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Editing Shine and Reflection in Lightroom

Let's just look at our cake reflection and see that. Scroll back through these. Okay, so here's where we took away a lot of the reflection and I almost kind of like the reflection a little bit. I don't know. What are your feelings? You like this one? I think it's gonna, I sort of love seeing how different images appeal to different people. So let's work on both of them really quick, because we'd have to be careful in this one when we have a big highlight like that, that we don't start to blow it out. And this would be an image that I would probably go in and Photoshop in just take out that seam, it's really bothering me. If you spray mounted it, which we just didn't really spray them out, we didn't want to all not be able to breathe. It will be smooth and you wouldn't notice that. Again, it's the light on the curve of the paper that's doing that. I'm just gonna straighten it out a little bit also. There we go. And let's just maybe lighten it a little bit more and then bring in our dark...

s. And I want this one a little bit warmer so it feels a little more edible. Then we play with our sharpening. And I will again, on this one now. I like the vignetting again. Because I feel like it gives it more of like a moodiness. And that's how I would edit that one, and then I would apply my edit to the other image that we liked. And pop that, and this one was a little bit darker, so when I applied that edit, it just made it too dark, so I would just brighten that right up again. And bring in my shadows. So on backlighting, you can do a lot of edit work with backlighting too, because you lose a lot of contrast with backlighting as that light goes into your camera. So I like to go in in backlighting and add the contrast back in by just subtly changing my shadows and my highlights. And obviously on this one, I might even make it square. So here's another nice thing, where it says as shot, I can go in and these have like a lot of the traditional props available to me, so if I want a square for Instagram, I can just go in and crop square, make it a little bit bigger. Actually pretty perfect right there. Okay so I can go in and just crop in edit. And then I usually bring back in the color saturation a little bit on a backlit image. So, let's go in and look at our last setup. You can see those deep shadows vs the highlight. But I would use the highlight. And then we're gonna go in and just rotate it right again, because it was meant to be a vertical. And we're gonna do our basic simple edits and then I'm gonna show you how to then go into Photoshop with the image from Light Room in case you wanted to add text, you can't really do that very well in Light Room. And look at that perspective change right there. So that really helped. I think we're good on there. I'm feeling like this one's like a little bit too cool, so we're gonna add in some warmth because I'm showing gold here. And with a silver product, you might want it to be cooler so it keeps that cool silver tone. But with a gold product, a lot of times I'll go a little bit warmer and a little bit more magenta to keep that hardy festive gold feel. And now after I adjust my sharpening, I'm gonna take it into Photoshop. And the way you do that is you go up to Photo, Edit In, and then you just click on Photoshop. And it will take it right in with your edits from Light Room into Photoshop, so they work really well together in that way. So what I mainly use Photoshop for now is if I need to specifically clone something out, I have a harder time with the healing tool in Light Room than I do with the cloning tool or healing tool on Photoshop. Or if I want to add in text, or if I want to add in some kind of graphic or label, what do we want to say. Party time, right. Can I ask a question? Yes, please. Which program would you use if you wanted to take two images and put them side by side, as in like the jewelry necklace image with the closeup. I would do that in Photoshop then. So I'd edit them both in Light Room, import them into Photoshop, open up a new image, or a new image size, and then drop both of the images in next to each other. Try to find a color that's in the photo, so I do this a lot, just pick the dropper tool and pick a color that's already in the photo, so that I know that it matches. And let's go even a little bit bigger. And then I can just like add my text in, whatever that is. And then I would just save it from Photoshop. Let's just delete, and have it say party. And that is how I would add text. And then I could save it from here and take that on, email it to myself, I do a lot, so I can have it on my phone, and then put that anywhere I need to. Put it on Facebook, put it on Instagram, anywhere that I want to do that. So you can still take your DSLR images and use them on social media, just as successfully. And actually I like to do that because I feel like images on Instagram that were taken with a DSLR really stand out because they look different than one that you could just take with your phone. That's editing. What do you guys think, doable? I wanted to let people know as well, you can certainly always go check out a free trial of Light Room, if this is something that you're interested in checking out, and you buy this class, and you can kind of get that free trial in Adobe, just search Adobe Light Room, and check that out. So. And I have a lot of people say why would I want to buy software if I can find one for free, and I feel like every time someone asks me that, I say, do you have Netflix, because it's cheaper than a monthly subscription to Netflix to own Light Room and Photoshop. And so it's an investment, it's a business investment, but if you love photography, I think it's an amazing tool that you need to have. So if you can afford Netflix, you can afford Light Room and Photoshop. Should we take a couple questions? Yes, I'd love to. Okay great, then grab a mic if you've got one in here. So, question is, can someone who has older photos that have been done with warm artificial light, edit in Light Room to fix that, make the white balance more natural, so can you take somethings that you need to fix? Yes, so the answer is yes. You can bring them in and adjust that. It's not going to be as good as if it was like a raw file and it was close to being correct, but you can make it a lot better. Won't be perfect, but you can make it better. Did you, many people had voted on the question that was what sizes would you re-size images for Facebook, Instagram, blogs, et cetera, touch on that really quickly. So it depends on blogs, it totally depends on your blog formatting, and the template that you're using, or the company that you're using to host your blog should tell you what is the best sizing for your blog. So it really depends. And it also depends with storage as well on what your formatting is, and if you have like the little tool to fly over it and it blows it up so you can see the detail if you have that, you obviously need a higher, larger file than if it's just gonna be a small thumbnail. So on those websites, it really depends. It's hard to give like a specific answer. On Instagram, those images are only seen so small that you really can have a very small file and still have it look good, but I keep those files relatively small because if they're going to go on my phone, I don't want to put like a 10 megapixel image, which is not that big, but it's big for your phone. So I'll keep them pretty small. And if I know that an image is only going to go online, then I'll change the resolution to 72, and that keeps my file size a lot smaller as well. But if you know that you're gonna print it, then you want to keep it at 300. So that will affect your file size as well. For Facebook, it's also different. If you're using the image as a profile image, or as a timeline image, or in your feed, those are all different things, and I think what we can do is maybe make a list and put that in the Powerpoint or something so it's available, because if I just randomly spouting out numbers, I might be wrong, I need to look that up. Alright, well thank you. Candace, this has been such an incredible class, and you have covered so many different things for the person who wants to create beautiful images and didn't know how. Do you have any final thoughts on how somebody who is like oh my gosh, this is so much, I think I can do it but I'm not really sure, how is the best way to utilize this class, and what are your final thoughts. Yeah, I do, I have totally been there, where it feels really really overwhelming. And I went to school for this, and I told you, the whole first semester I was just kind of like, this is just fun and creative, and I'll wing all the technical stuff, and it can get really overwhelming once you start wading into that. So I do recommend just starting one step at a time. So start with aperture priorities, so you can just focus on that one setting, and play with it, try all those different apertures, see what you like best. One simple setup next to one window, and just try it, test it out, see how it goes. But I think you have to start with the attitude of it's an experiment, as opposed to I'm gonna get this right the very first time I do it. It's easy to watch someone who's been doing it for 20 years and can do it in three minutes and be like, well I should be able to do that. But I can do that because I've made a lot of mistakes. I can do that now because I know what is not going to work, then that eventually led to what is going to work, right. And so in my mind, being creative is being willing to fail, and that means being okay with that. And so you have to kind of start out with that attitude of I'm going to make mistakes, and that's how I learn. A mistake is good, that's how I get better. And I may try something that I think is amazing in my mind, and it just doesn't work, and believe me, it happens a lot where I'm just like this background is fantastic, you know, and I'm the only one who ends up loving it, right. Or I just think I have like this great lighting idea, and it just falls flat, it just doesn't go the direction that I thought that it would, and that's going to happen, and that's okay, again, because the next time I do it, I'll do it in a better way, because I know what doesn't work. And sometimes the creative process is about learning everything that doesn't work, because you'll finally get to what does. And I don't know if that like stresses people out from the beginning knowing that, or if that helps. But it definitely helped give myself more permission to learn those things, and to grow with it. And you will get better. And a lot of times people tell me, well I don't want to start on Instagram until I'm perfect. That's a mistake, start somewhere and grow, and people will go on that journey with you. If I went back to my first few Instagram pictures that are covered in filters and like awful, awful, I didn't even realize the first time that I hit like post that then everyone could see it. I didn't understand Instagram at all. I mean this was years ago. And I could have been really embarrassed by that, it was like a selfie and I was super pregnant and like I was just trying to see what this whole thing was all about, right. But I didn't take it down, because I'm like, that's where I started, and look where I am now. It's cool, it's a process. And your shops can be that way too. You don't have to be perfect from the beginning. We're not perfect people and we're not selling to perfect people, but we do want to appear professional, we do want to work towards that. So, I think the most important step is just starting and not being afraid. And you know what, not being afraid isn't even the right word, it's being afraid and being okay with that. And that is what will push you to be better. I don't know, I got very Oprah-y right there in that moment. I want to stand up and clap for that one, but I'm gonna hold back, it's brilliant. It happens every once in a while. Permission to fail and to be afraid and move forward anyway, that is exactly what CreativeLive is all about. All of it, so thank you Candace. Thank you so much. It was so much fun. Wonderful ideas to put forward to everyone. So Candace, as we wrap this up, where can people follow you online. Okay, we're gonna list a lot of places. I am candacestringam on Instagram, and on Periscope, those are the two forms of social media I like best, so that's where you're gonna best find me. You can also find my professional work on My Mind's Eye if you follow that feed, it's all those pretty party items that I get to photograph. Some of the items that we photographed, Paper Bandit Press, they're really fun to follow, quirky, and Handmade Mood. So thank you again for joining us everyone, thanks to the entire crew here at CreativeLive, our students, and most importantly, Candace Stringam. That's a wrap for this class, and we'll see you all next time. Thanks everyone.