Posted: 12/31/2015 11:38:55 PM EDT
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I've been scolded in these pages for having a proper camera and no Post Processing know-how.
I know nothing about Photoshop or Lightroom. I want to tweak my images to make them better. I also want to do some HDR. Not a lot of HDR, just a little. As a Photoshop/Lightroom noob, where to start? Photoshop, Lightroom CC? Lightroom 6 standalone? Or something else entirely? I have a D7100. |
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I'd jump on the photoshop/lightroom $10 a month bundle.
HDR is a whole different animal. Photoshop can do it, but results are better from a little program called photomatix. As for workflow and general processing stuff...I'll give you a tip for how I do mine in lightroom. First, I generally overexpose by a stop or two according to the meter (sometimes more sometimes less) to get my histogram middle to right. Read my thread on ETTR. White balance is set to daylight on my camera. Always. Shoot in raw. In lightroom, the first thing I do to any picture is apply Contrast +31 Highlights -100 Shadows +100 Clarity +31 I also do the lens distortion correction (automatic, if you tick the box) and chromatic aberration (if there is some) and adjust the white balance if needed. Auto works pretty good most of the time, but you may have to dial it in manually on occasion. Once that basic set has been done, it's time to take a look at the exposure slider, white and black clip points. Hold alt and twiddle the exposure slider back and forth until you see bits of white show up, then back it down a bit until they go away. Release alt and eyeball the pic. Adjust if needed by sight. Do the same with the white point. Alt+drag up until white bits appear, back it down. Eyeball it and adjust if needed. Black is similar, but opposite. You're going to alt +drag down (usually) until you see black bits appearing. This is a matter of personal preference how much shadow detail you're willing to clip. This can also be done with eyeballing. That'll get you into a decent starting point. For more advanced tuning lightroom will let you adjust curves and do masks and all that crap but I generally don't mess with it. About the only time I do is when I'm doing astrophotography and I generally do a basic tune in lightroom and then move to other software for the real processing. You may also want to adjust the clarity and contrast sliders again at this point. Be mindful that you'll also need to adjust the others if you do. Clarity is one of those things that you don't want too much of most of the time. It has a tendency to cause halos and make things look weird if overdone. Lightroom will also let you do noise reduction and sharpening. For noise reduction, amount of 25 for both luminance and color seems to be a safe starting point. Truth is each image will be different. Some don't need any, some need a lot, and with noise reduction you're also reducing detail so apply it carefully and only when necessary. As for the sharpening goes, I do mine in photoshop more often than not, but you can do it in lightroom and it works pretty well. Make sure you use the masking slider to only sharpen the relevant parts of the image. Any questions, feel free to ask. |
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Hey Zeke, D7100 user here. I learned alot from Anthony Morganti on Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkHNVO_aPDSqjfIG_XHlYIg https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkHNVO_aPDSqjfIG_XHlYIg |
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Get the Adobe photography bundle. $10/month.
Buy a Colormunki Display $164 Youtube lightroom. Tons of videos. If you don't have a good monitor, that's okay for now. Just make sure you sit in the same position each time you are working on pictures. Save up for a IPS monitor. |
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Get the Adobe photography bundle. $10/month. Buy a Colormunki Display $164 Youtube lightroom. Tons of videos. If you don't have a good monitor, that's okay for now. Just make sure you sit in the same position each time you are working on pictures. Save up for a IPS monitor. As soon as I get some coffee in me, signing up for Photoshop CC`right now. I have to rag on B&H too but they're closed today. Have to rag on them Saturday.. The closest thing I have to a "good monitor" is the Panasonic Viera 42" plasma TV plugged into my laptop. I use it sometimes to evaluate images. What looks good on a 3" LCD screen doesn't always stand up to scrutiny on a bigger screen It's pretty good watching 1080p blu-ray movies. I'll have to make do with what I have. The slush fund is shot. Lightroom is complicated and infuriating. 
Guess I'll be spending the weekend reading and watching tutorials. |
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Not to highjack the thread... but has anybody used Capture One over Lightroom?
I only recently started playing around with post processing (less than a week) and I got the trial of Capture One. I've used lightroom and capture one for about the same amount of time, and capture one seems to be easier. |
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Lightroom takes some getting used to. Once you learn it you won't be happy with anything else. It is very efficient and great at what it does. I hated it when I first started too.  I took two pics of kitty that are deliberately wonky. Camera is set to the settings you recommended. Got almost to the point that I was happy with the tweaks and Miss M decided to do a tap dance on the keyboard.
Hosed everything up. She knows the difference between the real keyboard and the decoy. We have beautiful blue sky up here today. Going to run some errands and try it again. |
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Not to highjack the thread... but has anybody used Capture One over Lightroom? I only recently started playing around with post processing (less than a week) and I got the trial of Capture One. I've used lightroom and capture one for about the same amount of time, and capture one seems to be easier. I use both. Capture One at the studio and when I shoot tethered at home. Capture One is a seriously powerful and complex beast and is the industry standard in the commercial photo world. Their color editing can not be touched by Lightroom, not even close. When you're shooting product it has to be perfect. I keep saying I'm going to quit Lightroom altogether for my personal stuff, but I just can't seem to do it. I find its cataloging to be a quicker and better solution for my own needs. Capture Ones "sessions" workflow is great for what we do in the studio. I'm really surprised you find Capture One easier to use... if you can justify the price difference, I'd stick with Capture One. |
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I use both. Capture One at the studio and when I shoot tethered at home. Capture One is a seriously powerful and complex beast and is the industry standard in the commercial photo world. Their color editing can not be touched by Lightroom, not even close. When you're shooting product it has to be perfect. I keep saying I'm going to quit Lightroom altogether for my personal stuff, but I just can't seem to do it. I find its cataloging to be a quicker and better solution for my own needs. Capture Ones "sessions" workflow is great for what we do in the studio. I'm really surprised you find Capture One easier to use... if you can justify the price difference, I'd stick with Capture One. Quoted:
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Not to highjack the thread... but has anybody used Capture One over Lightroom? I only recently started playing around with post processing (less than a week) and I got the trial of Capture One. I've used lightroom and capture one for about the same amount of time, and capture one seems to be easier. I use both. Capture One at the studio and when I shoot tethered at home. Capture One is a seriously powerful and complex beast and is the industry standard in the commercial photo world. Their color editing can not be touched by Lightroom, not even close. When you're shooting product it has to be perfect. I keep saying I'm going to quit Lightroom altogether for my personal stuff, but I just can't seem to do it. I find its cataloging to be a quicker and better solution for my own needs. Capture Ones "sessions" workflow is great for what we do in the studio. I'm really surprised you find Capture One easier to use... if you can justify the price difference, I'd stick with Capture One. The subscription price isn't too bad ($15/month). I found the capture one help guides to be a lot better than adobe's. If I have problems figuring out how one of the tools works, theres the little question mark by each item that takes you to the exact support article for that tool. Plus their youtube guides are good. |
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signing up for Photoshop CC`right now. You should be able to cancel within 15 days. If you can, go ahead and grab it for $8 from Amazon: LINK Think the sale ends on Wed. |
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Get yourself one of Scott Kelby's Photoshop books. The first couple years you are doing stuff, it'll come in handy as a reference guide. As in, "I want to do something like this....flips to page 87.....here's where it shows me how." Like this book? http://kelbyone.com/product/adobe-photoshop-lightroom-cc-book-digital-photographers/ or This book http://kelbyone.com/product/lightroom/ |
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Like this book? http://kelbyone.com/product/adobe-photoshop-lightroom-cc-book-digital-photographers/ or This book http://kelbyone.com/product/lightroom/ Quoted:
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Get yourself one of Scott Kelby's Photoshop books. The first couple years you are doing stuff, it'll come in handy as a reference guide. As in, "I want to do something like this....flips to page 87.....here's where it shows me how." Like this book? http://kelbyone.com/product/adobe-photoshop-lightroom-cc-book-digital-photographers/ or This book http://kelbyone.com/product/lightroom/ The top one. I don't know anything about the one on the bottom. I got his photoshop books years ago and used them as valuable reference any time I wanted to know how to do something, kind of like a recipe book of sorts. You'll learn his way, and then with experience you'll develop your own ways of doing things. They are fairly thick books with lots of pictures. |
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Establishing a good workflow is essential. Mine goes something like this:
I'm thinking about changing the order a little bit by doing lens corrections, then cropping if needed, and then on to auto tone, etc. The only reason I've been doing lens corrections toward the end is because I've heard that some processing steps can take more processing power after the lens corrections are applied, but it doesn't really seem to make a difference that I've noticed. It can take a while to get the hang of it and it might seem like a lot of work at first, but once you learn the keyboard shortcuts and make good use of batch adjustments it can go by pretty quick. |
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My post is really similar to Zach3g's posted above. I'm extremely new to lightroom and have been using strictly photoshop for years, so it's interesting to say the least. Here soon, I'll be importing all of my new photos through lightroom as it really does streamline things. I'm just needing to export all my old photos to a backup drive so I can start a catalog with a clean slate on my PC.
+50 clarity adjust exposure if needed -highlights +shadows +contrast if needed (usually bump it to 20 or so) scroll down to lens correction and do that dehaze if I think the image needs it right click and > Edit photo in Photoshop CC for any final work if I think it needs it. I'm a huge fan of the Nik Effects bundle, especially the neutral density and dark contrast filters. |
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No one mentioned monitor calibration software. Post processing is a waste of time if the monitors aren't set up right. B&H had a one day sale on Spyder 5 Pro yesterday. Knocked the price from $189.00 to $109. Should be here early next week. Quoted:
No one mentioned monitor calibration software. Post processing is a waste of time if the monitors aren't set up right. B&H had a one day sale on Spyder 5 Pro yesterday. Knocked the price from $189.00 to $109. Should be here early next week. Wat? You even quoted me. Quoted:
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Get the Adobe photography bundle. $10/month. Buy a Colormunki Display $164 Youtube lightroom. Tons of videos. If you don't have a good monitor, that's okay for now. Just make sure you sit in the same position each time you are working on pictures. Save up for a IPS monitor. As soon as I get some coffee in me, signing up for Photoshop CC`right now. I have to rag on B&H too but they're closed today. Have to rag on them Saturday.. The closest thing I have to a "good monitor" is the Panasonic Viera 42" plasma TV plugged into my laptop. I use it sometimes to evaluate images. What looks good on a 3" LCD screen doesn't always stand up to scrutiny on a bigger screen It's pretty good watching 1080p blu-ray movies. I'll have to make do with what I have. The slush fund is shot. Lightroom is complicated and infuriating.
Guess I'll be spending the weekend reading and watching tutorials. |
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Wat? You even quoted me. Quoted:
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No one mentioned monitor calibration software. Post processing is a waste of time if the monitors aren't set up right. B&H had a one day sale on Spyder 5 Pro yesterday. Knocked the price from $189.00 to $109. Should be here early next week. Wat? You even quoted me. Quoted:
Quoted:
Get the Adobe photography bundle. $10/month. Buy a Colormunki Display $164 Youtube lightroom. Tons of videos. If you don't have a good monitor, that's okay for now. Just make sure you sit in the same position each time you are working on pictures. Save up for a IPS monitor. As soon as I get some coffee in me, signing up for Photoshop CC`right now. I have to rag on B&H too but they're closed today. Have to rag on them Saturday.. The closest thing I have to a "good monitor" is the Panasonic Viera 42" plasma TV plugged into my laptop. I use it sometimes to evaluate images. What looks good on a 3" LCD screen doesn't always stand up to scrutiny on a bigger screen It's pretty good watching 1080p blu-ray movies. I'll have to make do with what I have. The slush fund is shot. Lightroom is complicated and infuriating.
Guess I'll be spending the weekend reading and watching tutorials. Sorry. Need more coffee.
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| Fair warning, the calibration software (I have the Colormunki Display) will make your screen look a bit 'warm' as it sets it to be as if you are looking at photos in daylight. You get used to it and don't notice after a while. Also use your screen for about 15-20 minutes before running the tool. It makes sure the screen is warm for best adjustment. |
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Fair warning, the calibration software (I have the Colormunki Display) will make your screen look a bit 'warm' as it sets it to be as if you are looking at photos in daylight. You get used to it and don't notice after a while. Also use your screen for about 15-20 minutes before running the tool. It makes sure the screen is warm for best adjustment. Color temp is adjustable though in the settings. EDIT: 
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Color temp is adjustable though in the settings. Quoted:
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Fair warning, the calibration software (I have the Colormunki Display) will make your screen look a bit 'warm' as it sets it to be as if you are looking at photos in daylight. You get used to it and don't notice after a while. Also use your screen for about 15-20 minutes before running the tool. It makes sure the screen is warm for best adjustment. Color temp is adjustable though in the settings. Huh I'll have to poke around more next time I calibrate. 
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