These are the global adjustments I use to initially process a photo taken in raw format. They are general steps done in Adobe Lightroom and if needed are followed by more detailed edits in Photoshop. Lightroom has the vast majority of file management and photo editing adjustments most people would find useful. However, if you need to isolate specific objects or areas in a photo and mask adjacent areas that should not be affected then you need to work in Photoshop and perhaps a third party plug-in like Tony Kuypers TK 8 luminosity mask software. I will devote a future post to my common Photoshop edits. Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop both use the same core software and their controls are very similar with PS providing more in depth controls.
The following Lightroom process steps are abbreviated and confined to what I commonly use. For comprehensive LR instructions and definitions it is very helpful to have a manual such as Martin Evening’s Lightroom book.
Despite lack of comprehensive detail, this post should give you the steps needed to craft a photo and hopefully encourage you to further explore digital processing. I use Adobe’s Lightroom and Photoshop software for digital processing because they are widely recognized as comprehensive. Plus these are the programs I learned on. However, there are other good raw file software editing programs such as Capture One and DxO Photolab 3.
Lightroom has a good organization for file management and editing and it is a matter of personal preference if you do some steps out of order. I generally follow the adjustments as LR orders them.
Some people question the extent to which digital files are often manipulated. True, there are lots of computer controls available in today’s software but photographers manipulated B & W film negatives via the Zone System of exposure and development, and in the darkroom by cropping, and burning/dodging.
My goal with landscapes is to present the picture in an interesting way without unnatural distortions. I am not trying to present the scene exactly as my eye and brain may have perceived the scene; an impossible goal with only photographic memory. With any visual medium we all have a different set of objectives; therefore, final output is subjective. If a photo is pleasing, interesting and evokes an emotion then it is perfectly acceptable regardless of processing details. The one thing I try to avoid is over processing which results in garish unnatural colors and tones.
Shooting in raw I take all my pictures in raw format because it contains the greatest amount of color and tonal information of any format. A raw file captures the data recorded by the camera sensor and no image processing is applied except for exposure and ISO settings. This is unlike the JPEG format where specific editing decisions have been made for contrast, white balance, vibrancy, saturation and sharpening. Raw files also do not lose data when copied as compared to JPEG’s.
After shooting in the camera manufacturer’s raw format I then convert to Adobe’s DNG format in Lightroom. All camera manufacturers use their own unique proprietary raw file format and to insure that my files do not become out of date and difficult to process in the future, I use the universally recognized, open source Adobe Digital Negative (DNG) format. Only at the end of processing do I make final product decisions such as making a JPEG for web output or a TIFF file for publication or printing.
Make a “Virtual Copy” of your original image file as the firstdevelopment step in Lightroom so you are making adjustments only to the VC and not changing the original. VC’s create a set of instructions to the original which remains unchanged. I prefer to make the VC in the Library Module so I don’t forget to do it when I first open the Development Module. To make a VC, right click on the original image and select from the drop down menu.
Develop Module All the following edits are done in this module. Many adjustment controls are done with sliders and while these are fairly effective I often click on the numerical box and use the keyboard up/down arrows to precisely change setting values.
1) Set the Color Profile LR presents a handful of color profiles to display the image. I find “Adobe Color” to be the least processed and predetermined as a starting point for landscapes.
2) Lens Corrections Even high quality lenses have distortions that can be corrected in LR. Chances are that a pre calculated profile is available for your specific lens; however, if not there are manual controls to adjust vignetting, distortion and vertical or horizontal alignment. The Lens Correction section in LR is about two thirds of the way down but I do this step first followed by straightening and cropping. This order is purely personal as I feel better working on a lens corrected, straight, final crop image.
In the lens correction section is a check box for removing chromatic aberration. I check it even though this should not be an issue with most landscapes. It is color fringing around high contrast edges caused by color wavelengths not being focused on the same point. It does no harm to check the box.
3) Crop & Straighten Tools Landscapes often have a horizon angle that is wrong despite my best efforts to shoot level. LR has a simple tool to straighten the photo. Crop & Straighten is accessed through the rectangular icon near the top of the edit panel. It is in the same section with icons for spot removal, the graduated filter and adjustment brush.
I next apply the desired crop to frame the image. When cropping, I either keep the original aspect ratio as shot (dictated by the ratio of the sensor’s dimensions) or crop with a landscape ratio of 16 x 9. There are lots of other choices and are easy to apply in LR.
4) White Balance White balance refers to the color temperature of light ranging from warm to cool. There can be a range of temperatures in natural scenes so I set the camera color temperature to outdoor daylight and automatic. This gets me in the ballpark for a natural looking image; not too blue, yellow, green or magenta. But I do occasionally fine tune WB.
5) Exposure The term “exposure” refers to the midtones in a range from black to white. The other term used by Adobe in Photoshop is “brightness” which encompasses the full range of tones from black to white. So, exposure and brightness in Adobe terms are not the same things.
If you put your cursor over the histogram displayed in the upper right of the LR screen, the various dark to light regions will be highlighted. Exposure lies in the middle third of the tone range from black to white. You can also do all tone adjustments directly in the histogram by dragging your cursor but I find more precise using the slider controls.
A properly exposed raw file will look overexposed and needs exposure adjustment. Raw files display the linear camera pixel response to light and the pixels containing the greatest amount of data are in the lightest parts of the scene. Darker areas do not contain anywhere near as much data. To have as much light to dark area data as possible for processing, you should expose your files so they will initially look over exposed while at the same time not blowing out the whites which would leave no data to process.
This is counter intuitive for film photographers who expose for optimal saturation even in the lighter areas of the scene. An optimally exposed raw file looks quite over exposed compared with a film exposure. I will explain this in more detail in a future post but the point here is that you should be starting with an over exposed looking file and need to get your general scene exposure where you want it.
I start by adjusting exposure in the most prominent part of the scene, usually the foreground; then separately adjust the exposure level for the rest of the image, usually the sky. Key tools are the Graduated Filter and the Adjustment Brush whose details are covered in a separate post. They do a good job most of the time, but if I have to precisely isolate an area I work in Photoshop and make a selection and mask to make precise adjustments. Do not underestimate the Graduated filter or Adjustment Brush. The more you use them the more proficient you will become in controlling specific areas of the scene.
6) Contrast This controls the relationship between the lights and darks in an image. I normally do not use contrast because the exposure, highlight, shadow, whites and blacks adjustments give a more precise result.
7) Highlights, Shadows, Whites, Blacks These tonal areas fall on either side of “exposure” midtones. The range of tones form dark to light in a photo makes a huge impact on effectiveness. I usually spend a significant amount of time insuring the scene has a wide range of tones without losing detail in the blacks and whites. Some minor loss of detail in blacks and specular highlights is often visually acceptable but if of any great extent can be very disturbing.
8) The Tone Curve Just like Photoshop, LR has a graph showing the tones in an image with input plotted against output. This graph is presented by default showing a straight line relationship between input and output values. It can be manipulated to change the output and modify the tones in the various light to dark regions.
It provides an additional and more precise tool to control how light or dark you want highlights, lights, darks and shadows. Using the Tone Curve is a subject in itself, a subject for a separate post. But even if you are not familiar with curve adjustments, have a play and see what happens to your image. You can always reset the curve to a linear straight line relationship. A more straightforward way to manipulate tones is via slider controls for highlights, shadows, whites and blacks.
One of the neat features in the tone curve panel is a drag tool you can use by clicking and dragging on a specific area you want to modify.
9) Clarity and Dehaze Tools Most files benefit from a modest clarity enhancement. Clarity affects mid tone contrast and saturation. The lightest and darkest areas remain untouched. This is unlike the Contrast control where all exposure zones from lightest to darkest are affected. A bit of Clarity puts crispness into the mid tones without damaging the lights and darks. You can even use 100 percent clarity without alarming effects. Clarity can be applied to the whole image or to specific areas with the Graduated Filter or Adjustment Brush. Dehaze works in a similar fashion to clarity but the effects are significantly more pronounced and dramatic.
10) Vibrance and Saturation. I often apply a touch of vibrance and very occasionally increase the saturation of colors. This is not cheating. You are working on a raw file that often looks dull and lifeless. Of course, if you get out of control the image will begin to look too colourful and fake.
11) Hue / Saturation / Luminance Controls With HSL you can dampen or boost the H, S or L independently (or all together) for any one or combination of 8 colors: red, orange, yellow, green, aqua, blue, purple or magenta. I use HSL conservatively to tweak primarily H & S of grass and the saturation of skys. The HSL control has a drag type tool that can be placed on any area of interest and dragged to increase or decrease particular colors.
12) Sharpening LR applies a set of default sharpening settings to the image. I leave these because they are minimal. However, for prints I apply sharpening with a Photoshop plug in by NIK. Print sharpening must be done for the specific size of the print and have separate sharpening for capture and output based on paper characteristics.
13) Noise Reduction Digital sensors produce noise, a grainy pixel structure that stands out from a smooth background. It is always present but at higher ISO’s as the sensor signal is amplified it becomes more and more pronounced. Lower ISO’s like 100 to 200 noise will not be noticeable in daylight landscapes but in my evaluations of full-frame sensors with the least susceptibility to noise anything greater than ISO 800 creates visible noise. It can even be seen at ISO 400. So, have a look at your image in a magnified 100% view especially in the dark areas and see what the noise reduction slider does to your image.
14) Spot Removal The spot removal tool in LR is effective but I do most spot removal in Photoshop with the healing brush tool because I occasionally have disturbing small areas that need correction and PS has more sophisticated tools for removing objects plus cloning tools. If you only have dust spots and minor imperfections, the LR spot tool is good.
Final Output I now send the finished LR file to Photoshop via menu commands (Photo > Edit In > Adobe Photoshop). I have several reasons for further PS steps: print sharpening is one but it is important to “soft proof” an image file to see how it should look when it is printed. The image on your LCD monitor is more contrast and vibrance compared to how the image will print with ink on paper. I always have to make final print exposure and color adjustments. These are best done in PS because they can be created in a layer group that can be turned on and off with in a single image file so you can see their effects and use them for printing and still have a file for web or press output where their effects are turned off.
File Backup My final step is to back up the image file(s) on an external hard drive. And if I have been working on a significant number of files I will also make a backup of the LR Catalog both on the computer HD and an external HD. The Catalog contains all your LR edit instructions and data such as file structure and key words. It is a precious resource you don’t want to create from scratch if the computer fails. Know, however, that LR does not contain your original file; it only references them where they reside on your computer hard drive.
I know this may seem like a lot of detail but it is far less than a LR manual. I hope you are encouraged to have a go at digital photo processing via a comprehensive program such as Adobe’s Lightroom or Photoshop. Keep in mind that LR is a very robust program and contains all the controls many will need to manage, develop and output photos. Don’t be reluctant to apply adjustments; they are saved as instructions to the main file if you are working on a virtual copy. You can’t ruin the original.