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Rules for Developing in Lightroom CC

Now that we have an image and we've showed you how to calibrate it now let's talk about the rules for developing because I want to give you some basic rules that will help you to overcome the difficulty of getting through developing a lot of images so let's go teo mean that one was easy because it always the same so if you're doing portrait's your light doesn't change and so you just you just one and they all get adjusted together however, if you're doing something mohr like a wedding so let me go down to, uh this set of images here if you're doing something like a wedding now you're looking at, you know, indoor photos and an outdoor photos and then and all of these air different so everything along the way is going to be different so I'm going to first I'm going to sort and make sure we're on lee looking at raw images because there are a couple tiff and ps d's in this um so I'm looking at all my raw images let's take this one in the developed module and reset it so that it's back to n...

ormal now when I look at all these images, the one thing that you should be aware of and that you should be able to agree with me on is that these are all very different images so you have images inside you have images with you know, background lighting coming through the window, you got images under eve's got images out in the middle of the day light you've got images down here later towards sunset s o like all of these things are definitely different types of images and you can see how there popping back to normal so they're all going back to normal right now and remember these air shot with different can't a different camera so that the profile that I just used on this is not gonna work so it's not giving me that profile, but I could go in highlight all these because it's similar camera I could probably go into the develop module and highlight that studio lighting and click on it and it might be right, but it is studio lighting and not daylight, so I'm gonna take them all to adobe standard and now they're all going to so now they're all going to be back to their normal adobe standard look self, here are the rules first rule is that if you're shooting with multiple cameras, you cannot work on all of them at the same time because each camera has its own unique look especially if they're different cameras different models different makes if they're both cannon five d mark threes or they're both nikon d a hundreds and you're the one that's in control of both cameras then you can work on both of those together but if it's I'm shooting with one cannon mark three you're shooting with another cannon mark three well, I shoot bright you shoot dark or I shoot dark and you shoot bright we can't take the settings for mine and put him on yours because they're going to be different so if you're working on volume images, the fastest way to work is one camera at a time so work on this camera then work on that camera than work on this camera the second rule and the and the way you do that, by the way is to click on the filter library filter up here and you look at this right here all cameras there's my five d mark three there's a one d s mark too there's one d s mark three so these are my assistants cameras and this is my camera, but there are two of them, but I'm in control of those, so if I click on those, I can work on both of those at the same time because they're mine. But these air my assist since cameras and so if I click on those, I can work on his at the same time, but I can't work on his mark two at the same time we work on his mark three because they're different cameras and they respond differently so I'm gonna work on say, my mark threes that's what I'm gonna work on all right? So I choose the cameras first. Once I've chosen the cameras, if I'm working on something like a wedding or a long event where things happen over time, then I want to work on the best images first, so remember, as we've selected yesterday, we talked about going through and picking and starring, so if you're picking everything that the client will see, then that's what we're we're looking at the pics, but if you are starring while you're doing it, then you're registering your feeling about those images and if you on lee work on the start images first, that means you're gonna have instead of five hundred images to go through, you'll have maybe seventy five or one hundred or one hundred twenty, which makes the process faster, but you're still gonna have representatives throughout the entire thing. You're gonna have representatives of each section, so you'll have stuff from getting ready inside. You'll have stuff from the portrait sessions, you'll have stuff from the wedding time, you'll have stuff from the reception and so all of those will represent all the things you're not seeing. So what you would dio is you would go into your attributes and you'd sort by one star or greater once you've got one star greater, you see that I've gotta representative of all the pieces of the puzzle as I go through, see that got wedding, we've got reception got portrait's we've got all sorts of stuff, you know even got the night shots, so all of that stuff is now a representative of the other things that we that we don't see right now, but it's on ly one hundred and eighty six photos instead of five hundred and nine and photos so it's easier for me to get through those. So what you're doing is you're tricking yourself into staying active through the whole process because what happens is if you do all five hundred, you do really good on the first hundred, you do a little last good on the second hundred, you do a little less good on the third hundred, the fourth hundred you just like yawning and nodding and doing this thing and and then by the fifth hundred, you just turn him all the black and white because you're just done right and that's the way it goes. So what you need to do is you need to keep the energy level up without having to pound a bunch of red bulls all the way through the process, but what I've done is I've taken start to finish, and instead of giving you five hundred miles to travel, I've given you one hundred eighty miles to travel and you could do it you can move that far and but you'll still get to the same point, so I found a wormhole I've created a wormhole in the space and time of photo photography and that is by starring the images you have collapsed the distance, so now you're gonna get through the distance faster and then once you're done and you expand it back out, every single one of those representatives now khun b used to apply to the things that were not seen. So watch this in action well and that's the second rule, so now we're following the first two rules, which is just those air easier rules to follow, select a camera star, rate it up one star and above, and now we're ready to go rule three is that we're going to synchronize as much as possible, so let's go into the develop module now, because we've got all of our images that we want to work on and remember that these are all very different images, so if you scan through these images, you can see how different they are, but just because they're different doesn't mean you can't synchronize them too many people think that just because an image is indoor and another one is outdoor, I can't synchronize the two, but in actuality, once you have click the shutter, if you have done at all a good job but exposing those images of the same because you've exposed them correctly for inside and you've exposed them correctly for outside so now they have the same one might have too many highlights and one might have too many shadows in it but in general they're the same the mid tones should be equal to each other because hopefully you exposed them equally so I can highlight all of these images and I can do roughly the same thing to all of them and all of them will become close to being done now remember if you calibrated your camera and you calibrated your light room and gave it a default than most of the things that you want to do should already have been done remember I didn't calibrate this this camera because I calibrated that one and so we're looking at nothing but all of this would have been done what would have been done to this and remember we added a little contrast and we added some highlight we removed some of the highlights we added some of the shadows and we added a little bit extra punch in the black and we took a look I don't even know if we did a little clarity but I like a little clarity and we took the saturation down to what negative fourteen so let's go the negative fourteen so that is what would have happened based on our um that all of that would have happened when we imported files so we would have been looking at them with those things attached to them. So now when we look at our photos, we can just say okay, now I want to scroll through and find the one photo that's the most normal photo that I can have so I want the one that's kind of the median image, so I'm just scanning through and I'm gonna find the most normal image I confined um and let's say as I scan through that that would be something like that it's pretty normal image it's nothing crazy bright there's nothing crazy dark it's just normal. So what I'm going to do is that now keep in mind I'm highlighting all the images and I have the auto sync on if you click this that's what it looks like when it's off I have auto sync on when you have auto sync on what it does is anything that you touch gets done toe all the photos at the same time. So I'm going to go in and I would say all right, all of these images could probably brighten up just a little bit I could take the highlights down a little bit mohr on all the images I could take the whites down just a little bit on all the images take the shadows up just a little bit more on all the images and I could I think that's about right? So now it's a pretty normal image got my detail in my dress I've got my detail in the you know, I've got black hair I've got so everything looks good so now if I just simply go back to the grid, all of those images have been adjusted the same way. So now if I let's go back to the beginning and look att se this image here and going to the develop module and see what happens to it someone so that's that's good that one's a little bit better, but now what I can do is I can say okay, now all of the stuff inside of getting ready here inside is going to be well, that one's perfect as it is, I don't need to do anything to that let's see that one looks pretty good, so it looks like there's a set of images from here to here that might be a little bit too bright and so I could just knock those down just a little bit. These images, because they were backlit, are probably a little problematic. And so I can highlight all the backlit images like this and I can say, all right, let's, just choose the best or most important image that we have here, which I think is like, say this one or this one so let's do that one and I'm going to say all of these need to have the shadows brought up a little bit on them and I need take the highlight down a little bit and by the way I think all of these images should have some kind of a pre set established on them because I think they would be cool that way so I'm going to go into, uh grab a preset here let's do like a uh let's do like a there we go and see how all of that is applied to all of the ones getting ready so now she as she's getting ready I get all the same shots that one's done and now there's a couple out liars occasionally you'll run into an outlier so you grabbed the outliers and just bring the exposure up just a little bit and then you keep scrolling through, but do you see what we've done by virtue of way use the auto sync and we highlighted all of our images and we applied the basics for that job we said, you know this job in general I shot at all a little dark or it was all a little bit contrast here it was all and I established that is the baseline once I'm done, then I go in and grab a section highlight to that from this one shift click to that one and tweak and I'll have to tweak one or two sliders in order to bring those into compliance once I've done that then I scanned through and look for the outliers and there's occasionally a two dark one or one I didn't turn the flash on or whatever and so those I highlight those and I just work on those just tweet that up and usually it's just bring up the exposure or maybe its bring down the exposure whatever and then you're done sometimes you'll run into one where the auto white balance or your white balance that you were selecting of time didn't quite work right so you'll grab that one and readjust the white balance and that's pretty much the whole process once you've done that so now if we go back to the grid and choose a new sat of images by uncheck ing the star now you can see that I've got the same image here and look it has a representative all the way to there so then when I'm in the developed module I can see here's the one that I worked on these are the ones that I didn't if I'm using my shuttle pro in the developed module all I have to do is push a button on the shuttle pro and it's taking all of these stuff here and it's applying it all the way across there if not the way to do that would be to click on one turn off the auto sync and hit synchronized and then tell it what to synchronize. In most cases, you would say, check all on, then remove, say, the crop and the spot removal and the local adjustment brushes because that's usually, you know, specific to a set of images and you would then hit synchronized and it synchronizes everything across, okay? And that is the way you accomplish it see, however, it once you've once you've done it, these are they're all correct. They're all correctly exposed because you scan through and you said, oh, this one and this one are the same, so I'm going to synchronize it, so I'm just going to click sink, and now it synchronizes that this one and this one of the same, so I'm going to synchronize it, and now that looks the same this one and this one all the way to hear are the same, so I just synchronized those so now anybody can do this, you just scan through, click on this one sink to that one. This is where you start like watching you know who lou or whatever because you just all you're doing is just doing this the whole time just kind of scanning through and synchronizing, but now it's, mindless work, you know, now you can fall asleep at the wheel while you're doing this because of mindless just clicking, sinking, clicking, sinking occasionally as you run through this process you will find one photo that's like that and you'll say, well, that's too much so I'm gonna take the exposure down until I get the right there and then I need to take the whites down a little bit and if it's a good enough photo, maybe I need to say all right, I'm going to fix this thing I'm going to go in and I'm gonna grab you know, burn and I'm gonna go across here like this and because of our new tools I'm gonna hit the brush and erase and now I'm just going to take that and erase it off her face like that so now I've got some more detail on that side but I still have her face in there but that's, how quick it that's that's the process it's done and now I just keep moving through all right, okay, so those air three rules and the fourth rule was in there but I didn't say it and that is use presets don't tweak sliders so this area up here is for tweaking this area down here is for presets and when we get back we'll talk about presets so I promised so those are the four rules what were they camera by camera favorites first if you're doing long stuff if you're doing a portrait you don't need to look at the favorites first probably don't need to look at the camera by camera because one camera so you're doing a portrait just do it but all of you no matter what you're doing you need to do synchronization as much as possible and remember you can synchronize more than you think you can and the second rule that the other major rule is use your pre sets as much as possible because the more you slide those sliders the longer this process takes okay so those are your rules now one now that we're done with those rules I did promise that we would do in hd are so we're going to do in hd are inside of light room so in order to do that I'm going to go to a uh are there any questions by the way you khun as I'm finding stuff about calibration is the calibration on ly for light room or for the whole monitor wondering if my images will be correctly displayed on lian light room if you calibrate your screen with an x right it will be good all the way crossed everything that you're using because and then whenever you export something from photoshopped from light room from in design it's going to use those calibrations to then tell whatever it sending it to this is how we define color here so it's good all the way across as for this camera calibration right here when we calibrate the camera with the ex right with that with the uh where there we go with the color checker when we calibrate camera with the color checker we're calibrating inside of light room giving a calibration to that specific camera and it's good inside of light room but when I send the photo out two photoshopped or whatever all of that then gets tied in and we know the color and it sends out a colored definition so then it's good everywhere but it's only good in light room for the time being it's not like this calibration runs all the way through every program in every system but you don't need it to do right because you're only going to send those out when needed any others um uh camera calibration uh then profile it says embedded and does not give me any other choice how do I change that? So under camera calibration then profile oh uh I'll bet that person's shooting a j peg okay your pride right? So it doesn't get it yeah if you're shooting at j peg, you don't get that stuff yep it's like you're not part of the club yeah and as well you shouldn't be yeah if you're shooting a j peg right now unless it's a camera that doesn't shoot raw, in which case? It's just a point shoot. Fine. Shoot, j peg, you know, fine. If you're taking pictures with your ipad, have you seen that where people like running out their ipad taking pictures, it cracks me up? But anyway, if you're taking pictures with something like that, it should be a j peg, but if you're taking pictures with a camera, turn it on raw, even if in the end you're going to delete the raw and keep the final j peg, you just have more control over it, so shoot the wrong, so so no, you won't have that access to that if and some cameras might not have enough have profiles in there as well. But if it's j peg it's just embedding a profile in it, any others, uh, don't take more more now already want to get it h er when making adjustments, is there any difference between utilizing auto sync versus selecting all the images in the film strip? Say that again when making a just miss? Is there a difference between utilizing auto sync versus selecting all the images in the film strip? So auto sync is in itself a toggle? What kind of synchronization do we want to do? So if you are on auto sync? And you highlight a bunch of images inside of the filmstrip than anything that you work on is going to happen to all of those at the same time you don't have to request the synchronization but if you turn it off now when I'm working even if I have images selected in there it's on ly working on the one image so if I tweak this image watching this you know if I go like that that one got tweaked but none of the other ones got tweaked because it's on ly working within that one image and I have to request the synchronization to go across so um so any time you are selecting a bunch of images whether or not you auto sync is going to be depend on that little toggle however ifyou're in the in the library module every time you have more than one image highlighted anything you do in the quick develop will automatically be auto sinking because anything I touch is going to just synchronize because that's what the grid does the great always auto sinks everything always yeah would now be a good timeto ah ask question about the lens corrections or anything oh yeah when you by the way when you are working in the developed module if you were working on that camera calibration if you wanted the camera calibration to include any kind of lens correction, you would do it here so while you're making that camera calibration inside, well, not not the camera calibration, but while you're making the default camera default setting for light room, go in and enable your profile. Correct shins before you make it. If you want all of your images tohave a profile correction made to them always, because then they'll always come in that way. So when you do that, if you select on enabled profile corrections, it will do the ital! Auto! Bend it! So, uh, if we zoom back out, you can see if I turn these off and on. You can see how it's bending it based on my lens. So if I want to enable those profile corrections, I do that for the default. So then the default always correct for any kind of chromatic aberration. If I turn on that or any kind of profile corrections now in the profile corrections area, there is an option here to do auto. So when you're making your profile for your camera, make sure that you turn it on otto so that when it makes the profile, it knows turning on this option needs to be otto. Because then it's going to look at your make and your model of your cannon and your cannon twenty four, seventy. And it's going to say, what profile is associated with that lens? So all of that stuff needs to be on auto, so that if you happen to switch a different lens, it's not tryingto use a different profile for that lens, and so it knows every image I'm going to change based on the lens and camera combination that it's using onda also, you could then say, I want to fix the distortion, but I want to leave the vignette ing in so you can see I can either fix both, or if I like the natural vignette ing of the lens, I can leave the vignette ing in lens the lens vignette in by turning that to zero it's that way, every if this was the setting that I used than every image that came in would be based on this auto setting right here, but it would customize it to remove the vignette ing, and so then it would say, okay, I'm gonna take auto just term in the lens and the camera. I'm going to make the vignette ng r the profile correction, and then I'm gonna leave the vigna in, but it would all be unique based on those cameron lends combinations, okay, so, uh, let's reset all these images let's, go to the grid, and I I could choose one of the this one I could use uh can, uh hdr because I wanted teo I love this right here, but this was too bright, but I love the richness of that color right there on dh then the other option is this one I want to see a sunset, but I also want to see the mountainside but this one has a unique problem because of the bush is moving. So which one do you want? Architectural. Okay, so we're gonna do the architectural shot, which I'm glad we're doing. Um but by the way, the light room will actually fix that bush it's pretty cool. So it's amazing. Um, so anyway, we're gonna highlight all of these three images when we do hdr again, we don't need to adjust the images so I don't need to tweak thes I just need to right click them, go into photo merge hdr it's going to give me the preview so it's working on it, I'm going to give it the option of ghosting. So de ghosting is what you use when something's moving. And so like that bush I would de ghost it a little bit, and so what it does is the higher the de ghosting it if you didn't really hide the ghosting, it would literally go and find it one of the images that has the bush in it and used that bush for the for the for the moving thing, and then it would use all the other ones for everything else. So now you can see that I've got a really great hdr. I don't need any de ghosting on this one. I am going to do auto line because I hand held this, I just turned it on high speed and went like that, and I usually when I do that, I'll lean up against the post and put this against the post, so I'm like this and the best place to put the post is right here. So here's, my post and the post goes here like this in that little crook so that it holds. I get two points of contact, one on lenz and one on the actual camera. Um, or I can put it over here like this, so it's very, very sturdy, so I always use posts as much as possible when I'm doing that. So anyway, I'm holding it steady and ijust rapid fire three. Mmm. Right, as fast as I can go, and I just tell it to auto bracket, the time exposure so I am going to do auto line, just in case there was some moving and then auto tone basically tells it once you're done merging give me an auto tone and kind of put me in the ballpark so I'm gonna hit merge and now it's going to merge these three into a raw hdr so we no longer need to go to photo shop to do that we can do it right here then we can work on the raw image and once we've got the raw image accomplished which is right here so going to the raw image and now we can see all of the tones are available to us I'm going to go to the basic area c how it's auto toned everything so it thinks that that's the way it should be I don't really think that's the way it should be I think it should be a little bit darker I think it should have a little bit more contrast in it I think the highlights definitely have to come down in order to you know see that because you can see that like that area needs to come down however I really like right about they're for everything else I like the highlights in here I'm going to take the black down a bit but see how that's still a problem still bright but the beauty is I have the raw data there so now I can go over to my radio filter and the radio filter I'm gonna put a burn on it and instead of burning the exposure that I'm going to burn, the highlight heads down and I'm just going to go like this highlight that put it in the center and then I'm going to go down here and invert that mask so now instead of burning the outside it's going to burn the inside and boom there we go so now we've got it and I can start adjusting the exposure of that and I can take you know, my contrast down on it I can bring the exposure down I can change the temperature on it so there's warmer cooler I can change the saturation on it so it's a little less or more saturated so now I've got a lot more control over that one specific area and I can change this so that it really matches the way that that actually looks so I'm going to go like this and then if I hold down the let me zoom in here if I hold down the option key while I'm moving this it will on ly move one part see so I can make now I can make the circle look a little bit more ob longed so I'm moving just the parts that need to be moved until I'm really pretty dialed in on that circle and then aiken go over here and change my feathering so instead of feathered I can take it so it's all see that so it's feathered right now so that's burning heavily in the center and then by the time it hits the end there's none or aiken unf aether it so that it's doing the whole thing all at once and so now I can just play with that and see you know how how does that affect their ago there they're so I like that very good so that's an hdr it was all done in light room it doesn't take very long to do and so now I will actually do it whereas before I would never do it because I would have to take too much time and for me time is definitely money every time I spend an extra moment going to photo shop it's just costing me in money and I'm I can't afford that I don't have an editor and I don't have a this I'm a one man show so while I'm talking to you nobody is doing my post processing well shoot out at it is doing my basic post processing but nobody is delivering stuff to clients nobody is doing any photo shop work for me or anything like that and so when I get back and want to make those styles I want to do him quickly I want anything that I do I want to be done quickly so that anything I am actually involved in is not costing my business time bush really quick I'll tell you what, I'm going to start the bush and then when we come back I will show it to you so it's very quick to dio I just right click it and I emerge it in hd are this is the final hdr this is a raw image it's a d n g so you can see that it's actually it's a d n g so it's a raw image that's been made from these images here so this one all the way to that one but I'm going to zoom in and I want you to see the tree moving that's that's where I want you to see this tree moving around so here we go moving say that tree see how it's moving that's a lot of movement in a tree, right? But I have the thing on a tripod so you can see the mountains aren't moving but you can see the tree is really shaken there in the breeze and yet that's what it looks like on the hdr so meena that's pretty awesome so it did a great job that's the ghosting feature that we're talking about so when you are working in an hdr, the ghosting is when something's moving it will then depending on how heavy that ghosting is, this was a medium ghosting setting allows the hdr engine to go in and find a particular photograph that has the right part of the tree that's not moving, holds that's part, and then it uses the other images to build the sky and the sun and all that kind of stuff. So in the end, you get a picture like that which gives you the sky gives you the son gives you the tree, gives you that everything and it's that's, quite a nice hdr image and it's not real manufactured looking either it's, very calm, it's, very normal, um, a lot of hdr there's, a style to it and it's too much. S o if you're looking for that too much hdr style, it's, not your back, you need to go to either photo shop or you need to go to some other, you know, plug in. But if you're looking for very realistic looking hdr very quickly done, very simply done, but very, you know, rich. Um, this is this is where it's at, so they've done a great job with it anyway, that is hdr.