Arin & Brad - successful Lightroom use finally

I shot a wedding for my family. I found it quite easy to balance shooting and visiting. The bride is my cousin and a close one at that. I consider her a sister.

That being said I feared doing a family wedding. It just seemed something that I wouldn't do. Don't preach any BS to me that I took money away from someone else. I shoot weddings so step off.

To my point though, I had not been able to modify what I'm doing enough to intergrate Lightroom into my workflow. I of course shot RAW only and made myself use Lightroom. I used my import workflow and stapled Lightroom into it. Luckily I had a nice clean sensor so booger removal was not needed. It wasn't a large expectation as far as delivery goes. Take some nice shots and to quote her "Don't do all those lame cliché shots."

I'll be doing my first Askua book with this as well. My wife is not making books anymore. Asuka has put her out of business.

Sample shot:

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I love the background and pose, however the skin tone looks very ashen and there appear to be darker spots on their faces.

Their skin looked horrible.

Plus I'm not into making people look plastic. I do very subtle skin work. Zits, cat scratches. If there is a flash hot spot I'll tone it down.

1Ds Mk.II, 85 1.8. Zero saturation. Polarizer. Nothing done to the image other than some highlights brought down in Lightroom.

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Congrats on moving to Lightroom. It's awesome once you get the hang of it. It looks like you may have used a little too much noise reduction though. I find that the version 1.1 noise reducers work VERY well at settings around 15-20, but start looking fake beyond that. The version 1.0 noise algorithms hardly had any effect even up to 80.

picturecrazy wrote in post #3672698
It looks like you may have used a little too much noise reduction though.

You are very correct. I went back and opened it again and looked at the preset I had downloaded. It had noise reduction/colour smoothing cranked up and I like to run that at zero in ACR. Redux below.

I looked through the other shots and this series only is affected as much by the excessive noise reduction. I do find limitations in Lightroom in that is it hard to globally wipe a setting such as this. Kelby's book will help me a bit, but I will proof the keepers with CS3 before I let any product out the door with Lightroom.

Not entirely successful yet I would say. It's good for processing the filler. My ACR in CS3 is dialed. I should have Lightroom this way before day's end.

ps: these are still in prophoto RGB. I'm only doing for print right now.

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I have to say that #1 just doesn't look real to me. It looks like they're in front of a backdrop.

So are you saying that I used a backdrop or the background was just too good to use?

their skin looks very green/grey. white balance problem maybe?

hmm, OK i just dragged the photo into photoshop and the colors look correct now. perhaps you're not converting them to "web palette" before posting them online??

here is a conversion to web colors. I'm guessing you won't be able to tell since your computer sees the same colors you used to make the original.

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I find, even in the 2nd edit - their skin tone and the overall appearance of the skin looks incredibly off. Looks like the sharpening and noise reduction was overdone - back off of that even more to bring it back to normal.

I missed his post, he's using prophoto RGB colors (for printing). they don't show on the web properly.

xmacvicar wrote in post #3672785
I find, even in the 2nd edit - their skin tone and the overall appearance of the skin looks incredibly off. Looks like the sharpening and noise reduction was overdone - back off of that even more to bring it back to normal.

Nice shots Jason,

The WB looks off though and it looks a bit flat. Do you mind if I post an edit done in Lightroom with a list of adjustments done?

Noticed you had Image Editing OK turned on. So here is my take on it:

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I see a lot of you don't use a colour managed browser..

Michael and Bryan - nice conversions.