Photography is a wonderful way to capture special moments in time, the people we love, magnificent landscapes and so much more. Like many hobbies, there is so much to learn—from composition and lighting to cameras and f-stops, to how to edit and store your images. It may all seem daunting at first, but little by little you will learn all you need to know.
Now that you have the editing power of Lightroom Classic, why not push to maximize your efficiency. Hopefully you learned a few tricks to make editing go faster.
With Adobe’s recent October 2020 release of Lightroom Classic v10 comes the replacement of Split Toning with a new Color Grading tool. This is the tool many of us have been waiting for in Lightroom, and now we no longer have to go into Photoshop to utilize it.
Although you can simply take any color image and convert it to grayscale, I get the best results if I walk into a shoot knowing the final outcome will be black & white. I allow this to dictate my lighting and color choices, which translate into shades of gray and tonality. It’s crucial to understand what would work better in black & white or color, and this is something that can be mastered with practice.
Whether you are an expert or fear all things tech, upgrading your computer’s operating system and applications is a must. Of course, many experts will advise against upgrading to the latest version as there are always bugs.
We often use black & white photography as a method for focusing on the emotion in an image. In fact, there are only two reasons that we will convert an image to black & white. Both have to do with eliminating distractions.
When you are photographing a couple, you want to make sure you have a great tonal range. This really helps as we convert to black & white later while editing. Many of us look for contrast and texture while shooting for black & white and enhance these elements in post-production. Of course, there are multiple ways to get your Raw images converted, and in this article I have 5 tips for better black & white edits in Lightroom Classic.
"That's not what it looked like when I shot it!" If you've ever said or thought those words, guess what? You have a color management problem. It's so important for the images you create to look and feel the way it was when you saw the scene with your own two eyes.
When it comes to using multiple camera models and manufacturers, images photographed in the same place and time look different. As photographers, we focus on controlling this variance of brightness and color of light in a multitude of ways. Whether that’s using Auto, Priority Modes, or Manual settings in-camera, we constantly worry how this will look on the computer screen as well as images side by side. Regarding exposure specifically, we have standardized ways to keep this in check in-camera using blown highlight preview mode or showing the histogram on the display screen while shooting. Color consistency between multiple cameras is a whole other monster.
When it comes to traveling and personal photography, I like to edit and share my images on the fly. This means I'm not waiting to connect to my RAID storage drive at home before I can get started on my images. I want to quickly ingest memory cards, save Raw files to a fast external drive, and add my photos to Lightroom. Lightroom Classic is typically my go-to for photo gigs, however, in this case I want to be mobile and share edits fast. This is when I use Lightroom CC. I can truly travel light for post-production and have the ability to edit from my phone.
