How Did I Do This???

[Venturi]

Okay, I think Lightroom 2.3 is reading my mind - seriously.

This is probably Lightroom 101 but I obviously missed it...

I snapped a couple quick shots of the iris blooming while I was out in the back yard this evening with my son. Downloaded them into Lightroom knowing they'd suck since I used the onboard flash but what the heck. I was right but decided to futz with them a little anyway and see what I could possibly do using the magic wand (excuse me, the Adjustment Brush). I set it on exposure and cranked it down to -4EV on Brush B, which I have set to zero feather, and started playing.

And I noticed something rather cool happening. It was blacking the background and completely leaving the flower alone.

Before:


After:


So what's it doing? Is it sampling the color under the crosshair and only affecting that color range? And since the flower is purple and the background is green/yellow it just left the flower alone?

Not something I would use on a regular basis but definitely want to understand the tool. Thanks!

[Parallax]

It applied the Camera Raw default, which includes "Medium Contrast" on the tone curve. That is, medium contrast for the mid-tones which is lightening the "lights" (notice that the near-white area in the center is lighter on the second one) and darkening the "darks", but having little or no effect on highlights, shadows, or tones that are directly in the middle. As far as dropping out the background................................. {envision big shoulder shrug here}

[Venturi]

Mystery solved. The combination of using brush "B" and checking "Auto Mask" in the Adjustment Brush dialog is what did it. Based on some more playing around with it today if I uncheck "Auto Mask" the entire area under the brush gets the treatment. With it checked it samples what is directly under the crosshair of the brush and only applies the "effect" to pixels in the same color range/hue/spectrum.

Here's a "reversed" example...


Anyhoo, pretty powerful tool I didn't know LR2 had.

[netuser]

Any chance someone can explain how to do this on CS3 ?

[Mike Cash]

You can do all sorts of things easily and quickly using the adjustment brush and auto mask. Ditto the graduated filter tool. Together they have enabled me to make fixes in minutes that would have taken me much longer to accomplish in The GIMP using layer masks. Judicious use of the clarity setting on the adjustment brush is a good way to quickly take care of minor skin blemishes on portraits.

[netuser]

Originally Posted by Mike Cash

You can do all sorts of things easily and quickly using the adjustment brush and auto mask. Ditto the graduated filter tool. Together they have enabled me to make fixes in minutes that would have taken me much longer to accomplish in The GIMP using layer masks. Judicious use of the clarity setting on the adjustment brush is a good way to quickly take care of minor skin blemishes on portraits.

I hate when you guys don't talk English

I'm still newbie/noob on CS3. I will try to figure it out.

Thanks