Any tips processing photos with snow in Lightroom?

Anything you guys do in Lightroom with snow photos in particular?

Be careful with the black and white clipping points.

I live in Florida, but I can guess.

Expose to the right in camera. Don't trust the meter, it wants to make snow gray. If using Auto modes, you're going to need a lot of +EC.

In Lightroom, hold down Alt and adjust the exposure slider so that there are a few little highlights in the snow starting to clip.

Then pull down the Highlights slider to bring some detail back into the snow, and adjust the Shadows to make the non-snow areas look good.

One thing that works for me, if I haven't compensated in the original image from the camera, is to use the eye-dropper in the Basic Panel of the Develop Module and simply drop it on an area of snow that isn't in shadow - it is supposed to be white after all. Seems to work most of the time. HTH.

WesternGuy

I treat snow just like egrets...set your RGB numbers about 245, gives ya good definition.

chauncey wrote in post #16664995
I treat snow just like egrets...set your RGB numbers about 245, gives ya good definition.

95% in Lightroom.

tzalman wrote in post #16665222
95% in Lightroom.

What?

For snowy landscapes you still want to keep good texture in the snow. This is difficult to do in flat light situations especially. I find using the Tone Curve sliders helps. I usually decrease the lights and increase the highlights. This adds contrast in the snow. I also usually kick up the clarity slider in the Basic panel. If that isn't enough, I'll often add a brush layer to the snow and increase clarity there as well.
You want to expose to the right, but you don't want to have the snow too bright with no texture or definition.
Hope that helps.

IMAGE LINK: http://flic.kr/p/i1MPB​o

IMAGE LINK: http://flic.kr/p/i1NCw​2

IMAGE LINK: http://flic.kr/p/i1N5d​q

Hold down ALT when you adjust the black and white slider to see where it clips. Works for highlights and shadows as well.

tzalman wrote in post #16665222
95% in Lightroom.

mclaren777 wrote in post #16665245
What?

LR, in its normal editing mode, gives a numerical readout of RGB values as a percentage, i. e. on a 0-100 scale, not as values on an 8 bit 0-255 scale. It does this because the accompanying histogram is of the image in a hybrid color space which has the same gamut defining primaries as the ProPhoto RGB space and the tone curve of the sRGB space. Thus 0-255 numbers would be mostly useless and probably misleading for most people. When the image is soft proofed to one of the standard spaces the readout is in the conventional 0-255.

When shooting snow photos, I always shoot in manual mode. The camera will always try to under-expose, due to the brightness of the snow. If you can get the exposure right in camera, it will make things much easier in Lightroom.

Besides that, I always turn on the red and blue over/under exposure feature to help me see problem area which need adjustment.