Lightroom Highlight

Is there a way in Lightroom to highlight or mark a section of an image (non destructive), something like using an opaque brush tool in Photoshop? I have full page images of old newspapers and would like to highlight certain areas.

Not as simply as in PS where you can add the paint on a new layer, and toggle it on and off. However you could create a Virtual Copy once you have finishef your general editing, and then use the Local Brush, loaded with colour, since you can control the opacity. You probably don't need to create the VC but it helps the non destructive aspect in that it allows the easy removal of the marking up. You simply chose with or without for your export. I think VC's always work better for this sort of thing, rather than using the optin to save the current history stack, the correct name for which currently escapes me. That would be the only option in ACR.

Alan

Yep Alan's suggestion is the best (only) way to do it in LR that I can think of.

I didn't think about the VC. Thanks.

Yes it is amazing how useful VC's can be, I use them quite a lot. Most of the time much better than Snapshots, the name I couldn't remember before. Swapping between snapshots effectively kills the history stack. With a VC you can go to any point in the history stack, create a VC, which starts out with the current settings, and starts a new history stack for you from that point. It doesn't affect the history stack of the original copy either, which is why I like it so much. Virtual Copies would be really brilliant in Bridge/ACR, and I don't think they would be too hard to implement either. All you would need to do is use a separate XMP file for each VC, all it would need would be a suitable naming convention, and have Bridge produce a preview based on each .XMP file.

Alan

Well incorporating VCs into Bridge would be nice, although it would complicate the whole file system, as would other attempts to make Bridge/ACR "like" Lightroom, unless they made Bridge/ACR a totally catolog-oriented system, just like Lightroom!

tonylong wrote in post #18101160
Well incorporating VCs into Bridge would be nice, although it would complicate the whole file system,

Is Bridge not catalog based?

No by default Bridge is a straight file manager replacement, that has been optimised for working with the file types associated with the range of programs found in the CS suites. That is mainly graphical/video content, but also includes web pages, thanks to Dreamweaver, and of course all the other content types that go with the production of the main content. Being a true file manager it can see all file types, and for the types that it hasn't been optimised for, can still see all the usual file data, like size, creation and save dates, and it picks up the correct system icon too. You don't get the options of "preview style icons for unsupported file types though. So looking at a word document in Bridge, is like looking at a .PSD file in Windows Explorer. Also by default Bridge uses .XMP files for saving you RAW processing. It is possible to have Bridge use an LR style catalogue file for saving RAW edits from ACR, but it is not something that Adobe seem keen to promote. So basically Bridge is a file manager for "content creators" while LR is a comprehensive image management and processing program, with very limited support for video content. I guess that Adobe added video support to LR simply because most digital cameras these days also shoot video. If you are a LR user, and have mixed still and video content on your memory card, you will want the program to move all of the content to the computer. You can then send the video off to Premier for editing without having to go to Bridge. I'm still using LR 4.41, in which video is very limited as I have said, I suppose that the latest CC version has a little better support for video.

On the Adobe website there are a lot of good training videos. There is one by Julieanne Kost explaining the whys of Bridge against LR. Personally I do use several other of the CS suite, not just LR and PS, so I tend to use both LR when dealing only with photographic images, and Bridge when dealing with a variety of file types.

Alan

Dan Marchant wrote in post #18101429
Is Bridge not catalog based?

Bridge can switch between using a catalog or using xmp files for your RAW processing, which is fine if your are dedicated to Photoshop processing or don't have another approach. I myself have used Lightroom for a lot of years and don't need my file system complicated, although I have Photoshop when needed -- it woks as a plug-in for Lightroom!

BigAl007 wrote in post #18096945
Not as simply as in PS where you can add the paint on a new layer, and toggle it on and off. However you could create a Virtual Copy once you have finishef your general editing, and then use the Local Brush, loaded with colour, since you can control the opacity. You probably don't need to create the VC but it helps the non destructive aspect in that it allows the easy removal of the marking up. You simply chose with or without for your export. I think VC's always work better for this sort of thing, rather than using the optin to save the current history stack, the correct name for which currently escapes me. That would be the only option in ACR.

Alan

This is a good solution.

You can also toggle the Local Adjustment Brush on and off, though this affects all the local adjustments you've made on the whole image. There's a little switch on the lower left corner of the pane. Very similar to toggling a layer visibility in Photoshop - if all your local adjustments were on a single layer or group.

Not my image:
http://1.bp.blogspot.c​om …stmentBrush_Tog​gle_02.png


The Virtual Copy is probably easier to switch back and forth between two "copies" of the image, instead of switching the brush on and off. The VCs kinda clutter up the catalog, But I guess you could stack them with the original.

nathancarter wrote in post #18102786
This is a good solution.

You can also toggle the Local Adjustment Brush on and off, though this affects all the local adjustments you've made on the whole image. There's a little switch on the lower left corner of the pane. Very similar to toggling a layer visibility in Photoshop - if all your local adjustments were on a single layer or group.

Not my image:
http://1.bp.blogspot.c​om …stmentBrush_Tog​gle_02.png

The Virtual Copy is probably easier to switch back and forth between two "copies" of the image, instead of switching the brush on and off. The VCs kinda clutter up the catalog, But I guess you could stack them with the original.

I tend to have a lot of VC's anyway. I do quite a lot of monochrome conversions for a start, and actually prefer using the LR/ACR channel mixer, it has a couple of extra channels compared to either the PS Black and White filter, or the PS Channel mixer. It is odd, but I created a set of my own monochrome presets for LR, and even after getting the Nik collection when Google gave it away, I actually prefer my own preset collection to Silver Efex Pro 2. Add to that I also print a lot, and will save a correctly cropped Soft Proof VC for each print. These days I actually create the VC if I think that an image is likely to be print worthy, whether I am going to immediately print it or not. That way when I need to find eight other images to print via the lab, to make the postage costs worth while, they are just sitting waiting to be exported and uploaded. Actually thinking about it, a publish service to the lab would be an even better option. I also tend to use smart collections a lot for filtering my image viewing. Since I apply different colour labels to different images it makes them easy to separate. Keeper images that are finished get green, so that deals with most of the images I want to generally view. Print Proof VCs get purple, and images that have to be sent off to PS or other external editors get blue, since the PSD file then ends up with the green label. Of course since I am only generally viewing the green labeled images in the smart collections, all these other VCs remain hidden, without the need to stack them. Stacking them is also not a big problem either, as by default, at least in LR4.4 a VC is automatically stacked with the original when it is created.

You are right about being able to toggle applications of the local brush on and off, and would work, but the advantage IMO of the VC is that you don't have go into the Develop module to change anything before you export.

Alan