Lightroom 2 works wonders

[Fangman]

Following my recent posting of the little posing Innocent I thought I would show some more of her posing - real pictures and the fake studio shots, all done in Lightroom2 My daughter wanted some to go round the family and was shocked at the £100-150 quoted for a sitting. The cluttered background of the sitting room with everyone about had to make do. Most just with daylight and a 50mm lens on.

becomes this

Backgrounds softened and desaturated if necessary with the magic brush

Post crop vignette

And a real little poser

All taking just a few minutes in lightroom as downloaded direct as RAW files from the card. Printed on to A4 (4x 6x4s with a 2mm margin either side to give prints for the flip album for the Aunts) All in Lightroom.
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[NateWagner]

yeah, lightroom is great, but I will say at least with these pics I think you overdid it a bit with the vignettes.

otherwise... cute kid.

 

[F-Stop1.8]

Hey! I just saw this on Talk Photography!!

 

[Fangman]

Lightroom 2 is great and if you don't need the 3D modeling the RAW engine is as the new CS4 Photoshop. I only go to CS3 now for layer work and "cheating"

We had intended to drape a sheet for madam to pose on but as her brother has managed to be sick in the night my wife had been somewhat preoccupied with the washing machine for all the bedding and a fair number of her soft toys - her little ladyship was left to entertain her grandfather who as you can see she thinks is suitably daft! The vignetting was used to lose the background and far heavier that would usually be used.

 

[D40]

I will be upgrading Lightroom to version 2 as well, glad to hear you like it!

 

[Fangman]

It is superb - the control you have in the Develop module is amazing with the range of non destructive editing you can do on selective parts of the image and the print module is really something else. I have set up a series of personal templates to fit on to A4 to give 4 almost 6x4's as well as other sizes to fit paper. I often have sets to put on disk or up to a gallery for organizers of various events and the output module will size the collection to suit, both in dimension and dpi and this has saved hours. In the print module I find it so much easier to use the profiles for my printers and papers and the results are beating Photoshop. I don't think I will be investing in CS4 comparde with the £80 odd for the Lightroom upgrade. I was smitten by the Lightroom 2 beta and upgraded the day the full version came out and spend most of my time in it and trying to learn more each day.

 

[ChrisOquist]

Those vignettes are a little intense for me - I feel like they detract a lot from the pictures. For instance - I much, much prefer the second to last shot to the last one.

 

[Fangman]

I usually don't use the vignette effect on shots of the children - keeping them in their habitat if you know what I mean for the family albums but in this case I was asked to produce "studio" type shots and it was a case of adapting an image to suit.

I hope it has given some folks an idea of what is possible in very little time - thanks to you all for bothering to share your opinions.