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5 Post Productions Checks To Run On Your Images

Editing your images effectively is one of the most critical parts of the whole photography process. The reality is that every single image will benefit from some level of editing even if it’s as simple as just cropping or straightening it. Whether you decide to edit your photos or not will come down to personal preference. But there are certain things that regardless of personal taste you need to ensure you fix in photos. So here are 5 checks that you should run on every photo.

White balance

Unless you set your white balance while you are taking a photo, the chances are that it isn’t going to be correct. Which means having to fix or tweak it in post-production. The good news is that if you have taken your photos in RAW format then tweaking the white balance will be really easy. You can either do this manually by moving the sliders or you can use the presets that cameras come with (i.e. tungsten, cloudy etc). These presets will automatically try to tweak the white balance to match the scene. But they are not always 100% accurate and you may find that the colour doesn’t look right.

The key to tweaking the white balance is to aim for a natural look or in other words how your eyes viewed the scene. Be especially aware of skin tones that may look overly orange if the white balance is too warm for example.

The image on the left without the WB corrected. The image on the right looks more natural and how the eyes would see the scene.

Remove dust

The longer you have had your camera and the more you use it, the more dust is likely to appear in your photos. You can of course reduce this by regularly cleaning your camera and lenses. But you will always find that there may be specks of dust that appear in your images. One of the most prominent places this shows up on are blue skies. The only way to check and know for sure is to zoom into your photos at 100% view and check the image all over. If you find dust particles you can then spot remove them in Photoshop or Lightroom.

Converging lines

A common problem that occurs whenever you photograph buildings (or anything vertical) is something called converging lines. You will no doubt have seen the effect in your photos. This is when you take a photo of two parallel lines like the two sides of a building and they seem to get closer together near the top. This can make the buildings look like they are about to fall backwards and is especially noticeable if you tilt your camera up and when using a wide-angle lens. There are several ways that you can avoid this happening when you are taking the photo without investing in an expensive tilt and shift lens. Like stepping further back so that your camera is not tilted up as much. Or you can try to get higher so that you are more straight on with the building you are photographing.

But sometimes none of these options are possible so you will need to fix the issue when editing your image. Lightroom makes this fairly easy with an automated correction section. It doesn’t always work perfectly for all images but most of the time it will straighten your image. If it doesn’t you will need to manually correct the perspective of the image in Lightroom or Photoshop.

You can see how the verticle lines in the image on the left look like they are falling backwards. The image on the right is with correction added.

Chromatic aberration

Also known as colour fringing, chromatic aberration is a common problem that occurs because of lenses. The optics of a lens mean that sometimes when light enters it is diffracted or bent and does not return to combine correctly when it hits the sensor. Chromatic aberration usually occurs in high contrast scenes and especially in areas where there are darker edges against a bright background. For example, a tree against a bright sky at sunrise may cause the edges of branches to show chromatic aberration. You needn’t fret about chromatic aberration as it is pretty easy to fix in Lightroom or Photoshop if you shoot in RAW. All you need to do is to tick the box to remove chromatic aberration and Lightroom will do the rest. But like anything sometimes it might not work perfectly and so you need to manually remove chromatic aberration in Photoshop.

NOTE: Check out this post for the easy way to remove chromatic aberration in photoshop.

Lens correction

You may have noticed that when looking at your images in Lightroom they suffer from certain issues such as distortion, vignetting and as discussed above chromatic aberration. These could be because of imperfections that occur in every camera and lens. A few years ago Adobe realised that with the array of lenses on offer there needed to be lens-specific corrections. Essentially these corrections look to fix the issues mentioned above that arise by simply selecting the right lens profile for an image. The unique formula created by Adobe offsets these optical issues. Whilst it’s very reliable and works perfectly most of the time, there are times that it may not and you may need to tweak things manually. But it’s worth making sure you select your lens profile for every image (you can also do this automatically when importing images) to correct the issues above.

The image on the left is without lens correction. Notice the vignettes in the corners.

These simple checks are something that you should do on every image not only to ensure that your images look their best but also because they are essential for when photos are printed. Any of these issues will look pretty undesirable on a finished photo. So, spend a bit of time checking and correcting your images.

How to Use the Clarity Slider in Adobe Lightroom Classic CC

If you reach way back to Adobe’s Lightroom 1.1 build you will find the clarity slider. After its introduction wayyyy back then the clarity slider has been a favorite weapon of most landscape and even portrait photographers. This slider is a personal favorite of mine just as it is the professed secret love of many Lightroom users. It adds a little “punch” to your photographs and can work wonders with portraits, landscapes, and virtually any other image that appears to be a little visually flat. And now in Lightroom Classic CC, the clarity slider is still going strong.

But what does the clarity slider do specifically? In this article we’re going to talk about how the clarity slider works and how you can use it more effectively to bring out the full potential of your images.

How Does the Clarity Slider Work?

When we adjust clarity, we are essentially adjusting the contrast of our photo.The difference is that instead of the entire tonal range being adjusted, the clarity slider targets the midtones only. This give the overall illusion of the image become more clear. Look at this histogram of the image above before the clarity was increased by+60…

Now, look at that same histogram after the boost in clarity

The blacks and highlights haven’t been affected very much but the midtones certainly have. And that’s the great thing about the clarity slider: it is far less likely to wash out detail in the areas which are already bright or already dark. This makes it a great tool when working with textures(insert link to texture article) with scenes which need a good bit more contrast without going into overkill in the shadows and highlights. Speaking of overkill…or rather over’clear’(haha)…the next section will talk about some things to watch out for when using the clarity slider.

How NOT to Apply Clarity

Granted, every photo is going to be different, so there are no real “rules” when it comes to using the clarity slider(or anything else in photography) to adjust your images. That being said, a general guideline that will help you immensely is the good ol’ fashioned “less is more” approach. While there clarity slider works great to add some extra power in your photograph it can also cause some unsightly side effects if abused.

Here’s a photo where the clarity has been cranked to +100. Notice anything?

On top of the entire scene now looking a little unnatural, when we zoom in we can see the real problem with using the clarity slider too liberally.

Zoomed to 3:1

Those dreaded halos. I hate them, and honestly, you probably should as well. They are caused by the pixels around high contrast areas becoming too separated from the pixels surrounding them which adds up to the bright banding around those areas. To remedy this, try adjusting clarity locally using the radial or graduated filter or the adjustment brush. If all else falls, simply back off the clarity a bit. In almost all cases less contrast will be more preferable than that dastardly halo effect.While Adobe has drastically refined the performance of the clarity slider in recent years the over clearing a photo can still be problematic. Also note the halo effect is worsened when coupling too much clarity along with too much sharpening as happened with the image above..

Final thoughts on Clarity

The clarity slider is a great tool. It helps us to increase contrast in the midtone luminosity range while avoiding blown out highlights and burnt out shadows. I use it to some extent in virtually every photograph I process. That being said, as awesome as the clarity slider can be, it can also work against you if you push it too far. Always remember to keep things in the scope of the reality you wish to present to the viewer and don’t over clarify your images. On the flip side of that you should also not be afraid to actually lessen the clarity in some of your images. It can actually smooth out skin tones and impart a nice soft contrast to a landscape. With a little bit of knowledge the clarity slider can open up entirely new post processing opportunities that you might not have considered!

Editing Secrets Revealed!: Five Lightroom Tricks

Adobe Lightroom is one of the most widely used software programs out there. When it comes to editing your digital photos it’s extremely difficult to beat Lightroom when it comes to ease of use, versatility, and powerful post processing tools. It’s safe to say that most of you reading this likely have had some experience using Lightroom but do you know about some of the hidden capabilities of the software? Well, maybe I shouldn’t say hidden. Perhaps “lesser known” is a better way for my point to be phrased.

In this article, we’re going to show you five lesser known tricks to be found in Adobe Lightroom. You might even wonder how you’ve managed without them for so long!

#1: Direct Histogram Adjustments

You know how to adjust exposure using the adjustment sliders in Lightroom but did you know that you can make exposure adjustments directly to the histogram?

Yeah, really! Not only that, but you can work with the blacks, shadows, and highlights independently. To do it, simply hover over different areas of the histogram and pay attention to the bottom left corner of the histogram. This tells you which area of the histogram you will be adjustment. At the far left is the blacks region…

And to the far right will be the whites region.

To adjust an area, click on it and hold as you drag left or right on the histogram.

In the middle areas you will have shadows highlights and overall exposure. All independently adjustable in the exact same way.

#2 Visualizing Spots in Clone/Heal Mode

The clone and healing tools are a great way to remove unsightly dust and dirt specks that show up on your finished digital photo. It’s easy to just make some of those things go away with a click or two.

Did you know that there’s a super easy way to make removing those spots a lot more precise? It’s aptly called the “visualize spots” mode and to access it click…you guessed it, the visualize spots box at the bottom of the view window when in clone/heal mode. You can also use keyboard shortcut (A).

Your image is instantly converted to a black and white relief. Spots show up in white.

You can control the sensitivity of the spot revelation by using the slider.

#3 Sharpening Mask

Don’t introduce unwanted noise by sharpening your entire photo! There’s a smarter way and it’s by using the masking slider when sharpening your images in Lightroom.

Holding down the ‘Alt’ key(Option key on Mac) while adjusting the masking slider sensitivity will convert the image to a black and white relief similar to the visualize spots mode from earlier.

Now it’s just a matter of healing or cloning out the spots!

#4 Developing Video

For some, the downside of Lightroom is that it doesn’t work well with video editing. Video isn’t supported in the Develop Module so you have to rely on quick develop settings and presets to process any of your video files. Or do you? There is in fact a work around to help you edit your videos more precisely in Lightroom. First, make an image capture from your video.

Then make any adjustments to that image capture just as you would a normal photo. When finished, go back to the Library module. Then hold down the ‘Ctrl’ key(Command on Mac) and be sure both your edited image capture AND the video thumbnail are selected.

Now, click on ‘Sync Settings’

A dialog box will appear showing the available settings which can be synced. Make your selections and click ‘OK’. And boom! You’ve just developed your video.

#5 Custom Name Plate

This last trick is possibly the easiest…and the most arbitrary. You can customize the “name plate” in Lightroom along with a couple other things. The name plate is that little bit of text in the upper left hand corner of the view window.

Here’s how to change it. Simply right click on the name plate and choose ‘Edit identity plate’ from the drop down.

This will open the identity plate edit dialog box.

Select ‘Personalize’ from the dropdown at the top left.

Now change the font color, style, and size to whatever you want! You can even upload a custom logo image form here as well!

Final Thoughts…

Lightroom, as powerful as it is, offers some hidden gems if you just know where and how to find them. The secrets of Lightroom aren’t limited to just the ones we’ve shown here! Have your own tricks that you’d like to share with the class? Post them in the comments below!