Technique ADOBE LIGHTROOM
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Making your images better. Part 5: More on the Basic tab and how improving your images is quick and easy Software skills
LEFT The Basic tab is where key
aspects, like white- balance, of an image are adjusted using sliders. BELOW Shooting Raw means you can change white- balance in software.
Click on the As Shot drop-down menu opposite WB (white-balance) to reveal a number of white- balance presets – herewe picked Tungsten (the same as incandescent). Next is Tone. Here you can click on Auto and let the software do the work, but you won’t learn much. So instead work through the sliders. This image’s exposure is good, but moving the Exposure slider very slightly to the right improves it – even at +0.10 (equivalent to 1/10th of an f/stop), it looks better. Image contrast is good too but moving the Contrast slider to +6 improves the blacks. The next two sliders, Highlights and Shadows, are very, very useful. If an image’s highlights lack detail and look burnt out, moving the slider to the left will help. If the shadows look too intense and blocked up, moving the Shadows slider to the right will lighten them. How much of each slider you’ll need varies – and of course, the sliders can be used in conjunction with each other to get the best result. For example, you might use Exposure to darken an image and then Shadows to reveal shadow detail. The Whites and Blacks sliders are less frequently used but if you want more light tones, move Whites
Words by Will Cheung
We introduced you to the Basic tab in Lightroom’s Develop module last month and now here’s some advice on how to use it. Before we get to changing the image, visit Lens Corrections towards the bottom of the list. Here the software can automatically correct some of your lens’s optical shortcomings. In Lens Corrections>Basic, tick Enable Profile Corrections and Remove Chromatic Aberrations. Now click on Profile. Lightroom might have automatically detected the lens used and then made its corrections. If it hasn’t, click on Lens Profile Make and select the lens’s brand, next click on Model and choose the correct lens. If a profile is available it will show next to Profile. Not every lens brand or model is available but more will be added in time. Now go back to the main Basic menu. Working down the menu, white-balance is the first parameter we come to which is handy because our image is very orange having been shot under tungsten lamps with the camera set to auto white-balance.
to the right, or for more intense shadows, move Blacks to the left. Finally to the Presence options. If you want richer and more vibrant colours, the Vibrance and Saturation sliders are your tools here, but the most useful of the three Presence sliders has to be Clarity. Moving this to the right increases contrast in mid- tone areas of your photograph, giving more ‘punch’. It’s extremely useful.
NEXTMONTH: Essential advice for a smoothworkflow in Lightroom
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Issue 5 | Photography News
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