i cannot speak for other photographers. i can only speak for myself. but i absolutely love snapshots.

my personal facebook is full of them. recently mostly ducks- not my kids. probably to the annoyance of all my friends.

but as a photographer that really loves capturing the real stuffs of life…it’s what is happening in my life and i want to document that.

i see myself as more of a documenting kind of photographer than a fancy fashion kind. so 98374392 duck pictures are what is going on in my life right now.

i also edit my snaps. it’s my time to play. try new things. get out of the box a little. i might not change anything permanently in my style…but i love to play and try new things.

so here is a personal fav snap of mine.

i used my multi-purpose non-fancy 70-300 vr lens. i shot in aperture mode and set the iso to 2200 because these are just for me and i am letting my camera set the exposure.

i hate shooting manually on a lens whose aperture changes if I am at 100 or 300mm. it’s too much to keep up with when i want to shoot on the fly with moving targets.

so first up…

how i would normally edit this image. i adore bw. this is my hazy daisy bw preset with exposure cranked down. i like it dark.

i wanted to play. i thought…you know what.?

i want COLOR.  velvia is a type of color film. it’s really rich and often not so hot on people photos as it can make skin really orange or weird.

i made a color preset that was inspired by that very look. it also looks weird on people usually and can make the eye whites look really scary. so use on people with caution.

this image with the red mower and the blue skies screamed- try velvia!  to me. so into squeaky clean i went and i played warm water and then velvia (which only changes saturation/vibrance and hue panel).

i really love what it did to the sky. brought out the vivid blues and it made the red snap.

now that may not be everyone’s flavor. it’s not my usual flavor either. but i had fun and i think it really works here!

and then something that is very popular right now. the matte/hazy look.

i went into my wildflowers essentials for lr4 set and played chocolate lily lite. i tweaked it a LOT. lifted shadows, pushed contrast…a few other little things.

same snap. 3 different plays. my preference for this image even though it’s not my usual?

the velvia version. i’d love to print it and hang it in my kitchen of all places.

i challenge you to take a recent fav snap and play. i’d love for you to post your favorite play on my FB wall.

get those creative juices flowing!

not having to tweak a preset is NOT normal. but serendipity occasionally strikes. this is one of those times.

i love what this preset did to my greens. it adds a bit of a vignette, a touch of clarity, some adjustments in the hue panel, and some other little things…

the new SC for Lr4 tries it’s best to stay as close to the Lr3 version as it can but it’s not 100%. tools are missing from Lr4 that were present in Lr3 and tools that were never in Lr3 are new to Lr4…not to mention some tools remain but have been completely updated in their function. like the exposure slider seems to work a lot like the old brightness slider (which is now gone in Lr4). the new clarity slider is REALLY great. missing now is the odd haloing effect it used to cause when using it a little heavier, but NOW present is an odd desaturation in colors. working around for that is to globally increase saturation or tweak the hue panel some. but overall- i am really enjoying most of the changes.

also new to Lr4 is that the tone curve NOW has color curves (awesome!) and the adjustment brush can now paint on white balance, tint, noise removal , shadow and highlight effects…really like that!

anyway…here is my progress report and teaser for the new SC for Lr4.

will be adding more photos to this post…so keep checking back!

d700 | 300mm | f/5.6 | 2200 iso | 1/500

and my after…

next….

and how about this silly pic with a squeaky edit?

d700 | 155mm | f/4.8 | 2200 iso | 1/1600 ss

then….

white balance is off. so let’s try adding some green…magenta looks a little high…then warm it up…

I know it’s been a while since I shared a before and after. About time right?

My ‘look’ lately has gotten ‘cleaner’ if you’ve noticed. Less vintage- more clean. So that’s what I am going to share today.

Disclaimer: What is to follow is purely my own reflections, opinions and experiences.

*****

Now I have had people email me from time to time frustrated that their images are not looking like mine. I have several things to share that I hope sheds some light on why.

Why don’t my images look like yours when I use your presets or actions?

1. You aren’t me. We are two totally different people. I see the world one way, you see it another. Our end product should vary or I hope so. I don’t want your work to look like mine. I want your work to look like yours- an awesome version of yours.

2. You are not in the same moment, with the same lighting, using the exact same settings with the exact same equipment. A Canon 5D II with an 85 1.2 IS going to produce a different style image than a Nikon D300 with a 50 1.4. It…just is. The color renditions out of the camera are also going to vary. It just is.

3. Your subjects are not mine. If I am shooting a pretty blonde haired blue eyed toddler, get sharp focus and nice exposure and you shoot a sexy red haired green eyed woman, get sharp focus and expose a little under on purpose- that one preset you play IS going to look totally different. Why? Lighting. Equipment. Skin tones of the subject. YOUR use of the lighting. Exposure. White balance. Goodness so many variables!

4. If you underexpose skin very much- you will struggle with skin tones. You just will. Can you fix them? Sure but that preset is going to need more tweaking for sure- and skin tones definitely unless you nailed white balance. Adjust the exposure slider first then apply a preset.

5. If you overexpose much- you need to fix that before applying any preset unless you know that preset well. My presets often run bright- simply adjust by pulling back on the adjustment slider. Simple fix.

Ok so you don’t want your work to look mine- but how the heck do I get it close?

1. Exposure. Find your happy place with exposure.  Depending on the light situation- I determine how I want to expose. Over, under or spot on? And not too much over or under.

2. Nail focus. No need to explain here right?

3. If you want lighter crisper edits- watch the contrast and blacks in Lightroom/ACR. In PS/PSE watch the curves/levels layers with shadows pushed in, contrast, soft light layer opacities etc. Just because my preset has blacks at 12 and contrast at 50- doesn’t mean you should leave them there. Look at your image- what does the image need? It’s normal and necessary to adjust presets AND actions per your images. (remember what I said above about why don’t my images look like yours when I buy your presets) It’s not an Olive Juice thing- it’s a processing thing. If you need MORE contrast- then do the opposite with the blacks/shadows/contrast—> push them.

4. I use Fill Light a lot. I am sure you noticed if you use my presets. I will go negative on the Exposure (the slider. it protects me from blowing highlights) and push the Fill Light until I get some of the brightness I want. It helps throw global lighting into the eyes and shadows in general. Try it! Be sure to adjust contrast and blacks to put back some contrast.

5. Natural eyes. I usually do not touch the eyes. Maybe a little here and there (maybe a slight eyelash burn or eye white pick me up- but just barely if at all). If you get nice light in the eyes- honestly what more can you do? If you bleach those eye whites anymore – it looks alien and wrong and unnatural and totally noticeable. If you did not get decent light in the eyes do what you can using the Fill Light and other more global edits- a teeny tiny itty bitty eye pop and be done. Overdoing eyes that didn’t receive good light (and that happens especially when you are a lifestyle photog like me and chase your subjects)- is just bad processing. Sorry it just is. All I’m saying- is go easy.

6. In Photoshop I mask. A Lot. I add color fill layers and I mask the effects off the eyes and lips. It adds depth and it gets the effects off of places I don’t want washed or colored. If you are using a yellow-ish vintage action- I highly recommend using a brush on the mask on that yellowing layer and remove some of it from the eyes and teeth. Who wants yellow teeth and eyes? Not flattering. Not all or it looks funny. Leave a teeny bit behind. Masking is my BFF when I do use PS.

7. Find your shooting style – manual or aperture priority are the two most common settings pros use. Pick and stick and nail it to the wall. I’m telling you the more you find the style that works for you- the more confident you become in your exposures.

8. Find your editing style. The pastel vintage look is all the rage right now. Is it you? Or are you doing what others are doing just because it seems the thing to do? (no judgement here, we all do this at times with various things- props, lenses etc) Edit images several ways and step back. Which do you love? DO what you LOVE. I love to play. Vintage is fun for me. But I really love cleaner brighter crisper these days usually. I do what I love. What fits the image. And I try to stay consistent within the session to one or two looks (for me that means some black and whites because it’s my first love and one color style). That says pro. I know what I’m doing. It builds confidence when potential clients check out your work.

9. Rock what you got. Upgrade as you need to and are able to. You can still learn how to do all this on an entry level dslr and kit lens. Yes, once you upgrade bodies and glass you will see the quality improving but you can still nail that technical skill while you wait!

10. Do you need Photoshop CS5 to edit beautifully? No. There are a few tools in CS5 that I personally use that you cannot find in PSE. But I would survive with Elements as long as I had Lightroom. Some might disagree but I am sharing my opinion and I am entitled to it. Lightroom + Elements is a wonderful combo. Lightroom is fantastic. But I honestly do recommend having a secondary program where you can edit to the pixel level using masks, being able to make cards and things, make your own watermark with your logo and I’m sorry Lightroom- but your Clone Brush isn’t all that exciting or useful to me a lot of times.

Ok so ready for a B&A?

I took this image of my daughter. I shot in manual mode using my d700 and 60mm macro lens.

My settings were f/3.5 iso 400 and ss 1/320.

As you can see from the sooc (straight out of the camera) my exposure is dandy.

Ok first of in my sooc. Exposure? Check. Lighting in the eyes? Check. Lighting on the skin? Check.

In Lightroom I took the sooc (above)  then reduced exposure to -.60 (the sooc has not had exposure tweaked fyi).

(processed here a little heavier just so you could see the differences more easily)

Why mess with good exposure? Because I knew I was going to tweak the tone curve a lot and push the fill light. I played Topaz preset from my Jewels RAW Lightroom presets. I liked the way it looked.

I pushed fill light to +22. I like the light in the eyes and overall. The blacks and contrast were too heavy for this image. I reduced the blacks to 7 and the contrast to 40ish.

Then I tweaked the tone curve a little bit. I wanted more shadows so I moved that slider closer to zero rather than +. I pushed brightness to 60. I used my adjustment brush and burned the background at -.39 on the exposure setting. Did a color pop on her irises and lips- exposure on -.08 and saturation on +20.  I exported to PS. I played out no actions. I cloned out the scratches on her nose. I adjusted her skin tones with a color balance layer – she needed a wee bit of green and yellow (you can do the same with Levels for you Elements users). I added a white color fill layer at soft light blend mode and 30% opacity to add some light all over and masked it off her eyes and lips. I also added a hue/sat layer and reduced the light in the red channel and inverted it an painted it on her lips to lighten them some.

Done.

That’s all I did.

One last visual. All I did was play Topaz and adjust Blacks to 7 and Contrast to 31. No other adjustments were made to these images.

Questions? Comments?

Did this info help you? I’d love to hear about it! <3 xxx

~amy beth

I know it’s been a while since I shared a before and after. About time right?

My ‘look’ lately has gotten ‘cleaner’ if you’ve noticed. Less vintage- more clean. So that’s what I am going to share today.

Disclaimer: What is to follow is purely my own reflections, opinions and experiences.

*****

Now I have had people email me from time to time frustrated that their images are not looking like mine. I have several things to share that I hope sheds some light on why.

Why don’t my images look like yours when I use your presets or actions?

1. You aren’t me. We are two totally different people. I see the world one way, you see it another. Our end product should vary or I hope so. I don’t want your work to look like mine. I want your work to look like yours- an awesome version of yours.

2. You are not in the same moment, with the same lighting, using the exact same settings with the exact same equipment. A Canon 5D II with an 85 1.2 IS going to produce a different style image than a Nikon D300 with a 50 1.4. It…just is. The color renditions out of the camera are also going to vary. It just is.

3. Your subjects are not mine. If I am shooting a pretty blonde haired blue eyed toddler, get sharp focus and nice exposure and you shoot a sexy red haired green eyed woman, get sharp focus and expose a little under on purpose- that one preset you play IS going to look totally different. Why? Lighting. Equipment. Skin tones of the subject. YOUR use of the lighting. Exposure. White balance. Goodness so many variables!

4. If you underexpose skin very much- you will struggle with skin tones. You just will. Can you fix them? Sure but that preset is going to need more tweaking for sure- and skin tones definitely unless you nailed white balance. Adjust the exposure slider first then apply a preset.

5. If you overexpose much- you need to fix that before applying any preset unless you know that preset well. My presets often run bright- simply adjust by pulling back on the adjustment slider. Simple fix.

Ok so you don’t want your work to look mine- but how the heck do I get it close?

1. Exposure. Find your happy place with exposure.  Depending on the light situation- I determine how I want to expose. Over, under or spot on? And not too much over or under.

2. Nail focus. No need to explain here right?

3. If you want lighter crisper edits- watch the contrast and blacks in Lightroom/ACR. In PS/PSE watch the curves/levels layers with shadows pushed in, contrast, soft light layer opacities etc. Just because my preset has blacks at 12 and contrast at 50- doesn’t mean you should leave them there. Look at your image- what does the image need? It’s normal and necessary to adjust presets AND actions per your images. (remember what I said above about why don’t my images look like yours when I buy your presets) It’s not an Olive Juice thing- it’s a processing thing. If you need MORE contrast- then do the opposite with the blacks/shadows/contrast—> push them.

4. I use Fill Light a lot. I am sure you noticed if you use my presets. I will go negative on the Exposure (the slider. it protects me from blowing highlights) and push the Fill Light until I get some of the brightness I want. It helps throw global lighting into the eyes and shadows in general. Try it! Be sure to adjust contrast and blacks to put back some contrast.

5. Natural eyes. I usually do not touch the eyes. Maybe a little here and there (maybe a slight eyelash burn or eye white pick me up- but just barely if at all). If you get nice light in the eyes- honestly what more can you do? If you bleach those eye whites anymore – it looks alien and wrong and unnatural and totally noticeable. If you did not get decent light in the eyes do what you can using the Fill Light and other more global edits- a teeny tiny itty bitty eye pop and be done. Overdoing eyes that didn’t receive good light (and that happens especially when you are a lifestyle photog like me and chase your subjects)- is just bad processing. Sorry it just is. All I’m saying- is go easy.

6. In Photoshop I mask. A Lot. I add color fill layers and I mask the effects off the eyes and lips. It adds depth and it gets the effects off of places I don’t want washed or colored. If you are using a yellow-ish vintage action- I highly recommend using a brush on the mask on that yellowing layer and remove some of it from the eyes and teeth. Who wants yellow teeth and eyes? Not flattering. Not all or it looks funny. Leave a teeny bit behind. Masking is my BFF when I do use PS.

7. Find your shooting style – manual or aperture priority are the two most common settings pros use. Pick and stick and nail it to the wall. I’m telling you the more you find the style that works for you- the more confident you become in your exposures.

8. Find your editing style. The pastel vintage look is all the rage right now. Is it you? Or are you doing what others are doing just because it seems the thing to do? (no judgement here, we all do this at times with various things- props, lenses etc) Edit images several ways and step back. Which do you love? DO what you LOVE. I love to play. Vintage is fun for me. But I really love cleaner brighter crisper these days usually. I do what I love. What fits the image. And I try to stay consistent within the session to one or two looks (for me that means some black and whites because it’s my first love and one color style). That says pro. I know what I’m doing. It builds confidence when potential clients check out your work.

9. Rock what you got. Upgrade as you need to and are able to. You can still learn how to do all this on an entry level dslr and kit lens. Yes, once you upgrade bodies and glass you will see the quality improving but you can still nail that technical skill while you wait!

10. Do you need Photoshop CS5 to edit beautifully? No. There are a few tools in CS5 that I personally use that you cannot find in PSE. But I would survive with Elements as long as I had Lightroom. Some might disagree but I am sharing my opinion and I am entitled to it. Lightroom + Elements is a wonderful combo. Lightroom is fantastic. But I honestly do recommend having a secondary program where you can edit to the pixel level using masks, being able to make cards and things, make your own watermark with your logo and I’m sorry Lightroom- but your Clone Brush isn’t all that exciting or useful to me a lot of times.

Ok so ready for a B&A?

I took this image of my daughter. I shot in manual mode using my d700 and 60mm macro lens.

My settings were f/3.5 iso 400 and ss 1/320.

As you can see from the sooc (straight out of the camera) my exposure is dandy.

Ok first of in my sooc. Exposure? Check. Lighting in the eyes? Check. Lighting on the skin? Check.

In Lightroom I took the sooc (above)  then reduced exposure to -.60 (the sooc has not had exposure tweaked fyi).

(processed here a little heavier just so you could see the differences more easily)

Why mess with good exposure? Because I knew I was going to tweak the tone curve a lot and push the fill light. I played Topaz preset from my Jewels RAW Lightroom presets. I liked the way it looked.

I pushed fill light to +22. I like the light in the eyes and overall. The blacks and contrast were too heavy for this image. I reduced the blacks to 7 and the contrast to 40ish.

Then I tweaked the tone curve a little bit. I wanted more shadows so I moved that slider closer to zero rather than +. I pushed brightness to 60. I used my adjustment brush and burned the background at -.39 on the exposure setting. Did a color pop on her irises and lips- exposure on -.08 and saturation on +20.  I exported to PS. I played out no actions. I cloned out the scratches on her nose. I adjusted her skin tones with a color balance layer – she needed a wee bit of green and yellow (you can do the same with Levels for you Elements users). I added a white color fill layer at soft light blend mode and 30% opacity to add some light all over and masked it off her eyes and lips. I also added a hue/sat layer and reduced the light in the red channel and inverted it an painted it on her lips to lighten them some.

Done.

That’s all I did.

One last visual. All I did was play Topaz and adjust Blacks to 7 and Contrast to 31. No other adjustments were made to these images.

Questions? Comments?

Did this info help you? I’d love to hear about it! <3 xxx

~amy beth

Ok so today we are doing 2 things. We are going to tweak one of my favorite presets [bubbly] and use the adjustment brush. This preset is sooo gorgeous on natural light newborn shots. Gives it a little bit of a peachy tone. Mmm!

We are taking an image of my toddler. I am using it because it’s a close up, good focus, good exposure (raw gives you more wiggle room) and will allow us to work without a lot of zooming for this tut.

I am showing a SOOC image which means straight out of the camera.  I have seen people incorrectly use the term recently. It literally means NO adjustments have been made to it. It means you took the picture, your camera burned it to memory and then puked it out onto your hard drive.

* my little disclaimer. i am not a lightroom guru. i’m really not. i have a working knowledge of the develop module. that’s it -really. so i always teach/share out of my own knowledge and how i work in lightroom. nothing more.

Ok -

Now does one NEED presets?

Absolutely not.

But do you know how many darn sliders I would have to move around to do what [bubbly] did in a split second? Nearly all of them. And that, my friends, is exactly why I use presets and make them.

And a little tip for using some of my presets: they generally run bright. Rather than adjust fill light, tone curve or even brightness- hit the Exposure slider FIRST. For me there are no ‘rules’ in Lightroom working with RAW. Whatever gets me in and out and looking good. You can adjust white balance and exposure first- and I would if I were not using a preset. But since I know that many of my presets are bright- I play the preset then adjust. Why? Because I can. I am not in Photoshop so I personally choose not to follow ‘rules’ since – well I don’t have to. It’s not destructive, I’m not hurting anyone or anything and I can SO quickly undo anything. But that’s me. I get that others may like to follow an order of things. I am just showing you ‘my’ order because it’s how I actually work in Lightroom. Doesn’t mean you have to do it my way.

and here’s the part where i drop capital letters…hehe

(i often do fix exposure and white balance sloppily when i first view a session because it gives me a clear view of what i am really looking at)

first up is the sooc.

i like my sooc. i didn’t clip any highlights. but the darks are darker than i want them to be. my newer set shiny happy people vol1 is a bit bright.

and i like the color shifts the set has.  i chose [bubbly] because i love it.

this is run untweaked. now some of you might like how airy it is. but i want some more contrast. and it’s a little brighter than i want right now.

so rather than adjusting the fill light, tone curve or brightness:

i want the image to pop a little. that’s why i added contrast and lowered the exposure a little. i use the exposure slider instead of the others because it’s more global and faster.

next up i wanna gently pop the eyes. now everyone’s taste varies with eye pops. some people don’t do them at all. some people do them too much and with a heavy hand.

i like to do them but lightly. the trick is actually to get light INTO the eye. if the subject’s back is to the light source- you are going to have dark caves for eyes and no amount of ‘popping’ is going to make them look amazing and naturally sparkly. in those cases- settle for a gentle enhance and call it a day.

the adjustment brush for so many seems to be a source of intimidation.

don’t let it be that to you! the brush is simply a way to add adjustment layers by painting. that’s it yo!

so eye pop:

click on the adjustment brush

see my settings?

start there for an eye pop.

you might want to add some saturation but i generally do not on close ups. they get fake looking fast. eww

now remember even AFTER painting- you can adjust these sliders to your heart’s content when done.

want to delete the adjustment altogether? click on the silver pin and then tap delete on your keyboard. gone.

need to adjust a diff adjust brush pin? click on that pin and the adjustment box goes to those settings and you can retweak them.

i painted this on the entire eye.

why? because i did a colorless eye pop.

if i had used saturation- then i would have swiped only the iris. if you did saturation- then click NEW and then do a light dodge at .10 to .20 exposure on the eye whites.

looks pretty good so far eh?

now i want to burn the background a little bit. it’s blending in with her face more than i want.

now into photoshop i go to finish this up. all i really want to do is tweak the skin tones a little bit.

and now i am happy. it’s cleaned up, the color is pretty to me- i like her skin tones. she does not look like an alien, her skin does not look pasty or look oversmoothed like plastic (it’s naturally smooth because she’s 2 lol).

there are no clipped highlights on her skin (nothing overexposed)

so a quick before and after to see where we started and where we ended up:

Ok so today we are doing 2 things. We are going to tweak one of my favorite presets [bubbly] and use the adjustment brush. This preset is sooo gorgeous on natural light newborn shots. Gives it a little bit of a peachy tone. Mmm!

We are taking an image of my toddler. I am using it because it’s a close up, good focus, good exposure (raw gives you more wiggle room) and will allow us to work without a lot of zooming for this tut.

I am showing a SOOC image which means straight out of the camera.  I have seen people incorrectly use the term recently. It literally means NO adjustments have been made to it. It means you took the picture, your camera burned it to memory and then puked it out onto your hard drive.

* my little disclaimer. i am not a lightroom guru. i’m really not. i have a working knowledge of the develop module. that’s it -really. so i always teach/share out of my own knowledge and how i work in lightroom. nothing more.

Ok -

Now does one NEED presets?

Absolutely not.

But do you know how many darn sliders I would have to move around to do what [bubbly] did in a split second? Nearly all of them. And that, my friends, is exactly why I use presets and make them.

And a little tip for using some of my presets: they generally run bright. Rather than adjust fill light, tone curve or even brightness- hit the Exposure slider FIRST. For me there are no ‘rules’ in Lightroom working with RAW. Whatever gets me in and out and looking good. You can adjust white balance and exposure first- and I would if I were not using a preset. But since I know that many of my presets are bright- I play the preset then adjust. Why? Because I can. I am not in Photoshop so I personally choose not to follow ‘rules’ since – well I don’t have to. It’s not destructive, I’m not hurting anyone or anything and I can SO quickly undo anything. But that’s me. I get that others may like to follow an order of things. I am just showing you ‘my’ order because it’s how I actually work in Lightroom. Doesn’t mean you have to do it my way.

and here’s the part where i drop capital letters…hehe

(i often do fix exposure and white balance sloppily when i first view a session because it gives me a clear view of what i am really looking at)

first up is the sooc.

i like my sooc. i didn’t clip any highlights. but the darks are darker than i want them to be. my newer set shiny happy people vol1 is a bit bright.

and i like the color shifts the set has.  i chose [bubbly] because i love it.

this is run untweaked. now some of you might like how airy it is. but i want some more contrast. and it’s a little brighter than i want right now.

so rather than adjusting the fill light, tone curve or brightness:

i want the image to pop a little. that’s why i added contrast and lowered the exposure a little. i use the exposure slider instead of the others because it’s more global and faster.

next up i wanna gently pop the eyes. now everyone’s taste varies with eye pops. some people don’t do them at all. some people do them too much and with a heavy hand.

i like to do them but lightly. the trick is actually to get light INTO the eye. if the subject’s back is to the light source- you are going to have dark caves for eyes and no amount of ‘popping’ is going to make them look amazing and naturally sparkly. in those cases- settle for a gentle enhance and call it a day.

the adjustment brush for so many seems to be a source of intimidation.

don’t let it be that to you! the brush is simply a way to add adjustment layers by painting. that’s it yo!

so eye pop:

click on the adjustment brush

see my settings?

start there for an eye pop.

you might want to add some saturation but i generally do not on close ups. they get fake looking fast. eww

now remember even AFTER painting- you can adjust these sliders to your heart’s content when done.

want to delete the adjustment altogether? click on the silver pin and then tap delete on your keyboard. gone.

need to adjust a diff adjust brush pin? click on that pin and the adjustment box goes to those settings and you can retweak them.

i painted this on the entire eye.

why? because i did a colorless eye pop.

if i had used saturation- then i would have swiped only the iris. if you did saturation- then click NEW and then do a light dodge at .10 to .20 exposure on the eye whites.

looks pretty good so far eh?

now i want to burn the background a little bit. it’s blending in with her face more than i want.

now into photoshop i go to finish this up. all i really want to do is tweak the skin tones a little bit.

and now i am happy. it’s cleaned up, the color is pretty to me- i like her skin tones. she does not look like an alien, her skin does not look pasty or look oversmoothed like plastic (it’s naturally smooth because she’s 2 lol).

there are no clipped highlights on her skin (nothing overexposed)

so a quick before and after to see where we started and where we ended up:

I know some people do video tutorials and I thought about it. But decided to keep it like this for now. Unless y’all are dying to hear my sexy man voice. Ok not really mannish- but I’ve had many emails saying that many of you much preferred to go the snip route than video route. If I get enough feedback in the future swinging towards the other way- I am happy to do video. I am also considering offering up an image with my tutorials so that you can literally play along- please let me know if you’d be interested in that. <3

So here we are with a step-by-step. If you have any questions about this tutorial or do not know how to use something mentioned in this tutorial- please ask in this post so that others can be helped. No such thing as a stupid question! There is a lot to read, so grab a cup of coffee!

So here we are going to take a purposefully overexposed image and show how amazing it is to 1) fix this in RAW and 2) how to edit so thoroughly in Lightroom that you only have to move to Photoshop to play for some fine tune tweaking. And that, my friends, saves you a whole lotta time if you have a set of images to work on. In a future tutorial I will cover batch processing a little bit but won’t touch on that here.

So here is my image:

Totally overexposed right? Let’s fix that little problem.

In this next step- I not only fixed the Exposure (see slider) until she was completely exposed correctly with no red blinkies (that shows clipped highlights), but I also warmed up the image some. I liked where my tint was but felt it was too cool – so I warmed it. You may need use the dropper to fix your white balance.

Lightroom has a little quirk that I found a work-around for. Even when you have the highlights marker checked (in the Histogram box), Lightroom still sometimes has some blown Reds (or greens or blues) even though it doesn’t show (but it shows in PS by passing the dropper over especially the cheeks/nose/forehead but other places too and seeing 249+ in the Reds/Greens/Blues). I automatically use the Recovery slider at 10 after adjusting the Exposure itself. Sometimes I use more but I personally never go over 30 (skin tones get gross and weird). We want NO blinkies on the face. Lightroom doesn’t have RGB the same way PS does so you can’t just ‘check’ like we do in PS. Annoying little quirk that I hope Adobe fixes one day but it’s not enough to make me stop using it!

Also for adding color globally- I use the Vibrance slider. It is so much kinder to white folks skin. We have a tendency to get orange faster (bleh) and Vibrance saturates color minus the extra orange. For people of color- I actually often prefer the Saturation slider. Play with it and find what suits you best. Just be warned that going over 10-15 in LR can sometimes blow the Reds out and make them look like hot molten neon magenta- especially for us Nikon folk (Nikon thing). So find a happy place with saturation/vibrance. And remember if you bump the color in Lightroom- take it easy in Photoshop with adding color.

I adjust the Tone Curve, Contrast, Blacks…I really bump up my Darks AND Shadows in the Tone Curve and rely on Contrast and Blacks to add contrast and pop. Take it easy with the Blacks and Contrast though ok? if you like crisp images- using a heavy hand on the Blacks, Contrast and even the Shadows (going – not + with the slider) can make the image look very heavy especially around the eyes. Remember you can always burn those lash lines later if they need more pop.

Next we are going to do a simple simple eye pop in Lightroom. So many people think it can’t be done- but it so can and EASIER than in Photoshop (depending on your methods). I turned my mask on in LR so I can see exactly what I’m ‘painting’.

So here was an eye pop in Lightroom.

You can actually go EVEN simpler than this by swiping the entire inside of the eye but you need to be careful of the Saturation setting.

If the person has some red eye (red veins etc) going on- you make them more red. Ewe.

Now let’s pop the background. Now THIS part is cool. No multiple layers one swipe! If you REALLY want to make the background pop urban style really push the Saturation, Clarity, Contrast and Exposure (to the negative) and paint it on. Adjust the sliders as needed even after painting. Super cool thing about doing this in Lightroom! Easy to adjust! If you need to vary up the effects of what you’re doing- simply click NEW every time you need to do a different effect with the Adjustment brush (it’s sorta like starting another mask layer in Photoshop).

Can I fix a little scratch or pimple here and there in Lightroom? Why, yes you can!

We’re ready to leave Lightroom!

Now I personally export as TIFF (you can do PSD too) and then pull it into Photoshop/Elements. After I am done editing in PS/PSE I do NOT flatten my image. I simply hit SAVE (not save as since I exported as PSD or TIFF) and it saves alllll my layers open.

Why do I do this? In case I or a client needs some little thing fixed. If it’s on a certain layer- isn’t it easier to go to the layer and tweak than RE-EDIT the entire thing?

Now here I check my skin tones. Making sure they are pleasing to me. Orange skin is yuck. Red is skin is yuck. It’s not at all flattering to the person in the image. This is the reason why I took the time to learn how to edit nice skin tones. <3 I’m not covering skin tones in this tutorial, other than to check them. Elements users disregard this portion.

I could tweak the skin tones a little more BUT this is close to her real skin tones and I prefer the person to look themselves even if that means the numbers are slightly ‘off’.

Now I check around for ‘hot spots’ or areas of overexposure.

When processing bright (like I often do) it’s important to do these AS YOU WORK so you can nip it in the bud as you go.

Elements users you CAN check this part!

So that’s a basic edit for me. I could leave it alone and be happy. But I want to play.

Now I run a simple action for fun, because I can. And my results:

See that wasn’t so hard was it?

Start to finish this took me less than 5 minutes to accomplish.

Once again if you have ANY questions about what I’ve covered in this tutorial, please ask! Preferably here, not in email so that your question can help others.

I know some people do video tutorials and I thought about it. But decided to keep it like this for now. Unless y’all are dying to hear my sexy man voice. Ok not really mannish- but I’ve had many emails saying that many of you much preferred to go the snip route than video route. If I get enough feedback in the future swinging towards the other way- I am happy to do video. I am also considering offering up an image with my tutorials so that you can literally play along- please let me know if you’d be interested in that. <3

So here we are with a step-by-step. If you have any questions about this tutorial or do not know how to use something mentioned in this tutorial- please ask in this post so that others can be helped. No such thing as a stupid question! There is a lot to read, so grab a cup of coffee!

So here we are going to take a purposefully overexposed image and show how amazing it is to 1) fix this in RAW and 2) how to edit so thoroughly in Lightroom that you only have to move to Photoshop to play for some fine tune tweaking. And that, my friends, saves you a whole lotta time if you have a set of images to work on. In a future tutorial I will cover batch processing a little bit but won’t touch on that here.

So here is my image:

Totally overexposed right? Let’s fix that little problem.

In this next step- I not only fixed the Exposure (see slider) until she was completely exposed correctly with no red blinkies (that shows clipped highlights), but I also warmed up the image some. I liked where my tint was but felt it was too cool – so I warmed it. You may need use the dropper to fix your white balance.

Lightroom has a little quirk that I found a work-around for. Even when you have the highlights marker checked (in the Histogram box), Lightroom still sometimes has some blown Reds (or greens or blues) even though it doesn’t show (but it shows in PS by passing the dropper over especially the cheeks/nose/forehead but other places too and seeing 249+ in the Reds/Greens/Blues). I automatically use the Recovery slider at 10 after adjusting the Exposure itself. Sometimes I use more but I personally never go over 30 (skin tones get gross and weird). We want NO blinkies on the face. Lightroom doesn’t have RGB the same way PS does so you can’t just ‘check’ like we do in PS. Annoying little quirk that I hope Adobe fixes one day but it’s not enough to make me stop using it!

Also for adding color globally- I use the Vibrance slider. It is so much kinder to white folks skin. We have a tendency to get orange faster (bleh) and Vibrance saturates color minus the extra orange. For people of color- I actually often prefer the Saturation slider. Play with it and find what suits you best. Just be warned that going over 10-15 in LR can sometimes blow the Reds out and make them look like hot molten neon magenta- especially for us Nikon folk (Nikon thing). So find a happy place with saturation/vibrance. And remember if you bump the color in Lightroom- take it easy in Photoshop with adding color.

I adjust the Tone Curve, Contrast, Blacks…I really bump up my Darks AND Shadows in the Tone Curve and rely on Contrast and Blacks to add contrast and pop. Take it easy with the Blacks and Contrast though ok? if you like crisp images- using a heavy hand on the Blacks, Contrast and even the Shadows (going – not + with the slider) can make the image look very heavy especially around the eyes. Remember you can always burn those lash lines later if they need more pop.

Next we are going to do a simple simple eye pop in Lightroom. So many people think it can’t be done- but it so can and EASIER than in Photoshop (depending on your methods). I turned my mask on in LR so I can see exactly what I’m ‘painting’.

So here was an eye pop in Lightroom.

You can actually go EVEN simpler than this by swiping the entire inside of the eye but you need to be careful of the Saturation setting.

If the person has some red eye (red veins etc) going on- you make them more red. Ewe.

Now let’s pop the background. Now THIS part is cool. No multiple layers one swipe! If you REALLY want to make the background pop urban style really push the Saturation, Clarity, Contrast and Exposure (to the negative) and paint it on. Adjust the sliders as needed even after painting. Super cool thing about doing this in Lightroom! Easy to adjust! If you need to vary up the effects of what you’re doing- simply click NEW every time you need to do a different effect with the Adjustment brush (it’s sorta like starting another mask layer in Photoshop).

Can I fix a little scratch or pimple here and there in Lightroom? Why, yes you can!

We’re ready to leave Lightroom!

Now I personally export as TIFF (you can do PSD too) and then pull it into Photoshop/Elements. After I am done editing in PS/PSE I do NOT flatten my image. I simply hit SAVE (not save as since I exported as PSD or TIFF) and it saves alllll my layers open.

Why do I do this? In case I or a client needs some little thing fixed. If it’s on a certain layer- isn’t it easier to go to the layer and tweak than RE-EDIT the entire thing?

Now here I check my skin tones. Making sure they are pleasing to me. Orange skin is yuck. Red is skin is yuck. It’s not at all flattering to the person in the image. This is the reason why I took the time to learn how to edit nice skin tones. <3 I’m not covering skin tones in this tutorial, other than to check them. Elements users disregard this portion.

I could tweak the skin tones a little more BUT this is close to her real skin tones and I prefer the person to look themselves even if that means the numbers are slightly ‘off’.

Now I check around for ‘hot spots’ or areas of overexposure.

When processing bright (like I often do) it’s important to do these AS YOU WORK so you can nip it in the bud as you go.

Elements users you CAN check this part!

So that’s a basic edit for me. I could leave it alone and be happy. But I want to play.

Now I run a simple action for fun, because I can. And my results:

See that wasn’t so hard was it?

Start to finish this took me less than 5 minutes to accomplish.

Once again if you have ANY questions about what I’ve covered in this tutorial, please ask! Preferably here, not in email so that your question can help others.

With just a little know how in Lightroom you can do a complete edit.

Now if you want to play a lot or add textures and special effects- then you will need to move over to Photoshop or Elements for that.

Here I have a lovely image courtesy Michelle.

Using her Raw file taken with her Canon (first time I’ve ever worked on a raw Canon file)…here is a clean and pretty simple edit.

Using my all time favorite preset Bubbly, tweaked and then using the adjustment brush for the rest.

This edit was remarkably simple and fast to do. From start to finish it only took me a couple minutes.

One of the wonderful things about this? I don’t have to ‘save’ it. Lightroom automatically saves the ‘edit’ for me. And does so without changing the image- so you lose no data.

If you have Lightroom 3: Export for whatever medium you need to. Even rounding corners and sharpening. No need to keep a duplicated PSD or TIFF file. (Well unless you move to Photoshop and I still do that at times)

Add a watermark and export for web. Upload where you need to and delete the web file after you’re done uploading (easy enough to do it again if you need to).

Saves you room on your hard drives since you have only that one RAW file. And by making virtual copies (ctrl + ‘) you can have multiple edits without taking up tons of hard drive space.

And here is my final edit a little bigger.

With just a little know how in Lightroom you can do a complete edit.

Now if you want to play a lot or add textures and special effects- then you will need to move over to Photoshop or Elements for that.

Here I have a lovely image courtesy Michelle.

Using her Raw file taken with her Canon (first time I’ve ever worked on a raw Canon file)…here is a clean and pretty simple edit.

Using my all time favorite preset Bubbly, tweaked and then using the adjustment brush for the rest.

This edit was remarkably simple and fast to do. From start to finish it only took me a couple minutes.

One of the wonderful things about this? I don’t have to ‘save’ it. Lightroom automatically saves the ‘edit’ for me. And does so without changing the image- so you lose no data.

If you have Lightroom 3: Export for whatever medium you need to. Even rounding corners and sharpening. No need to keep a duplicated PSD or TIFF file. (Well unless you move to Photoshop and I still do that at times)

Add a watermark and export for web. Upload where you need to and delete the web file after you’re done uploading (easy enough to do it again if you need to).

Saves you room on your hard drives since you have only that one RAW file. And by making virtual copies (ctrl + ‘) you can have multiple edits without taking up tons of hard drive space.

And here is my final edit a little bigger.