[clockworkrat]

Nothing says 'I screwed up and forgot about a setting when I took the shot" louder than the 'Monochrome and Grain' look. :-D

Giving it a blue/gold and strong vignette, instagram filter probably comes a close second.

[Zafar Iqbal]

My "big secret" is to use the blue channel under Calibration. It helps to "lighten" up the image and make the colors pop.

However, it works best at low ISO's as it's very easy to get artifacts here and there with too high ISO's (or if you have brighten dark areas).

I generally also like to up the darks and blacks just a bit, and compensate with contrast and clarity (5-10) and possibly lower the highlights.

I never use LR for the final look/critical view, unless it's in 1:1 size. If I need to check my sharpening or noise reduction, I always export at smaller sizes.

When done, all exported photos in smaller sizes get extra sharpening added from he export dialog.

[BigMackCam]

My "big secret" is to use the blue channel under Calibration. It helps to "lighten" up the image and make the colors pop.
...
When done, all exported photos in smaller sizes get extra sharpening added from he export dialog.

Great info - thanks! I've never sharpened at the export stage, but it makes sense. I just tried it on a couple of existing photos, and the exports do look nicer on screen with sharpening added!

[BigMackCam]

@stevebrot - so, I picked up a copy of the Martin Evening book, bolstered by your reply. It arrived today and I spent most of the evening working through the develop section. Superb. I realise now that I've misunderstood quite a few features and capabilities of LR6, and will be altering my develop workflow as a result. Thanks for this

[stevebrot]

@stevebrot - so, I picked up a copy of the Martin Evening book, bolstered by your reply. It arrived today and I spent most of the evening working through the develop section. Superb. I realise now that I've misunderstood quite a few features and capabilities of LR6, and will be altering my develop workflow as a result. Thanks for this

Cool

I had much the same experience when I got my copy. There were features that I avoided because I was unsure of what they did.


Steve

[mee]

With bright landscapes it goes something like this:

1) adjust the exposure, bring down highlights largely, pull up shadows lightly, apply lens profile
then
2) load Nik Effects (auto converts from DNG to 16-bit TIFF) and handle my processing
then
3) crop and export

Essentially, I only use LR to catalog and to handle the very basics.

The biggest thing here is in lowering highlights bar WAYYYY down as you'll see a lot more cloud/sky detail this way. But you'll need to play with the shadows and generally the exposure to get it right. Clarity slider is nice. But, if I use it instead of Nik's Structure slider, I generally apply it lightly to the whole scene and then make point masks where it apply it much more heavily to the sky to pull out cloud detail.

There is no definite amount though per slider. I generally go up until it looks obvious to me and then lower it a skosh. I also purposely underexpose the image slightly too (.3 to .5 stop) when taking the photo to help retain cloud detail. My K-5II is really allowing for this though at low ISO. SOOC the images look rather poor. After it has gone through processing it can be pretty nice and much nicer than had I exposed properly for the scene.

[emalvick]

Cool

I had much the same experience when I got my copy. There were features that I avoided because I was unsure of what they did.


Steve

A bit late to this thread, and I had recently picked up a copy of his book for LR5 (although I have LR6). I haven't really had a chance to look at it, yet, but I had used his book for LR2 quite a bit in the past. Is there information in the LR6 book with regard to the discussion here that is beneficial over what might already be in the LR5 book. I think I picked the LR5 book up because it was half the price (LR6 book just came out), and I figured there would be enough to get by.

---------- Post added 11-16-2015 at 02:00 PM ----------

Besides, the question on the book, my own workflow is to generally work from top to bottom (white-balance on down).

If I know I am going to crop, I'll often do a rough crop first, so that the histogram represents the final image I'll get. I'll occasionally do some "temporary" detail work first if I'm going to crop to see whether I'll end up with something usable before I go into other adjustments. If everything is ok, I'll reset the detail sliders until I get back there in the process.

For exposure and contrast, I do often start with an automatic step, but I often back the white slider back to zero. I don't like using it much, and I find LR tends to brighten my photos more than I'd like if I let it auto everything. If I really don't like something I'll reset and go full manual.

I do adjust clarity and vibrance, sometimes hitting those first.

After this, generally everything is ok, and I move almost directly to the details. But, I do occasionally use the HSL sliders because the White Balance doesn't always get everything the way I remember, and I find the aqua and blue sliders can be quite useful for the challenge of skies (often saving me from needing HDR).

For details, I focus on sharpening and noise reduction. I lay off the noise reduction mostly. With the K-3, I limit Noise Reduction to settings less than 20, usually around 5-10. I almost always give a 5, even with low ISO shots. The K-3 shots do not seem to look too good if I end up over 20. If that is a problem I shift over to Photoshop and use Nik software to clean up the noise and masking to make sure I don't lose details. I wish LR had a masking function like they do for sharpening. I think I also need to look into the previous referenced topic for sharpening and noise removal to see if I'm missing something. I'm usually just thankful that with the K-3 and K-5, I rarely need noise removal. On a screen the images are usually small and noise is not very visable, and on print, the noise is not often perceivable. I was going to say unless I enlarge the photo greatly, but even that hasn't been a problem for me. Noise really only seems to be a problem when I'm pixel peeping at 100%, which keeps me inline to not cropping that drastically.

Finally, I make my lens adjustments (CA correction, distortion, straightening, spot removal, etc).

[BigMackCam]

A bit late to this thread, and I had recently picked up a copy of his book for LR5 (although I have LR6). I haven't really had a chance to look at it, yet, but I had used his book for LR2 quite a bit in the past. Is there information in the LR6 book with regard to the discussion here that is beneficial over what might already be in the LR5 book. I think I picked the LR5 book up because it was half the price (LR6 book just came out), and I figured there would be enough to get by.

As a relative newcomer to Lightroom (I started at version 6), and a real newcomer to the Martin Evening books, I can't say for sure... I'd guess the major differences would be specific to the new features that LR6 offered over LR5 - things like HDR merge etc. But I'd have thought the core image optimisation information would be much the same, save for a few differences in the user interface... Hopefully someone with definitive experience can give you better info!

Thanks for the insight to your workflow...

[clackers]

If that is a problem I shift over to Photoshop and use Nik software to clean up the noise and masking to make sure I don't lose details. I wish LR had a masking function like they do for sharpening.

You can select whatever area you like for noise or sharpening with any of the tools, Emalvick, and add or subtract to that area with a brush as you see fit.

[emalvick]

You can select whatever area you like for noise or sharpening with any of the tools, Emalvick, and add or subtract to that area with a brush as you see fit.

True, but the options within the brush, gradient, etc are quite limited vs. what you have when using the global edits. Usually, I'm moving to Photoshop because I don't have the flexibility I need in LR. Some of it may just be with regard to practice, but the one thing I like in Photoshop that LR really lacks on is the layer abilities and the refined control that entails. Some of it is just experience. I've not been a huge fan of the options in LR over time. I appreciate that they are there and do use them at times, but I feel like they are a bit more rough and dirty.

Conversely, in my testing with DxO Optics Pro, I've been able to use it's PRIME noise removal on some of my more challenging shots successully without needing masking or brushing and so forth. That doesn't say much though as presumably I'd end up in a similar spot, using photoshop for the finest adjustments.

[clackers]

True, but the options within the brush, gradient, etc are quite limited vs. what you have when using the global edits.

Well, you get just the one slider when you do a local edit.


Like many people, I have both products on my laptop courtesy of the CC subscription.


I rely mainly on the NIK noise reduction and sharpening plug-ins, and they're invoked from either program, so Photoshop's there on my hard drive, but gets little use to be honest, unless it's blending a couple of images together.