Learning lightroom. A few questions. C&C welcome.

Desi · Oct 22, 2011

Been lurking on TPF recently. Too much work, not enough free time to thoughtfully take photos.

I've been inspired to get lightroom from reading all the posts talking about post-production. I've been using iphoto up to now.

Here's a photo taken 2 months ago at Mono lake. Strong sunlight. Original looks a bit washed out. 2 years olds don't pose well, so I got this shot (which I love) but with a rock sticking out of her head. Here's the before and after (cropped, increased saturation, increased contrast, increased "blacks", my attempt at cloning out the rock). White balance was "cloudy day". I left that alone.

Your thoughts? Regarding the cloning out of the rock, can lightroom do better or is that a bit much to ask. I do see some scalloping along the hairline from the circular clone tool and some mis-match of the water. I haven't quite gotten the hang of the heal tool, but it starts to look very busy with all those circles on the screen. Thanks in advance for our comments.

Original

DSC_1287 by Javier Descalzi, on Flickr

Lightroom edit

SamMonoLake.jpg by Javier Descalzi, on Flickr

DSC_0894.jpg by Javier Descalzi, on Flickr
This is not a particularly nice shot, but it taught me bit about white balance. The original was very orange (orange house, dull-grey sky). I'm assuming the streetlights are sodium vapor? Lightroom fixed that very easily and I was truly surprised how it got the colors right. I have a couple of pictures like this where I'd love to get rid of the power lines. I can do it in lightroom using the clone tool, but it would take a long time. Is there a tool that I'm missing or is that just something that needs photoshop to do quickly.

Thanks.

MTVision · Oct 22, 2011

So, in the first you want to know if you can clone better in Lightroom?
I think cloning is a skill. I suck at cloning so I stay away as much as possible.

I don't have Lightroom but in photoshop there are plugins you can buy to get rid of power lines - don't know how well it works.

The 1st image is a little oversaturated for my taste. Have you played with the vibrancy slider at all? I, personally try to stay away from the saturation sliders - that's just me though

Desi · Oct 22, 2011

Thanks....I'll try vibrancy. I think I'll ruin more photos than I fix with all these new sliders to play with.

Yeah, I had hoped cloning would be easier.

WesternGuy · Oct 22, 2011

Desi, as far as the "cloning" goes, Lightroom is not good at this sort of thing, because it involves manipulating your image at the "pixel" level, something that is better done in Photoshop (either Elements or CS5). Lightroom does have a "crude" (IMHO) cloning, healing tool, but it is really only good enough to deal with the removal of dust spots from dust on the sensor and other relatively small objects that appear in your image.

Lightroom's real capability is in the "library" module that allows you to import and keyword your images, as well as exporting them in jpg, tif, psd, dng, and other formats. As well, the Develop module, of LR, is also very good for things like cropping, and all the editing processes that can go into a final image; however, you cannot do things like layers, masks and text labelling of images, or anything else that involves the manipulation of an image at the pixel level. I have LR 3 (now at version 3.5) and I like it very much - it does probably 90% of my editing and I have CS5, if I need to use Photoshop for some additional editing. For example, your edit to remove the "rock sticking out of the child's head could be done in Photoshop using "content aware fill" Also, because it is so small relative to other things in the image, it is possible that the "Spot Removal" tool from the LR would work fairly well in this case. HTH.

Cheers,

WesternGuy

KmH · Oct 22, 2011

As mentioned by WesternGuy, Lightroom's primary function is not image editing. Lightroom 3 is not intended for extensive retouching and is not capable of editing pixels. Lightroom 3 was designed to be a compliment to CS5. Adobe fully expected people to get CS5 before they got Lightroom.

You may want to note that Lightroom 3's Develope module is actually Photoshop CS5 Camera Raw (ACR). So any books or tutorials for Camera Raw also apply to Lightroom's Develope module.
Real World Camera Raw with Adobe Photoshop CS5

Lightroom lacks the kind of selection tools CS5 has. in your cloning situation, if you had CS5 or Elements you could use one of the selection tools to isolate your child so the clone tool would have no effect on the child and not produce "scalloping along the hairline from the circular clone tool".

Another learning resource is Adobe. With Lightroom's Develope module open, press the F1 key on your keyboard.

Desi · Oct 22, 2011

Thanks WesternGuy and KmH.

I'm really beginning to understand how much knowledge and effort goes into getting some of the shots I see on this forum.

I appreciate the time everyone here takes to help a noob.

I'll try to master what I've got before moving on to photoshop.