Tuesday, December 10, 2019

CLEAR SAILING TO CATALINA - Lightroom 9.1 released

ADOBE has just released the long awaited update to LIGHTROOM CLASSIC


MAC users that have not updated to the new OS can now go ahead as the known issues have been fixed

Those on Catalina should update Lightroom Classic to the 9.1 release

If you don't see the update in your Creative Cloud App - sign out the log back in to the app and it should appear.

The update fixes a lot of the bugs and has added some new camera support.



GOOD NEWS FOR THOSE WHO USE LIGHTROOM CC - The cloud based version

You can now import images directly from your camera or card to iPad without having to go through your camera roll! You can now all export to Photoshop as a TIFF file.
Options for watermarking, file naming, sharpening on export too.

RAW photos can now head straight to Lightroom without being duplicated in the camera roll. After import, users can edit full-resolution RAW files with the same conversion tools as Lightroom CC for desktop,


More information to follow as Adobe appears to be updating the release info even as we speak.




Saturday, November 16, 2019

WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE???

WHATS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN...........??????????

In my Lightroom classes and one on one tutoring I often get countless questions that ask...

 "what's the difference between this and that.  
Vibrance and Saturation.....Dodge and Burn.....Relative vs Perceptual rendering intent etc.



Great questions and we have fun exploring the answers. Over the years I have collected some of the most often asked  questions and my answers. Although I could dive in really deep with these answers, I've kept them relatively simple and easy to understand.



Vibrance and Saturation

Although they appear to do the same thing they do work very differently. Think of Vibrance as “smart saturation”.

The saturation slider is very aggressive and effects all the colors and gradations of colors in the image with the same intensity. As it tends to hit the red channels heavily it often creates overly saturated and unnatural skin tones.
SATURATION 

VIBRANCE 
Vibrance, which was actually created by Adobe, is more intelligent, it leaves the already saturated colors alone and increases the intensity of the more muted, less saturated colors. This is particularly great for skin tones as well as a more natural look to most of your images.  

If you decrease the vibrance slider all the way to the left, you will still see some remnants of colors. However, the same adjustment with the saturation slider takes away all the color leaving you with a grey scale image.





O Saturation
0 Vibrance



Note that the Vibrance adjustment tends to hit the Blue and cooler tones first and the saturation slider hits the reds and oranges first.  So, depending on my image I may choose to use either vibrance or saturation or a careful combination of both knowing which colors it will target heavily. 


Texture/Clarity/Dehaze

All these slider works to either increase or decrease perceived detail in an image, but they have very different end results because of how they attack edge frequency differently. High frequency areas have a lot of detail and lots of edges whereas low frequency areas are relatively smooth.



Texture
The new texture slider isolates the contrast in the middle frequencies so it wont effect the really small or really large details. Reducing Texture is great for skin smoothing without over doing and getting that plastic look. Increasing the texture can add subtle sharpness and clarity to an image. It is available as a global adjustment and well as a local adjustment. Unlike Clarity and Dehaze, Texture doesn’t significantly shift color or saturation. It's also useful for creating the appearance of sharpness of slightly out of focus areas.

I prefer to use it locally with a brush to affect only targeted areas of the image in a very subtle manner.


Clarity
Is more aggressive with local contrast in the mid tones of an image it’s what I used to refer to as Texture before that slider was recently introduced. It’s a lot heavier handed than the texture slider and definitely affects the black and dark areas of your image. I will use the Clarity slider sparingly and usually globally to add a little pop to the overall image.

Dehaze
Does exactly what is says it removes the effects of water vapor and haze in our images. It adds or reduces a lot of contrast and saturation, but it also adds a lot of blue.  Often if I use the tool aggressively, I need to adjust by blue saturation sliders to compensate for the color cast and increase shadow detail.  Great for underwater photography and milky way as well as night sky photography. 



I will often use just one slider or combine a bit of each one to create the desired effect and mitigate any adverse effects.


Clone and Heal
Cloning takes pixels from one place and replaces the other. Everything is copied exactly, shape, color and texture
Healing takes pixels from one place and BLENDS them with the other, retaining texture, color and tone
CLONE
HEAL


There are no real rules as to which tool to use.  If one doesn’t work the way you wanted, try the other!
 


Dodge and Burn
These terms are leftover from film darkroom days. They were techniques used during the printing process to change the exposure of areas of an image.

Dodging makes area lighter

Burning makes areas darker
A great example is how makeup is applied. Dark to make areas recede Bright to bring them forward. 

Used for adding depth and separation to portions of your image. Brightening or darkening areas to guide the viewers eye through the image and add three dimensionality. 



Highlights vs Whites

The Whites slider is the absolute brightest part of your image. That area that is to the further right on your histogram. If you are underexposed moving the Whites slider will ensure that you’ve maximized your dynamic range.
The Highlight slider adjusts the next level to the left of the whites, the bright values in your photograph. Highlight slider can recover lost detail in the brightest parts of your image brighten the image without pushing your exposure past your white point. 


A little trick in Lightroom is to hold the ALT/Option key while moving the whites slider it will show a threshold view that will allow you to see the whitest whites as they appear.




Shadows vs Blacks
The Blacks slider is just the opposite of the Whites slider.  It is the True black and the far left on your histogram.
That ALT/OPT key trick works here too showing the threshold of the black tones. I am not a proponent of setting the black in the image too early if at all.

The shadows are the underexposed areas but not true black.  Increasing the shadows can reveal detail but too much can introduce a lot of noise and result in a flat artificial looking image. Lowering the shadows can add contrast and form.

Flow and Density

Flow controls how much of the effect you see with every stroke of the brush. Its cumulative so he more you brush over an area, the more of the effect that you will see. If the flow is set at 100% all of the effect is applied at once. A lower flow setting allows you to add effect gradually and subtly

Density puts a limit on how much of an effect is applied in total. A density 50 means that only 50% of the adjustment will be applied. 

Using the adjustment brush and using flow and density as needed will make the best most effective adjustments

Hue Saturation Luminance
Hue is the shade of color
Saturation is the intensity of the color
Luminance is the brightness or darkness of the color also referred to as value






Sharpening – Amount/Radius/Detail/Masking

Amount – from zero which is no sharpening to 150 which is the maximum. Too much sharpening will add noise and too much detail giving a really “crunchy” look.

Radius – The size of the area around the edges to be sharpened.  A value of 1 = I pixel all the way up to 3 is the max and will affect 3 pixels from the edge. With the radius slider use the ALT/option key to show the threshold of the effect as you apply it

Detail – 0 will apply the sharpening to only the larger edges where 100 will hit every edge no matter the size. The detail slider is designed more for bringing out the finer textures.


Masking – Allows you to decide where the sharpening is to be applied and where you can “mask” it out. ALT/OPT key provides visual overlay. The areas in black are being masked out, while the areas in white are where the sharpening will take effect




Noise Color/Luminance

Luminance noise is noise where only the brightness of a pixel is affected.  Luminance noise is monochromic so it will be less colorful and more like grain. Seen frequently in images with high ISO

Color noise looks more like confetti, multi-colored pixels in area that should have solid color



There are many programs and adjustments that can help minimize the look of noise but they come at a price….they soften your image and blur the details. They best way to avoid issues with noise is don’t bring it in in the first place. Expose to the right. Of course, with really low light shots and night images a software solution is required.



Profiles vs Presets
Presets are shortcuts or predetermined “recipes” for applying Develop/Edit settings.

PROFILES (LUT's)
PRESETS




























Profiles apply an overall look to the photo. They leave all the Develop/Edit controls unchanged. It a different starting point for your image. LUT’s(Look up tables) LUTs work by remapping colors and allow you to browse various color rendering, camera profiles and creative artistic effects



Size vs aspect ratio
Size is the actual measurement of an image length and width, the dimensions of your image. It can be measured in inches or pixels

Aspect Ratio is the proportional relationship between its width and height – so will determine its shape. For instance, a 6 x 4 inch image has an aspect ratio of 3:2. An aspect ratio does not have units attached – instead, it represents how large the width is in comparison to the height. 
Square, 1:1 
Panoramic 16:9
Standard Photo Prints 4:3
3:2
1:1

4:3
16:9











DPI/PPI
DPI – Dots per inch deals with a printed or scanned image.  How many dots of ink will be applied per inch of paper.  DPI is for print out put 

PPI – Pixels per inch deals with pixel resolution and is usually used in screen and digital image formats. The higher PPI the higher the pixel density and hence the quality of the image. The individual pixels in a 300 PPI image are much smaller than in a 72 PPI image. Smaller pixels blend the shapes and color better and allow for greater enlargements. 





Raw vs DNG
Because each type of digital camera has a different sensor, many different types of camera raw formats exist.
Each camera manufacturer has their own proprietary RAW format, Canon uses .CR2, Nikon .NEF, Sony ARW etc.
Along comes ADOBE and they create a format called DNG which stands for Digital Negative. They are open standard and non-proprietary. It is intended for long term file preservation should any of these camera companies go out of business.

There are pros and cons to converting RAW images to DNG. They claim to be faster loading and compact. It does take another step in the import process to convert to DNG, especially with large files. You lose the ability to use the manufactures software, The DNG file format removes a lot of the metadata from the RAW file, so details about picture controls, focus point, and so forth, are no longer available.
Backups take longer and many international photography competitions will not accept DNG.

As of today, I do not convert my RAW images to DNG


Rendering intents Relative / Perceptual

Rendering intent describes four modes by which color management systems adapt some or all colors in a picture to the limitations of a given display or printer.
For practical purposes we use two of those, Relative Colorimetric and Perceptual

Perceptual - Tries to preserve the visual relationship between color so it's perceived as natural to the human eye, even though the color values themselves may change. This is useful with images that have out-of-gamut colors.
With Perceptual, colors are generally desaturated in order to preserve their perceived relationship. This can make for very smooth transitions between colors and avoids the banding that is possible with Relative Colorimetric, the downside is a slight loss of saturation.

Relative Colorimetric - Out-of-gamut colors are shifted to the closest reproducible color in the destination color space. It compares the white of the source color space to that of the destination color space and shifts all color accordingly. Relative colorimetric preserves more of the original colors in an image than Perceptual. First it takes all the colors the printer or color space can reproduce and does so, exactly. Then, it takes all the ones out of gamut and maps them to their closest in gamut equivalent. This rendering intent has the benefit of causing no over all tone shift to the image. Relative Colorimetric tries to reproduce colors with as little desaturation as possible. 

For most images, Relative Colorimetric rendering produces superior results. For others, Perceptual will be far better. Images with significant shadow details where a slight lightening of the print is acceptable to open up the shadows. Also images with areas of highly saturated color can benefit from Perceptual rendering. If you see color banding in the soft proof with Rel. Color. selected, try Perceptual.


Lightroom desktop /mobile/cc/cloud etc
I saved this one for last as it keeps changing!! 

LIGHTROOM CLASSIC
LIGHTROOM












We went from Lightroom then branched of to Lightroom 6 and Lightroom CC when the new subscription model was released. Then in 2017 it was just called Lightroom Classic CC now its Lightroom Classic. Lightroom Classic is the desktop-focused digital photography product. Lightroom Classic is the renamed version of the Lightroom application you have used in the past, and it is optimized for desktop-focused workflows, including local storage of your photos in files and folders on your computer. 
 
LIGHTROOM CLASSIC (DESKTOP)

Lightroom is the cloud-based photo service that works across desktop, mobile, and web. This was called Lightroom CC now it’s just Lightroom. 
 
LIGHTROOM (CLOUD BASED)


Finally there is Lightroom Mobile – This app is for IOS and Android



I hope that help to put some of the missing pieces together




I am available for one on one instruction either at your home with your computer and images or we can meet online via TEAMVIEWER.

I can help you 
Setting up and understanding Lightroom
Organize your images
Cleaning up your mess
Find missing photos
Streamline your workflow
Advanced techniques in Post Processing
Quick Tips and Shortcuts
Exporting
Backing Up
Create Books and Prints



I also teach classes throughout the year with ARIZONA HIGHWAYS PHOTOSCAPES at University of Phoenix.









Monday, November 4, 2019

LIGHTROOM CLASSIC v 9 Released today November 2019


ADOBE released a few updates to Lightroom Classic and CC  today.
NOVEMBER 2019 release (Version 9)

FEATURES


Fill uneven edges around Panoramas

Often, when you merge your photos to create a panorama, the result is an image with a lot of uneven edges. Fill Edges is an option that uses Content-Aware Fill technology to fill the uneven edges of your panorama automatically.

Boundary warp stretched the image to fill the gaps, this new tool uses CONTENT_AWARE FILL technology to fill uneven edges automatically!




MULTI BATCH EXPORT



You can now perform multiple export jobs for the same set of images all at once. Lightroom Classic will export one image for every preset selected.
EXPORT FOR MULTI SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS IN ONE GO!

Filter folders and collections based on color label

You can now filter your folders, collections, collection sets, and smart collections based on the color label assigned to them. 




Clear history above selected step

With this release, there is an option to clear the history above the selected step in the History panel. To clear history above a particular step, do the following:
  1. Select the step in the History panel above which you want to clear the history.
  2. Right-click (Win) or Control-click (macOS) the selected step and select Clear History Above This Step.

Before you had to select a step then make a minor correction in the sliders to do this. 




Delete photos

You can now delete multiple images in Library or Develop module when you're in the Loupe view. Select the images you want to delete in the filmstrip and press Shift + Delete/Backspace on your keyboard.

Crop enhancements

With GPU acceleration enabled, you can now preview the post-crop vignette effect live while cropping.

Keyword performance improvements

Experience improved performance with Keyword List and Keywording panel, specially at launch and when selecting multiple images.



Additional info can be found on Adobe Site