Activity 7.1: Create a watermark

Watermarking your photos is a simple way of protecting your images online.

Your first task for this module is to create a watermark in Lightroom Classic, which you can then use when exporting images.

PRO TIP: Type Opt+G (Mac) or Alt+0169 (Windows) to quickly and easily pull up the copyright symbol.

Creating a watermark in Lightroom is simple.

Click on export, scroll down to watermark, click edit watermark once you’ve decided how it should look click save.

Retouching DNG or Digital negative files / RAW files is easier in Lightroom than retouching JPEGs/JPG files.

The activity is as follows

Activity 6.1: Retouch or remove distractions from an image using Lightroom

Click on the above link and choose from the images with which you have been provided for this activity. Alternatively, you can select some your own photographs, and use Lightroom’s Spot Removal tool, in combination with the local adjustment tools explored in this module, to remove distractions, retouch blemishes and enhance the image(s).

Be sure to try various techniques on multiple photos.

When you have completed the process, analyse and reflect on the results. What were the strengths and limitations of each tool and technique? Was there anything that you were not able to achieve? If so, why?

Activity 1a

Last time I chose to edit the JPEG portrait and converted it to black and white because that’s my style and I felt it looked better and had less distractions in the image.

This Time I’m going to edit another portrait and a landscape image from the files provided for the class to use.

The first image I’m editing is the Landscape with the jet ski’s there a few things in the image I find distracting so I’m going to use the spot removal tool to get rid of the things that are annoying me in the image.

After removing the floating bits and aspects of the waves i didn’t like, i will now have a play with slider and presets to enhance the image to my preferences and make the image pop.

As you can see I’ve had a play with the Colour and Tone settings as well as the Presence to make the colours more vibrant.

I’ve also brought up the grid to see if i want to crop the image and to see if my horizons are strait. At this point I’m also thinking about presets for the Tone Curve or if I’ll manually adjust it and what kind of impact I want the final image to have. I’m thinking I’ll go with a cross process tone curve as per the image below.

Activity 1b

For part two I’m going to chose one of the other portraits.

This is the image I’ll start with and I’ll see what adjustments with skin tone and spot removal/healing I need to do.

As you can see i have identified a few areas that needed some spot removal but her skin had a lot less acne than the JPEG image model in PART A

https://danielle.photo.blog/2020/04/08/retouching-and-local-adjustments-in-lightroom-part-1/

After finishing healing the image I’ve played with the sliders a little to see how much i want to adjust the exposure and contrast and the highlights on this image. Again I’m thinking of converting the image to black and white because that’s my signature style with portraits. So i’ll screen shot a few different edits before i upload my final edit of this image. I find the hat a little distracting and purposeless in colour and if this was a photo shop exercise I’d probably create a mask and remove it if I couldn’t find a preset I liked or created in Lightroom.

As you can see different preset filters give the portrait a slightly different feel and brig out different tones in the image.

The Final Image ……

All of a sudden i like the Hat !

The difference in editing a DNG and a JPG is huge and you can compare the quality of the images side by side. JPEG editing is very limited which is why you should always shoot in RAW.

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Activity 6.1: Retouch or remove distractions from an image using Lightroom

Click on the above link and choose from the images with which you have been provided for this activity. Alternatively, you can select some your own photographs, and use Lightroom’s Spot Removal tool, in combination with the local adjustment tools explored in this module, to remove distractions, retouch blemishes and enhance the image(s).

Be sure to try various techniques on multiple photos.

When you have completed the process, analyse and reflect on the results. What were the strengths and limitations of each tool and technique? Was there anything that you were not able to achieve? If so, why?

Retouching an Image in Lightroom

So for this exercise the first image I’ve chosen is the above portrait from the files given to us for the exercise, and I will be removing the blemishes from the models face. This file is a JPG file so there is a limited amount of editing i can do do enhance the quality but i can use the heal spot tool to remove blemishes.

Being a Jpeg there are limitations to the adjustments you can makeand the changes are noticable with the noise in the image as adjustments are being made which makes the healing tool grab some crazy pigments and it’s limited to how may blemishes on her skin i can retouch, normally i would do this in Photoshop and create a mask and additional layers, so to take the noise distraction away I had a little play with filters.

I converted the image to black and white as that’s my particular preference using the presets Infrared preset and adjust the contrast and noise before saving it .

Being a JPEG there are some obvious points where you can see blemish removal and Lightroom is limited in this way, I’d use Lightroom to retouch or heal spots in a landscape but not on a portrait i would normally use my Anthropics software or Photoshop if i had a lot of time on my hands. The out come would have been slightly better if I’d had a RAW DNG to work with.

To illustrate my point there was a landscape and a few other portraits in DNG format that i will have a play with and upload in part 2 of this post.

Activity 5.1: Create a Develop preset

In Lightroom Classic, Develop presets provide a way to save a group of settings and apply them to other photos. Once you create and add a preset to the Presets panel in the Develop module, it remains there until you delete it.

For this task, choose an edit you have applied to an image using the tools and techniques we have discussed during the last two modules, then save those edit settings as a preset.

Next, apply that preset to multiple images, and compare the results.

Creating a Develop preset

To start making your preset, go to the develop tab in Lightroom and you will find 9 options for developing your Digital Negative. Once you’re happy with your result, click on the plus sign on the left side of your screen. This will open a new window, to save your preset simply give your preset a name and select the settings that you used. You can either save your preset in a specific folder or in a general folder entitled User Presets. Once everything is how you want, click on Create.

So the Photo I’ve chosen for this exercise is a Cityscape taken last year from Wentworth Point looking across to Rhodes on the Parramatta River NSW Australia.

After choosing my RAW image Ive started by calibrating my monitor (there was an incident with a cat and an air conditioner which resulted in a broken LCD on my 27inch iMac and a broken Pelvis)..(furry little bugger is fine in case you’re wondering!)

As you can see in the screen shot the horizon is a bit wonky as i knocked my tripod but the light was perfect so I took the long exposure as i knew i could correct it easily in Lightroom. So after putting my copy right details into the Library

Now that the horizon is level in this shot i will go a head and adjust my image to what i think will look best and screen shot the process of developing my RAW image.

Now that the preset is saved i have decided to crop my image and then export it to the desk top for printing at a later date.

Now that’s all done, here’s the final saved Image saved in it’s file

Normally i probably wouldn’t saturate the colours so much i generally prefer a pinky twilight colour rather than an orange glow but the great thing about Lightroom is that now i can go back and reset the image to the original raw data and edit it in a completely different way as this version is saved on the hard drive or i could us this preset again for another image as per below:-