The second assignment for the MyPhotoSchool Adobe Lightroom Course went much smoother than the first one, in the sense I was able to upload some images to the system after a while of trial and error. That aside however, assignment 2 delved right into what I think are some of the most simple but important editing tools Lightroom has to offer. All of the tools described are heavily used in our editing to subtly enhance images. These tools include shadow and highlight sliders, graduated filters, colour correction and cropping tools. Thats not to say of course that we are terrible photographers and rely on editing 😛 Some scenes contain far too much variations in brightness and its simply not possible to save details in bright areas or brighten darker areas of the scene without negatively affecting the image.
Week 2’s Lightroom course tutorial was again very easy to follow, explaining how each tool affects the image, and how to compare the newly edited image to the original. For anyone looking to enhance their images in a few simple steps this tutorial is fantastic, it also shows you just how far to push the adjustments without causing issues such as clipping. A lot of tutorials which I have seen previously while learning photography, show you what tools to use, but don’t show the negative effects they can also have.
Here’s my 3 images and adjustments with before and after shots.
Image 1 – Shadows lifted to show more detail in clothing.
Image 2 – Exposure adjusted using gradient tool to bring more detail into the sky and accentuate starbursts top right of image.
Image 3 – highlights slider used to recover highlight details as much as possible from overexposed background and sides of face.
If you missed week 1’s tutorial you can find it here.
(please note all images are copywrite of Cross-Jones Photography)
Really interesting. I need to get some photo editing software as I can’t keep relying on the weather – which never does what I need it to do!I’ve heard Lightroom is a good one to use, but still undecided.
We use Lightroom as our pro photography editing system. Its a bit less complicated than general lightroom and is easy for general photo editing. Photoshop is best if you want to do graphic design work though
Oh my goodness, I am so pleased to come across your beautiful blog = Your photos are stunning (even the before shots!)
Aww thank you Helen! We try our best, lol!
What great examples. I love that you’ve included before and after shots. I really do need to get to grips with photo editing. Like Choclette I often rely on it being bright enough outside and setting up by a window…not the most reliable!
Lightroom is really easy to learn the basics, that are usually enough for blog outfit shots and things like that. Jon has learnt most his skills via You Tibe, but this course was great for those needing basic skills.