases the names, of all the Basic Tone sliders.
Overall, I’m really happy with the new process, especially for high-contrast images. But if you’re accustomed to Lightroom 3 the new tools may seem strange at first. So I’ve been working on two videos to explain the changes and how to work with the new tools.
The first video, embedded here, explains some of the differences between the old and new processes, how the new tools work, and the ways they affect an image’s appearance. Here are some of the main points:
(more…)
