question about lightroom

Hey all. I have picked up a copy of lightroom and I am totally new to post picture editing. Looking at some of the pictures you guys/gals post is fantastic. What I would like to know is what do you use mostly in Lightroom? Ie: sharpening, noise reduction, contrast etc. I am lost with all the functions and features it has.

Thanx in advance!

For me, every shot is different, so are the tools I use in LR to edit. Sharpening, NR, and WB are probably what I used most frequently.

Most of the tools get used at some point; my main usages are WB, Contrast, Tone Curve, Noise Reduction and Sharpening; plus the crop/leveling tool and local adjustment brush. Sometimes straight Exposure if I've totally bolluxed something up in the original taking of the image, but less so nowdays, thankfully.

It's been a little while since the "Show Us Your RAW Conversions, BEFORE And AFTER" thread has had a post.
But it is one of the most useful in respect of revealing what Lightroom is capable of and how people are using it:
https://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthre​ad.php?t=684360

Snydremark wrote in post #16551395
Most of the tools get used at some point; my main usages are WB, Contrast, Tone Curve, Noise Reduction and Sharpening; plus the crop/leveling tool and local adjustment brush. Sometimes straight Exposure if I've totally bolluxed something up in the original taking of the image, but less so nowdays, thankfully.

IMO, learning the wb, contrast, NR & sharpening are the first things to nail down; however, you will come to find out if you are anything like me that the little icons at the top right for adjustment brush and gradient filter are extremely powerful tools. The end result is similar to a lot of things used in photoshop but I have found the user interface or how easy it is to nail down corrections is light-years easier to do than photoshop. Just to point out something I didn't find for a LONG time but has since made it even easier to use, when you are using the adjustment brush, there is a box below the image that says "show selected mask overlays". It is nothing more than showing you what areas you have selected but it is a big help.

There are a lot of ways of using the gradient filter but the thing I use it for the most is if I don't have the image evenly lighted, I play with the exposure and where I place the gradient(s) and can fix a lot of shots. This shot, I adjusted some of the other dials but the primary fix was gradient filters.

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You can also use the 'O' key to toggle that highlight on/off

For me I found SLR Lounge Preset system really opened up my LR work. Worth a look. They also provide some free tutorials on LR via YouTube if you are interested.

Its a great tool, but you can get a little swamped by it at first, and worse, spend far too much time in PP than sensible. On the other hand, it is worth investing some quality time, learning the various functions in Develop so that it becomes intuitive. Some great tutorials are out there - I particularly like those in SLR Lounge.

For me, its about getting the workflow right, so you spend quality time on the good photos.

• The first thing I learned was not to use LR as an excuse for fixing sloppy exposures. Get it right out of the camera.
  
• Second, cull ruthlessly in the Library module don't mess around with fancy ratings, I just use P or X - pick or discard.
  
• Third, I import with a standard preset of the changes I know I will almost always carry out. The main ones are: I always lighten the shadows a bit (+50), darken the highlights (-50), and make minor increases in vibrance and clarity. Then a fairly big increase in sharpening (75), and similarly luminance (50) for NR. Then tweak around that for specific pictures: I appreciate the value of almost all of the controls, though still to really get to grips with split toning and the tone curve elements.
  
• Fourth - only then do I use the brushes, spot removal and filters as my final set of adjustments.
  
• Finally, I export 2 versions, one full size, and one 1mb size for emails/web use.
  

RedSloth wrote in post #16552574
For me I found SLR Lounge Preset system really opened up my LR work. Worth a look. They also provide some free tutorials on LR via YouTube if you are interested.

ha - snap!

Kirth Gersen wrote in post #16552587
ha - snap!

Lol. I'm on a ipad at the mo. Hate the keyboard so only did a v short response. Like and agree w yours.

Thanx for the responses. I have been messing around with LR the last few days. I am posting some pictures for you to have a look. Please critique, the picture from the camera was a bit dark, I screwed up on the exposure on that one. However I think I was able to save it in LR.

Here are the links to the pre and post. Thanx!

https://www.mediafire.​com …uh,sy90bko1bdsm​b9i/shared

Create your own preset and start from there. I always start with Clarity +14, Vibrance +17, Lens profile with CA correction on, Luminance NR 8, Portrait sharpness preset settings with Detail bumped to 50, and Auto Tone (the Exposure part of it tends to be wildly inaccurate in 4.4, but otherwise it's a good start). I then correct Exposure, White Balance,open up shadows or recover highlights where needed, for portraits use Teeth Whitening brush and sometimes Iris Enhancement brush, and often use Clarity brush on some areas that I want to appear sharper, and Noise brush on skies / background. It all takes just a couple of minutes, less than it takes me to type this.

You really need to experiment with it. I highly recommend Scott Kelby's LR book, he's easy to read and full of good info.

Personally I always leave the lens corrections off until I have finished processing. I also try to leave spots and local brush use untill most other processing is done. This is because my computer is quite old and stars to really slow down when it has lots of pixel recalculation to do.

Alan

BigAl007 wrote in post #16557776
Personally I always leave the lens corrections off until I have finished processing. I also try to leave spots and local brush use untill most other processing is done. This is because my computer is quite old and stars to really slow down when it has lots of pixel recalculation to do.

Alan

With shots done by Sigma 17-50/2.8 I used to have, a lot of time correction makes subtle lightness / luminance changes. So I am not making any adjustments before correction was applied. My computer is rather old, too.

Get Martin Evening's book and learn it the right way. LR is a powerful and sophisticated tool and dabbling in it will only produce half-assed results.