First edits using lightroom C&C welcome

[BrandonLaw]

I love how easy LR is to use I will definitely be picking it up. Thanks for looking at my photos!

StacksVig by BrandonLaw87, on Flickr


Tower 005 by BrandonLaw87, on Flickr

 

[Light Guru]

The vignetting on your images is to much.

 

[WesternGuy]

Agree with Light Guru - sometime vignettes work and sometimes they don't - I don't know that they work here. Would you care to share why you did it in these images? What was the effect you were looking for? The second image looks a bit dark - underexposed. Maybe try increasing the exposure a bit in post.

WesternGuy

 

[BrandonLaw]

Yeah now that I look at them the vignettes are a bit much here are my edits without the vigs on them. The reason I put the vignette on the first pic was because I thought it made the rock stack pop a little more. For the tower I am not sure why I added the vignette I guess I just liked the way it looked at the time. Thanks for the comments!


StacksLR by BrandonLaw87, on Flickr


Tower 004 by BrandonLaw87, on Flickr

 

[UnknownBro]

seems a bit too saturated. Maybe bump up teh clarity a bit too.

 

[Benco]

The first looks a little cool, maybe up the WB temp a bit.
The second you could desaturate and warm the blue channel, and up the exposure a touch.

 

[KmH]

It's not real productive to C&C edits when we can't compare the edit to the originals.
Explaining what editing steps/techniques you used also allows us to give you better feedback.

 

[Mully]

Open the mid tones of the lighthouse and reduce the saturation some.

 

[BrandonLaw]

Sorry I am a bit new at this thanks for the advice! Here are the originals so you can compare them I just did basic edits to them.

In the first one I increased the contrast, lowered the highlights and white clipping, I increased the shadows and the black clipping, increased clarity to 40, vibrance to 50, and saturation by 10, then I put the sharpening up to 75.


DSC 088 by BrandonLaw87, on Flickr

StacksLR by BrandonLaw87, on Flickr


For the second one
Exposure: +0.24 Contrast:+19 Highlights: -50 Clarity: +55 Vibrance: +100 Saturation: -17 Highlight tones: +18 Light tones: -24 Dark Tones: +40 Shadow Tones: -9 Highlight Saturation: +50 Sharpening: +23 Sharpen Detail: +35 Color Noise Reduction: +25 I also cropped it in on the left a bit.


Tower by BrandonLaw87, on Flickr

Tower 004 by BrandonLaw87, on Flickr




Is that what you mean by saying what I did to it? I am still new to this and would appreciate any advice to make it easier to C&C anything I post thanks!

Also what is the best way to post what I did? Are either of the ways I did it good? Edits done with LR5 beta

 

[Benco]

The lighthouse is too blue, you can fix that by selective colour adjustment. Like this:

 

[BrandonLaw]

Thanks Benco I was wondering how to turn down the blue in just the lighthouse would I go over the whole thing with the adjustment brush or is there some other way?

 

[jwbryson1]

The lighthouse is too blue, you can fix that by selective colour adjustment. Like this:

Here's a dumb question -- I don't have a good eye for color it seems. Once Benco pointed out the over-blue saturation of the lighthouse, then I could see it, but not before. After he pointed that out, it was obvious. So the dumb question is HOW do you determine which color(s) are too saturated or under saturated? Just practice and a good eye?

OP - Nice shots.

 

[Benco]

Thanks Benco I was wondering how to turn down the blue in just the lighthouse would I go over the whole thing with the adjustment brush or is there some other way?

Yes there is another way, the colour adjustment tool allows you to adjust hue, saturation and luminence of a range of colours (red, orange, yellow, green, aqua, blue, purple and magenta), this usually gives you enough control to sort out such issues. That's how it works in LR4 anyway, I've not had a play with LR5 yet so maybe it's different.

The lighthouse is too blue, you can fix that by selective colour adjustment. Like this:

Here's a dumb question -- I don't have a good eye for color it seems. Once Benco pointed out the over-blue saturation of the lighthouse, then I could see it, but not before. After he pointed that out, it was obvious. So the dumb question is HOW do you determine which color(s) are too saturated or under saturated? Just practice and a good eye?

OP - Nice shots.

Personally I do it by the seat of my pants...by eye that is. There are tools to help assess colour issues with an image (the histogram for instance) but I've not yet really investigated them, on the whole I find that images vary so much in what they are that except for major issues like clipping one just judges it by eye.

 

[KmH]

Lets first look at what main things need to be done.

1. The original, except the sky, is badly under exposed. Likely from using Matrix/Evaluative metering.
2. Sharpen locally.

Note: I used ACR 7 (Camera Raw), not the ACR 8 LR 5 uses.
Since the sky exposure is essentially OK, local edits rather than global edits are needed so the sky highlights exposure isn't increased.
So the Adjustment Brush is the main tool of choice, because it allows us to do local edits. Unfortunately, the Adjustment Brush is still fairly imprescise compared to using Photoshop's selection tools for local edits.
I didn't record all the specifics, but I made 14 different 'new' edits using the adjustment brush. In other words there were 14 'pins' in the image
I added some blue color to parts of the sky and upped the exposure +.5 EV on some of the clouds.
I added +3 EV to the tree on the left, +2.5 EV to the front of the tower, +.1 EV to the camera left side of the tower, and +1 EV to the grass. The tower also got some Sharpening and Clarity.
I cropped so the near building corner camera left, and the near tower corner were both of RoT verticals. I cropped a sliver off the bottom so the low roof line was on the bottom RoT horizontal.
I left the keystone distortion and cheated a bit by adding a thin black border in Photoshop.

 

[BrandonLaw]

Lets first look at what main things need to be done.

1. The original, except the sky, is badly under exposed. Likely from using Matrix/Evaluative metering.
2. Sharpen locally.

Note: I used ACR 7 (Camera Raw), not the ACR 8 LR 5 uses.
Since the sky exposure is essentially OK, local edits rather than global edits are needed so the sky highlights exposure isn't increased.
So the Adjustment Brush is the main tool of choice, because it allows us to do local edits. Unfortunately, the Adjustment Brush is still fairly imprescise compared to using Photoshop's selection tools for local edits.
I didn't record all the specifics, but I made 14 different 'new' edits using the adjustment brush. In other words there were 14 'pins' in the image
I added some blue color to parts of the sky and upped the exposure +.5 EV on some of the clouds.
I added +3 EV to the tree on the left, +2.5 EV to the front of the tower, +.1 EV to the camera left side of the tower, and +1 EV to the grass. The tower also got some Sharpening and Clarity.
I cropped so the near building corner camera left, and the near tower corner were both of RoT verticals. I cropped a sliver off the bottom so the low roof line was on the bottom RoT horizontal.
I left the keystone distortion and cheated a bit by adding a thin black border in Photoshop.

Thank you for the feedback! So the reason the tower was underexposed was because I used matrix metering? Should I have used center weighted metering instead or is there not really much I could have done?

What made you leave the tree on the left in? I hated that I couldn't get it out of my frame when I took the shot lol. Does it have to do wit RoT?