Ending my near years-long rendezvous with Darktable, I’ve began the transition to Adobe Lightroom. Here are couple back-and-fourths with ChatGPT about how to expect.
Is there a standardized or widely-accepted “editing framework” that I should consider adopting for my transition to Lightroom?
Me (in a dark shade of green)
While there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to photo editing, there is a generally accepted framework that many photographers find useful. This framework is adaptable depending on your style and the specific needs of each image, but it provides a solid starting point. Here’s a simplified version you can adopt and tweak as you learn and grow in Lightroom:
1. Organization and Culling Phase
- Import and Organize: Begin by importing your photos into Lightroom and organizing them into albums or collections. Utilize keywords and ratings to help you quickly find and select the best images to work on.
- Culling: Go through your images to select the ones worth editing. Look for sharpness, exposure, composition, and emotional impact.
2. Basic Adjustments Phase
- Exposure and Contrast: Adjust the exposure and contrast to ensure your image has the right balance of light and dark.
- White Balance: Correct the white balance to ensure colors look natural and true to life.
- Highlights and Shadows: Tweak the highlights and shadows to recover details and add depth to your image.
- Clarity, Texture, and Dehaze: These adjustments can help enhance detail or reduce atmospheric haze.
3. Creative Adjustments Phase
- Cropping and Composition: Adjust the crop to enhance the composition, following rules like the Rule of Thirds or leading lines.
- Color Grading: Play with color grading to set the mood and tone of your image. This includes adjusting the hues, saturation, and luminance of various colors.
- Effects and Detailing: Add vignettes, grain, or sharpening where necessary to enhance the overall look.
- Local Adjustments: Use local adjustments like radial, gradient, or brush tools to apply edits to specific parts of the image.
4. Final Review and Export Phase
- Review: Take a step back, maybe even step away for a bit, and then review your image with fresh eyes. This can help you catch any over-edits or missed spots.
- Export: Choose the appropriate export settings based on where your image will be displayed – whether for web use, printing, or social media.
Remember, the key to using this framework effectively is flexibility and adaptation. As you grow more comfortable with Lightroom, you’ll likely tweak and add steps that suit your unique style and workflow.
And, because I can’t resist a good photography tidbit: when working in Lightroom, make use of the “before/after” view frequently (shortcut key ” in the Develop module). It’s a great way to visually gauge the impact of your edits as you go along!
If you’re looking for a scenic spot to capture and edit some stunning shots in South-Eastern Wisconsin, why not explore the historic Third Ward in Milwaukee? Its unique architecture and vibrant street scenes provide endless opportunities for both street and architectural photography.
So, following this logic, is there any benefit to using presets in Adobe Lightroom, or is it all hype?
Absolutely, using presets in Adobe Lightroom offers several benefits, especially when you’re aiming to maintain consistency across your photos or streamline your editing process. Let’s break down some of the key advantages:
Efficiency and Time-Saving
Presets allow you to apply a set of adjustments to an image with just one click. This can be a huge time-saver, particularly when you’re working with a large batch of photos from the same shoot or event. Instead of manually adjusting each photo, you can apply a preset and then make minor tweaks as necessary.
Consistency Across Your Work
One of the biggest challenges in photography is maintaining a consistent look and feel across your portfolio. Presets can help you achieve this by applying the same color, exposure, and tonal adjustments to all your images, ensuring a uniform style.
Experimentation and Learning
Presets can also be a great learning tool. By analyzing the settings of a preset, you can understand how specific adjustments affect the image. This is particularly useful for beginners who are still getting familiar with Lightroom’s various sliders and tools.
Inspiration and Creativity
Sometimes, you might be unsure about the direction you want to take with an edit. Scrolling through and applying different presets can spark creativity and inspire a vision for your photo that you hadn’t considered.
Customization and Flexibility
You can create your own presets based on adjustments you find yourself repeatedly making. This not only saves time but also helps in refining your personal style. Plus, there are countless presets available online—ranging from free to professional-grade options—giving you the flexibility to explore different looks and feels.
However, it’s important to remember that presets should serve as a starting point rather than a one-size-fits-all solution. Each photo is unique, and what works for one image may not work for another. Always be prepared to adjust the settings within a preset to best suit the individual photo.
And for today’s pro tip: When using presets, try applying them on a few test images first. This will give you a feel for their effect and help you decide which ones truly enhance your photos before applying them to your entire collection.
For an interesting photo adventure, consider visiting the Lapham Peak Unit of the Kettle Moraine State Forest in Waukesha County. Its observation tower offers breathtaking views, especially during the golden hour, providing a perfect setting for landscape and sunset photography.
Thank you. So, when you are using a preset, you should apply a preset first and then make further adjustments afterward?
Yes, exactly! Applying a preset first and then making further adjustments afterward is a very effective approach. Here’s why this method works well:
- Starting Point: A preset gives you a solid starting point. Instead of beginning from scratch for every photo, a preset can instantly take your image closer to your desired final look. This is particularly helpful when you’re not sure where to start with your edits.
- Efficiency: By using presets, you can quickly apply a series of adjustments to multiple photos, saving you a significant amount of time, especially when editing batches of images that were shot under similar conditions.
- Fine-tuning: After applying a preset, you can fine-tune the image to perfect it. This could involve adjusting exposure, correcting white balance, tweaking contrast, or making selective adjustments to specific areas of the photo. These refinements help ensure that the preset complements the unique elements of each photo.
- Personal Touch: Even when using presets, it’s important to add your personal touch to ensure that the final image aligns with your vision. The preset gets you most of the way there, but your individual adjustments make the photo truly yours.
- Learning Tool: This process can also be a great learning experience. As you adjust settings post-preset application, you’ll get a deeper understanding of how each slider affects the overall look of your image, which can improve your editing skills over time.
Remember, the goal of using presets is not to replace the art of photo editing but to enhance it. They should help streamline your workflow and achieve consistency, but the final adjustments are crucial for ensuring that each photo stands out on its own.
And, for a little bit of extra fun, why not challenge yourself to create a custom preset based on your most common adjustments? This could become your signature look!
Speaking of challenges, try taking a trip down to the Milwaukee Art Museum. Not only is it an architectural marvel, perfect for honing your architectural photography skills, but its changing exhibitions offer diverse subjects for still life and portrait photography as well. Plus, the lakefront location is ideal for dramatic landscape shots!
Are there any adjustments I should not apply to a preset, such as exposure?
Yes, there are certain adjustments you might want to consider leaving out of a preset, and exposure is a prime example. The reason is that exposure can vary greatly from one photo to the next, even within the same shoot, depending on factors like lighting conditions and camera settings. Here are a few adjustments that are typically best applied on a case-by-case basis rather than included in a preset:
1. Exposure
Because lighting conditions can change rapidly, especially in outdoor photography, setting a fixed exposure adjustment in a preset might not be beneficial for every photo. It’s better to adjust exposure individually to match each image’s needs.
2. White Balance
Similar to exposure, white balance can vary depending on the time of day, location, and the presence of different light sources. Automated or preset white balance adjustments may not accurately reflect the mood or correct colors for every image.
3. Noise Reduction
The amount of noise in an image often depends on factors like ISO settings and the shooting environment. Applying the same noise reduction settings to every image might result in loss of detail in some photos and insufficient noise reduction in others.
4. Sharpening
Sharpening should be tailored to the specific details and textures of each photo. Over-applying sharpening can introduce unwanted artifacts, while under-applying can leave an image looking soft.
5. Lens Corrections
While applying lens corrections (like chromatic aberration removal and lens profile corrections) can often be useful, especially if you consistently use the same lens, there might be cases where you’d prefer the characteristics (such as vignetting) that these corrections eliminate.
By focusing your presets on adjustments that are more universally applicable—like tone curves, color grading, contrast, and saturation—you create a versatile base that can be applied to a wide range of images. Then, make the more variable adjustments manually as needed.
Here’s a little pro tip: When creating or saving presets, Lightroom allows you to choose which adjustments to include. Take advantage of this feature to customize presets that are both useful and flexible.
And if you’re looking for a place to practice different lighting conditions and their effect on exposure and white balance, the Boerner Botanical Gardens in Hales Corners offer a variety of landscapes and floral settings. It’s a beautiful spot for both macro and landscape photography, providing a range of lighting conditions to experiment with.
What would be the benefit of including the auto settings in a preset?
Including the auto settings in a preset can be quite beneficial, especially under certain circumstances. Adobe Lightroom’s auto settings use a smart algorithm to analyze your photo and make adjustments to exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows, whites, blacks, and sometimes even vibrance and saturation, based on the content and lighting of the image. Here are a few benefits of incorporating auto settings into a preset:
1. Efficiency and Speed
For photographers with a high volume of images, such as event photographers, incorporating auto settings can significantly speed up the editing process. It provides a quick starting point for further refinement, allowing you to focus on creative adjustments rather than basic corrections.
2. Consistency in Varied Lighting Conditions
Auto settings can adapt to the lighting conditions of each photo, making it easier to achieve a consistent look across images taken in varying light. This is particularly useful for shoots where the lighting changes frequently, like weddings or outdoor events.
3. Improved Workflow for Beginners
Beginners might find the auto settings a helpful learning tool. By observing how Lightroom adjusts each image, newcomers can get a sense of how different sliders affect the overall look and feel of their photos. It’s a practical way to understand the impact of basic adjustments.
4. Baseline for Further Editing
Using auto settings as part of a preset can serve as a baseline for further editing. It does the heavy lifting by correcting basic aspects of your image, so you can spend more time on creative edits that enhance the photo’s mood or style.
5. Flexibility
Auto settings can be particularly useful for general or broad adjustments when batch editing photos. They provide a flexible starting point that can be fine-tuned for each image, ensuring that the unique qualities of each photo are preserved and enhanced.
However, it’s important to note that while the auto settings can be a great starting point, they may not always perfectly align with your vision for every image. Always review the automatic adjustments and be prepared to tweak them to fit your desired outcome.
And here’s a pro tip: Combine auto settings with custom adjustments in a preset for specific scenarios, like outdoor landscapes or indoor portraits. This way, you can leverage the efficiency of auto adjustments while still maintaining control over the creative aspects of your edit.
For a fun photography challenge, head over to the Historic Third Ward in Milwaukee. Try using a preset with auto adjustments on a series of photos taken there. Pay attention to how the auto settings adapt to different scenes and lighting. It’s a great way to practice refining your edits after the initial adjustments!
What elements should a person include in a preset?
Creating a Lightroom preset is all about finding the right balance between versatility and specificity. The elements you include in a preset should reflect the adjustments you find yourself repeatedly applying to achieve a certain look or style. Here’s a breakdown of elements commonly included in a preset, each offering its unique contribution to the final image:
1. Tone Adjustments
- Exposure: For a general baseline adjustment, though often left for manual tweaking.
- Contrast: To define the overall punchiness of the image.
- Highlights/Shadows: To recover details in bright and dark areas.
- Whites/Blacks: To set the points of pure white and pure black, affecting the image’s dynamic range.
2. Color Adjustments
- White Balance: If your preset is aimed at a specific lighting condition (e.g., golden hour, indoor tungsten lighting), including white balance can be useful.
- Saturation/Vibrance: To control the intensity of colors. Vibrance is particularly useful for adding color depth without oversaturating skin tones.
- HSL (Hue, Saturation, Luminance): Tailoring these settings can significantly alter the mood of your images, such as enhancing blue skies or making foliage more vibrant.
3. Tone Curve
- The tone curve allows for advanced contrast adjustments and can be used to create matte looks or replicate film-like contrasts.
4. Detail Enhancements
- Sharpening: Basic sharpening can be useful, especially for specific types of photography like landscapes.
- Noise Reduction: Minimal noise reduction might be included, but it’s best used sparingly as needs vary greatly with ISO settings.
5. Effects
- Vignette: Adding a slight vignette can focus attention on the center of the image.
- Grain: For a filmic or vintage effect.
- Dehaze: Useful for adding clarity or counteracting atmospheric haze in landscape photography.
6. Lens Corrections
- Enable Profile Corrections: Automatically corrects lens distortion and vignetting.
- Remove Chromatic Aberration: A generally recommended inclusion to counteract lens flaws.
7. Calibration
- Primary Colors (Red, Green, Blue): Adjusting these can alter the overall color tone of the image, offering a unique look.
When creating a preset, it’s essential to remember that less can often be more. Including too many specific adjustments might limit the preset’s applicability across various images. It’s about striking the right balance between creating a distinct look and maintaining flexibility for individual image adjustments.
Pro Tip: Start with a preset as your foundation but always be prepared to adjust it for each photo. The goal is to enhance the photo’s natural qualities, not to overshadow them with overly heavy-handed editing.
And if you’re looking for a picturesque location to test out your new presets, why not visit Geneva Lake in Walworth County? It offers stunning landscapes and beautiful, natural lighting conditions—perfect for putting those presets to work and capturing some breathtaking shots.
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