Lightroom Post Processing - My way.........

At the request of +Ananda Sim I have put this together. I think there is something for every one to takeaway here, if you like my car photos then this is how I do it, if you don't like my car photos then this is what not to do.

Disclaimer: I have watched lots of tutorial videos and read a lot of articles on post processing and have taken bits and pieces from them to end up with something I like.

Once I have rated and imported all the photos into Lightroom I'll usually follow this process for most of my car photos, I do slightly different things depending on what the subject is but for machinery and mechanical things with lots of detail and structure I like the effect I get with this method.

So to illustrate my method I'll be using this image of a 1963 Aston Martin Lagonda Rapide I captured at the recent Australian Grand Prix.

This is the original image just imported with the default settings, when I shoot the images I usually take into account how I'm going to process them and will sometimes under expose or over expose to get the effect I want later.

First thing I usually do is adjust the highlights and shadows as shown below, minimum highlights and maximum shadows, that shows as much detail as there is in the RAW file. I like details so I start here.

Next is to use the white and the black clipping sliders, to try limit the loss of detail, sometimes you go a little bit further just depending on how you like each image.

A handy thing is to use the sliders in conjunction with the Alt key on your keyboard while sliding the white slider will show where you are about to loose detail as white spots if you keep pushing the slider in the positive direction.

For the black clipping using the Alt key will show you where you will be starting to loose detail in the shadows as you push the slider in the negative direction.

The next step for me is to adjust the Exposure and Contrast until I like it, I can't think of a way to quantify it it's a "vibe" thing. As well as add some Clarity and Vibrance and very rarely a very little saturation. These are great to bring out detail in machines and buildings and the Vibrance just brings out the colour.

As far as Clarity I think you need to be a little bit conservative with it, when I first discovered it used to use it quite aggressively but you end up with a lot of noise, artifacts and glowing things in your images which look weird (I think). It's up to you to find your level of conservativeness.

As a rule of thumb I usually set the Vibrance to about half of the Clarity and then move it around a little either way but rarely go more then the Clarity (on the slider), but every image is different and your preferences will dictate where you go.

At some point you might have to crop and straighten the image, you preference as to at what point you do this, usually if I have to crop in a lot or rotate the image quite a bit because the initial angle I took it at just didn't work or because I wasn't careful enough taking the image, I'll crop early on in the process as this helps set all the previous parameters more accurately as your not tuning the image for areas that you will be cropping out anyway.

Some people don't like cropping close to the subject but for me it depends on the subject, I think with my images of cars, I'm usually using quite a wide angle that the image will be distorted anyway and the focus is the center of the image it's not as bad, but that's my theory.

Quite often with cars, structures, machines I'll use the details panel to sharpen up some of the smaller details. Usually I'll push the Sharpening Amount slider to about 70 and see what happens, sometimes more or less depending on how much detail is already in the image, then I'll use the Mask slider in combination with the Alt key to reduce the effect of the sharpening to the higher detailed areas that you really want the detail in.

I'll usually toggle the Details on and off with the switch on the details panel in order to get a feel for where the sharpening has occurred, sometimes the extra detail is so subtle it's hard to know where it is as your moving the sliders but when you turn it on and off it's much easier to see it. This image shows the detail tuning off.

The next image is with the detail tuning turned on, quite noticeable.

Next I'll usually tweak the Luminance slider a little and try to reduce some of the noise in the image, if you go to far you can end up with something that looks like a pastel drawing or cartoony, but it's your preference again as to how far or not you go. Using the Alt key in conjunction with the Luminance slider will convert the image to black and white which helps see the noise as it's being affected a bit better, zooming in also helps a lot.

The last step which I usually take is to use the corrections panel to remove/reduce chromatic aberrations. These are normally more apparent when using a fish eye lens which I like to use for car images but in this image I used the Olympus 40mm f2.8 lens and there was really no need to remove any chromatic aberrations. Usually I'll tick the box to enable it then use the green and magenta sliders to reduce the chromatic aberration effect from the image. Chromatic aberration is usually very easy to see around edges where there is a high contrast between objects. Once you see it, you can't un-see it and you have to get rid of it.

So there it is. This all seems like a lot to do but it's quite quick and simple. As you work out what you like you can also develop your own presets to get you to your starting point at the click of a button then once you import the images you can just apply the appropriate presets and tweak the settings for the individual image.

Hopefully this was helpful for someone and you can take something away, either what to do or what not to do.

The B&W Project - Challenge #3 - Tools of the Trade

Tools of the trade the next challenge in the #BWProject26. hmmm, nothing to exciting for someone in IT field. To try and fit in with the goals of using flash and liquids there was only one option throwing water on a keyboard or mouse. The mouse option would probably have been slightly less interesting with less things for the water to splash off.

The next thing was to find a dead keyboard, having thrown out a keyboard which had been ruined by coffee mid last year. I briefly contemplated purchasing a cheap $5 keyboard but it seemed a little wasteful to ruin a brand new keyboard just for a photo so it was lucky that I found a dead keyboard in the office.

So since starting this project I had ordered some cheap soft boxes and some clamping style flash mounts for the soft boxes and all the bits arrived finally in time for this challenge. Everything seemed to fit relatively well together and it's interesting wrestling with the soft boxes trying to assemble them without "incapacitating" myself. But once it's all together it all seems to work as I expected (rightly or wrongly).

So the next major goal was where to setup and how to set it all up so that there would as little permanent damage as possible from the splashing water, so it was to the kitchen and commandeering the kitchen table and the kitchen.

Once things were setup there was a lot of trial an error placing the soft boxes the keyboard and seeing what worked best before any water was stilt. Initially i was trying to get the table as the base for the keyboard but that was just not going to work splashing water all over it and I didn't have anything large enough or photogenic enough to cover the whole table top. I remembered a sheet of clear acrylic plastic lying around waiting to be used in another project non photographic project and I figured it would give a nice reflection to sit the keyboard on that, but being clear it also gave a very clear view of everything under it as well.

While looking at the keyboard sitting on the acrylic I noticed that there would also not be an easy way to crop anything that the acrylic was sitting on so I found some boxes from a recent PC build and used those to prop up the acrylic sheet off the table. Next step was trying to get something with a nice solid color under the acrylic and I found a black cloth which under the acrylic gave a really nice reflective top to work on.

So after about 50 or so test shots moving lights, trying different backgrounds I had established ground zero.

Ground zero.

There was no turning back once the water starts flying....

I was shooting tethered using Olympus Capture and didn't want to have the laptop next to the splash down area so I used a wireless mouse to trigger the computer to take the shot. Just when you think you can introduce any more lag into a system you add a wireless mouse.

So pressing the left button on the mouse clicked the button on Olympus Capture which then sent the signal to the camera which also triggered the wireless flashes, yay...

So now the "easy" part, time everything perfectly to get enough water and splashes in the image. about 20 shots later and 5 or 6 glasses of water later I lucked out and got something which I was fairly happy with. There were a few shots with nothing in the frame at all, some with water just entering the frame, some with only a few drips in the air. It's just part of the fun.

Once I was happy with the shot there was the worst part of the job to do, the big cleanup, this is where I was beginning to regret selecting liquid photography to try out ;-). About 45 minutes later it was time to look at Lightroom and see what needed to be tweaked.

Processing....

Once I'd settled into the Lightroom editing it was relatively easy to process the setup was already fairly monochromatic and thankfully there was only some minor tweaks to do in Lightroom with a hint of the Liquify filter used in Photoshop to straighten out the back of the acrylic as it had sagged a little with all the water on it, and then removing some extraneous droplets that felt out of place.

The result was this.

1/250 sec, f7.1, ISO 400, 27mm

No more regrets choosing liquid photography now.

The setup....

This is a photo of the setup taken quickly before the cleanup with the phone. There was a soft box on either side of the keyboard one from slightly above, another on the floor behind the table pointing up at the white wall.

Not a lot of room but it seemed to work out and even managed not to knock over the camera tethered to the laptop on the kitchen bench just below the bottom of the photo.

Equipment....

• Camera: Olympus OMD E-M1
• Lens: Olympus 12-40mm f2.8
• Triggers: Pixel Opas
• Flashes: 3 x Vivitar cheapies.
• Stands, clamps, soft boxes: ebay cheapies.

Lessons...

• Try to plan things out a little more ahead of time and look at what might be needed as far as materials to water "proof" the area.
• Look at better flashes the recharge time is quite long and the consistency between shots with the cheap flashes leaves a bit to be desired. Maybe better batteries or try to rig up a power pack.
• More water protection = less cleanup (hopefully).
• More room would be awesome.

hmmmm wonder what the neighbors would think of doing this outdoors at night and setting flashes off every minute or so... 

Bring on the next challenge.