Lessons

Lesson Info

Basic Image Editing Workflow

in terms of workflow. I don't change on anything with an image. So if I come back here, I'm gonna come into an album. I'll grab, Say, I'm not sure I'll go grab people. I'm gonna photograph this. We're gonna get this one. I fly fishing. First thing I'm doing, picking the right profile. Cool. I come in, I'm gonna work that white and black get the base exposure I want. So I kind of like that kind of aesthetic and look, recover a little bit of highlights out of that dark in the shadow up to build a little contrast, Come down for color. In this case, I'm just gonna, uh, pretend like his. Ah, best There's pretty neutral color balance. And then that orange fly line is God. Well, that's pretty cool. I want some saturation there, and there's not much else orange in this image. So in this case, I'm gonna come in and I'm into saturation on that orange. I punched the orange up on that line. In this case, I'll come down under effect. I had just a tiny bit of clarity, but not too much, because I don...

't want to really monkey with him and it's already got a pretty good punch quality to it detail. I would've play, you know, my portrayal level of sharpening. Grab my masking mask out kind of that water smoothness. But I do want the little ripples of the water to have that optics. I would turn on my lens profile correction and in geometry. Now he's not exactly like, perfectly straight up, and I could tell you that he waas you stand in the river, your try to be straight up I, on the other hand, holding very expensive camera lens I rented. So I have Lily like like the water's coming and I'm like, leaning to try not fall over so he's not quite straight up. So in this case, I could come in and actually draw my vertical line and the drama horizon back there and just get that little bit of pop to come up from that. Now, if I want to see what I had edited before, so I want to go back in time. If I just hit the backslash key, the one goes this way. I end up with before and afters, that's this is the original import. That's the original this is while the editor play. So at any point I can toggle back and forth between those. So it doesn't matter if I'm doing portrait work. Doesn't matter if I'm doing landscape work that consistent, reliable workflow. I come in, I work top to bottom, apply luminosity, apply a color. I made those transforms, and it doesn't matter what I'm doing. It's the same thing over and over and over again. So if the other piece that I hear a lot of people ask is they ask me what I worry about my history ram as it's the mythical beast of photography. So the hissed a gram tells you the luminous values in the image. There is no correct hissed a gram. Okay, here's the history and for this image and let's grab demo file, there's a history. And for that image, this image is edited the way I want. That's what I wanted to look like. So the history and looks like it's a little bit dark, waited a little of the left. What's because there's a lot of shadow detail in there? That's all it's telling me is that there's information. So I used the history. Graham to tell me if things are bad at the extremes. But I don't try to edit to get this this central history and peace. And when we first start learning about photography, we hear a lot about you can't get the history and right you gotta get the instagram right got exposed to the right. Like I said in the very beginning, the photograph is more about how it feels so long as it doesn't have an egregious issue that so distracting we can't stick with it. The feeling of the photograph is more important than the history, Ram and I can tell you that I have sold a lot of photographs and I have never once had a photo buyer asked me to see a snapshot of history, but pretty much half the photographers I meet. They want to look at the history. It's a photographer problem. People look at photographs, they see photographs. They feel funny that on history and photographs, because believe me, if I thought I could sell the hissed a gram way easier, I feel like I moved the exposure slider to get this little hill and then it's I sell it, so I want to jump over to the IPad real fast. Um, to show that we've been looking on the computer here. And when we jump to the IPad, we're in that same basic view were in the same basic demo files here. I'm gonna click on an image and here I've got my edit tools up. So I've got my profile. I'm gonna browse for my profiles. In this case, let's choose a vintage profile. It's kind of chooses. Vinnie's number nine is our starting point. That kind of has, ah, feels like a seventies throwback vibe to me, mostly because I look at my photographs I took from the my childhood and my parents took. They'll have that weird kind of faded look to it. I think I'll get it. Looks kind of cool. That's the decision point. I come into the light panel here that looks pretty much the same. I'm gonna just exposure. I got my white point. Black point highlight. I won't recover the highlight a bit on my cloud dark in the shadow ups. You see it just dark in that shadow of a little bit, kind of creates a little depth in that foreground, just going to the aesthetic kind of the way the image looks. If I click on the little point there, this is one of my favorite pieces. That's how you should get to work on the tone curve across the whole image, right can just be like, Oh, it's huge! Although it's so nice, course I still can't get on the four anyway. You get on my little point, um, you know, and if I want to make the adjustments into the color pieces there in here, So they're just right over there. If I go to color temperature as shot, and if I click on my little wheel right here, there is my color mixture down there. Convert to black and white, but I go 10 and temperature adjustment. Get off black and white to color my color back there. 10. Temperature adjustment, vibrance and saturation. Same basic piece effects are gonna be the exactly the same punching clarity. So I get to work the tool down top to bottom detail. Slider, the panel's expanded out already said, I have heard about the little toggle to come in. I got my optics now down here, just like I have on the desktop. If I click on that little icon right here at the bottom allows me to go back in time a little bit. So I go back to when the photograph is opened. See all adjustments again. I got a little back and forth. Peace chromatic aberration, lens correction. Now I don't have the sub level I had on the desktop here. So this is where you're going to see some little differences based on what the interface could do of what's been written into the device and with the devices capable of so had a little more control in the desktop version on lens correction. I could define little bit barrel distortion been getting, But here's gonna take the default and the geometry is the same way. I've got the geometry now, one of the things that's really kind of nice on the When you're working on one of the tablets or on the phone, I'm in the next image swipe. I'm in the next image. So from a workflow standpoint, that's why I like that album notion of the album. I'm working on that the stars, because I can come in and be like, Okay, that's been edited I click on the stars, I go four stars, I swipe, I'm editing my next image and I can just clear that folder out. Just came back to when you were editing just now. That photo at what point you had mentioned that you do the contrast last or just not do it unless look, at what point do you go back to? The contrast has never signed new contracts. Eso in my workflow I would do White Point, Black Point shadow, highlight exposure the best I can and then use contrast to finesse off of that. And the reason I do that is contrast is a sledgehammer. It says All contrast moves where the highlight slider, the Shadows letter on Lee just contrast within the range is kind of allowed to play in. So I'm just trying to play that little bit of that finesse key. It's great question, but from a workflow standpoint, being able to just have edits and slide is a really nice piece in the interface, and it also goes to a little bit about why, when light room is ported over into CC, the paradigm of how to actually use your fingers to edit And so if you think about a tone curve on the computer, we had that tiny little box to work in. So when I come over here and you give me a tone curve, I've actually got the whole tablet to work with because I'm using a finger. And even if I've got a pencil, I'm still on a small space with limit P. So that ability to think about that usability is one of the reasons why cc so good. It went back to that simplicity of approach, a minimalism approach and really thinking about how is the tour going used in the spacing of the tools? Um, the effect here, if I drag like you can see that the white slider I mentioned you hold on the altar option key. If you hold down two fingers, you see the two red dots appear and you drag. If I get it right and drag the slider. That's the equivalent of holding down the altar option key. So it's a two finger touch on. I'm bad at it, like got big fingers, and I never quite feel like I can get it quite right. But what it does work even I got it to work. So But it is a way to actually continue to have that little bit of interface, because that is a nice little bit of help for people for that look at what you've got. Those level of it. It's done. That is the big heavy lifting for an image in terms of getting the base pieces right. Once we get that done, we then start to think about moving into our regional local in its the workflow in those is gonna be the same and we're gonna look at those today. But we're gonna look at the exact same workflow we just looked at, but in those same tools. So this is why, in that repeatable world light color saturation, then clarity on those things the regional adjustments, that in local tips we made the same way to make the adjustment and it just in the kind of that same order. So in that world of learning, if you can learn those basic steps, no matter what, you're gonna make the edit on global regional local. Your workflow is gonna pick up speed as you move through that because you're making the same things in the same order. Now, you don't have upright geometry and a brush, but you have several same tools. So as we look at those regional and local adjustments will have that those same aspects have any other questions about the global editing peace. Do we have any? We do, yes. Danielson online questions. So this one is kind of a bigger question about editing your images. You're using both the desktop and an IPad. You might be on your on your phone as well. So Karl asked about calibrating your monitor to properly judge colors. Do you have any? I know that's a huge yes, Daniels turning around. It's a huge topic, but just in general, because you're also not just the devices but your in C. C and you're in. Yeah, that's a good question. Um, my laptop desktop universe is highly calibrated, so I calibrate all the time. Um, it does matter which calibrate er used. Getting calibrated is important. It's interesting in that space, even if we get a light room classic, which has the more robust of the engines. If you're in the library module, it's Adobe RGB. If you're in the print module, it's Adobe RGB When you have a development module urine pro photo with a variation of an S rgb curve applied, there's the weird color management going on across the board and device to device. They don't have color management built into him. Now you can actually take, uh, spider from data color or next, right, and in their app, calibrate patter, laptop as long as you're in a color man who's been aware app that responds to their profile Salt. Um And so in general, if it looks good on the IPad and I'm thinking about my mobile environment looks good on the IPad. Looks good on my phone. It's gonna probably look good when I exported to the Web because I'm gonna be in the S rgb color space and within the hell universe of that when it comes time to actually go to print, it always goes back to the desktop in a highly calibrated desktop environment. So I'm in control of it. And the reason for that is in the color management world, the screen, the printer, the camera all have different senses of color, and I have to have somebody be able to translate firing generate on the monitor is might be called Strawberry right on the printer, and I need that that connection. Peace. And that's what Light Room Classic has in the print module where Sisi doesn't. So I'll make all of the edits. And when I'm on my desktop CC to the classic, that pipeline looks great. For the most part, the monitor gets me close, but I might finesse that last little bit on the desktop where I know I'm in complete control of the color for anybody has taken my color class. To say that I'm a freak about getting that color right is an understatement. Like I will obsess and tell my students like You're off, you know, if we come in and look at the color here, the temperature there is 4900 on the same age, and I'll be like, Let's print that at 48 90 49 90. Let's look at what 10 points of blue makes. The way I learned color was from a guy who was even more obsessive than me. I think I'm pretty easy going about that. And so for me, that last little bit is so critical. But in most cases for a lot of people. I don't think it's that much beyond that in that environment. Yeah, it's a little a little were dirty fingerprints on your on your IPad areas, even works of all the sins of the problem. Get a little cloth to keep that thing polished up because your fingerprints are going toe smudged and show you mawr like, Wow, that's really I got a crank the clarity upon that and then no, your you need to learn how to wash your hands.