Lightroom Finishing Touches
Lesson 12 from: Capture and Edit Classic Black & White PortraitsJared Platt
Lightroom Finishing Touches
Lesson 12 from: Capture and Edit Classic Black & White PortraitsJared Platt
Lessons
Class Introduction
03:23 2Set Up Your Black & White Portrait
08:35 3Create & Augment Light
08:31 4Backlight Your Model
08:42 5Light for Contrast
13:09 6Portrait - Male Model
16:17 7Portrait - Female Model
06:30 8Shoot In Black and White Q&A
09:01Lesson Info
Lightroom Finishing Touches
now that we have adjusted our tone curve, I think we're ready to start playing with burning and dodging and and, like, really sweetening up this file. And remember, everything that we've done so far has also been done toe all of the other photographs. Oh, it hasn't Sorry. Remember, everything that we've been doing could have been being done to the other photographs. Had I done one important thing, which is to click on Auto Sync says sink dot, dot, dot That means I actually have to click it. So I click it and I say synchronize everything. So I'm gonna hit sync and now everything's been done to all those photos. However, if I had had my wits about me, I would have clicked on this button and it would have said Auto Sync. Then everything that I was doing would automatically have been done to those. So, for instance, if I went in here and said, You know what, I still want a little bit more contrast than than we're getting out of this. So I'm gonna go in and fill this so we can see him, and ...
then I'm gonna go up to the contrast area and I'm just gonna add maybe about five, in contrast, and that's a little nicer. Okay, so now that I've done that, all of the others have that as well. So when I click on the other ones, they have the same. Everything's done exactly the same. Like so all of these files Now, the lighting changed a little bit. So you're going to see different lighting conditions like, for instance, here notice that this is something toe hearken back to the portrait. Shoot that we did Remember at the first of the portrait shoot, I was shooting with one forward light. And it was that for Nell, Uh, lends cover that goes over the top of the flash, right, And it creates a very harsh light source, and it's very directed and it doesn't spill anywhere. It goes right onto him. You noticed that it like, for instance, and I love this print. This actually extremely cool. But when I when you look at this print, look it, it doesn't hit the laptop. That's how target is is barely spilling onto the top of that laptop at all. So it's targeted. Look at the background. See the bricks now watch, stare at the background. Don't lose the background and watch the bricks change. Do you see what happened to the bricks? They're milky. The shadows between the bricks are filled in by the soft box that I added in order to make him have softer transitions. You see how that happened? Okay, so the lesson here is remember that if you put a soft box, or even worse, if you put a shoot through umbrella, it's going to scatter light everywhere, and it's gonna fill in shadows that you might might not want filled in. Or maybe you do. It's going to soften up your background to. The only way to avoid that is to put what's called a soft grid onto the actual soft box. So that directs the light, even though it's a big light source. So it's nice and soft. It only goes in one direction. It doesn't spill out onto the wall behind them, so you could have done that. But we basically softened him up, and we saw from the bricks up a little bit at the same time. And so it's a little bit muddier back there. It's still fine, but it's not quite as dramatic as this. You see how it pops? That's because it's not a soft. So when you want something, have more volume. You need to bring the light to the side and make it a harsher light source, and it will have more volume. The flat of the more to the front of the subject you get with your light and the bigger the light source, the flatter that subject is gonna become all right. Okay, so let's work on one. Let's we're just gonna go and look at all of these together, and I'm gonna look and find the one that I like the most. I think it's that one. So we're gonna go into the develop. Yeah, I like that. Nice. OK, so that's the one we're gonna work on. We're going to disregard all the other ones because now what? We could do some of the things. So as long as I'm looking at his portrait like this, these portrait's right here. They're all pretty much the same. I have the same framing and stuff like that so I can work on them all together and it'll be close. So, for instance, I can go in and do my crop right here. Make sure that the cropping is right so that those bricks are angled. And then once I've got that done, um, it's gonna be cropped on all of them. I might have to fuss with the other ones, but for now it works. And then after that, I can go in and start doing my burning and dodging. So the first burning and dodging that I might do is come in and do a radial filter. So the radio filter is going to allow me to kind of do a of in yet ing. So I'm just gonna go and click on his face and then I'm gonna drag around and like that, and that's going to create a vignette. Now we already have a nice natural vignette that's happening as a result of the for Nell because it's it's just softly falling off this way, and it's kind of circular, so we already have that effect. And so if I apply this to, it's going to get even more so Right. So in this case, what I'm gonna do, actually, cause I'm gonna come down to the bottom and change the feathering So if I hold over there, you can see See how the center of it is letting all of the light through, and then it's slowly falling off. If I take the feather, turn the sun so you can see the mask. I'm gonna take the feather and I'm gonna see I'm expanding it out there. That's much better. So now we're gonna have the fall off out at the edge, Right? So now we'll turn the mask off again. And now, as I move it up and down, see how that's like it's getting darker and I don't want to dark in the bottom because it's already dark enough. But I want to dark in the top just a little bit. So what I do is I just grab that and drag it down to the bottom like that, and now it's gonna kind of spill over the top of him, and then I can go in and after the fact, decide how much of that. But notice how the rest of the of the burn is way down here, so the burn is happening way down there. So this is the easiest way to create a quick burn on one side of a photograph. That kind of is a soft, you know, burn that will go across the entire photograph and kind of kind of bring it all in. That's the easiest way to do it. Plus, once I've got that, then I can also go into the brush area of the filter. So remember him in the filter and there's a little brush area right here below it. So in the brush filter, instead of editing army inside of the radio filter inside instead of editing, I'm gonna go to the brush. I'm gonna click on the brush, and then once I'm in the brush, I'm gonna go down here and hit a race. And then I could just go like this and a race off any of that. Any of the spill on that vignette that's coming over him? I'm just erasing it out. So now when you look at this overlay, see how the overlay is is completely off of his face. So it's just kind of burning the edges behind him instead. And I can go in and zoom in. Well, I don't a zoom in that close. Let's zoom into lake there. Um and I could go in and still use that brush and a race even mawr off of his hair so that that vignette doesn't ever dark in his hair Because we don't want the vignette toe to darken the hair too much. There we go. So now when I zoom out, turn this off. Okay, So let me show you before after then. So the before is this on the after? Is that so? We've just done, like, kind of a general overall vignette burning in, but we've localized it, so it's not affecting down below, cause it's already dark enough down here. Okay, so that's one way that you can start playing with your photos. You can also obviously use a Grady int. So you come into the Grady in and you could burn up on this table or burn the sides or whatever, but we don't necessarily need to in this photograph. What we do need to do is start working on retouching the face
Ratings and Reviews
rorofot
This course is a good overview and I love the way Jared teaches. But the course mixes basic lightroom handling with intermediate portrait photography and really expensive gear. Which person, that doesn't know the basic importing and editing in lightroom, has three studiolights from profoto with grid or a calibrating system for the inkjet printer?? And be aware, it's only about LR-editing and nothing about photoshop. But over all it's a good overview for beginners - alas not for intermediate users.
TIm Smith
I usually don't write reviews, but thought Jared did a great job presenting the material. Clear, concise and didn't talk excessively fast. Material was well organized and reasons were given for why something was done a certain way. The fill lighting technique was something different and plan on using. The discussion on tones, textures, clothing and background were also helpful when discussing black and white.
Amy Vaughn
I haven't shot much with the intention of turning the photos black and white, but this class piqued my interest in trying it. This class isn't just about how to turn any photograph black and white, but how to think about the photo as you're shooting for black and white. I especially appreciated Jared's explanations about the importance of texture, creating drama and carefully targeting lights.
Student Work
Related Classes
Adobe Photoshop