Category Archives: Lightroom

Quick Dramatic Landscapes in Lightroom

Posted on April 3, 2010 by singraham| 1 Comment

HDR (high dynamic range) has captured the attention of many photographers these days, not always for the good of the art, imho, but there is little doubt the technique produces images with high drama. Most HDR work involves 3 or more exposures of the same scene, bracketed two or more stops, recorded as RAW files, and then processed in PhotoShop or dedicated software to capture the best tones from each exposure.

I shot jpeg, and, though I have experimented with what can be done in software wit 3 jpegs, I have developed a technique in Lightroom for quickly extracting maximum dynamic range and drama from a single file. I am certain that is is not a unique discovery on my part. Given the tools in Lightroom, others will have stumbled on the same technique. I have seen it on Moose Patterson’s twitter stream, for one, and I am sure a google search will turn up other instances, maybe quite a few. However, since I have already talked about this process in several posts in the past, and since it has become an essential tool in my photographic process, I thought a little video tutorial might be of interest.

So, here it is. You can view it here, but to see it to best effect it is best to view it through the link on YouTube, and to select the 720p (HD) option. Depending on your computer, you may have to pause it and let the video fully download before it will play smoothly.

Enjoy.

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Posted in Lightroom, dramatic landscape, editing, hdr, instruction, postprocessing

Rainy Day on Point Loma: learning.

Posted on March 14, 2010 by singraham| 3 Comments

My one free day in San Diego with a new camera to play with…or rather, a new camera to learn…turned out to be blessed with rain. Still, it was San Diego…I only get there once a year…and I have never yet been disappointed by a visit to Cabrillo National Monument at the tip of Point Loma high above San Diego Harbor and the Pacific. The Monument’s hours are dictated by the fact that you have to drive through part of the naval base and the National Cemetery to reach it, and, with budget cutbacks, the military gates are only open 9-5. I drove the few miles from my hotel to the Monument in the rain, and arrived at the pay station just after it opened. It was drizzling then, and I hoped for dryer weather later in the day, so I took the turn down to the Tide Pools at the foot of the point on the Pacific side, accessible by the road that serves the modern Coast Guard station lighthouse down there, and the water treatment plant for the naval base.

I was dressed for the weather, and had a umbrella with me to shield the camera, so it seemed worth a walk from the parking lot down the short trail to the top of the cliffs overlooking the tide pools themselves. When I got to the cliff top I realized that the Monument must have come into some of the Economic Recovery Funds, since they had clearly been working on expanding the trail system back up and across the soft sandstone conglomerate and compacted soil cliffs and further back along the coast toward San Diego, giving me access to new views. Even in the rain, this proved too tempting to resist, and I spent a couple of happy hours there shooting the rain drenched cliffs from under my umbrella…the surf, the rocks, seaweed, pelicans and the green headlands further north.

Shooting in the rain, or near rain, is a challenge, not only because you need to keep today’s digital cameras dry, but because the lighting is so tricky. The sky can be surprisingly bright, especially when compared to the rain soaked foreground. If you are not careful you end up with the worst of both extremes: muddy, dark, indistinct foregrounds and white skies. Even within the clouds themselves, it does not take much thinning for the contrast range between dark heavy cloud and lighter cloud to exceed the range of most sensors.

Of course, Lighroom has the tools necessary to extend the apparent dynamic range of an image in post processing: Recovery for highlights, Fill Light for foreground and shadows, and Blackpoint adjustment to bring up the intensity of flat images…but there are limits to what can be done in post, even if shooting RAW, and certainly if, like me, you shoot JPEG.

Then too, one of the things I have learned about my new Canon SX20IS is that, in Programmed Auto mode, it favors high shutter speeds and large apertures: more suitable for people (who are often in motion) than for stationary landscapes. The Canon seems to select even wider apertures than my Sony H’s did. This is not necessarily bad, as the lenses on these superzoom digitals are certainly optimized for wide apertures as well…but I am still traditional enough to be nervous shooting landscapes at F2.8.

The SX20 has a Landscape mode, but there is practically no information in the instructions as to what it actually does, beyond the obvious; “for capturing stunning landscapes.” Not helpful for anyone with photographic skills. Still, brief experimentation has taught me that it selects smaller apertures and slower shutter speeds and tends to favor lower ISOs. I am pretty sure…but not certain…that it also defaults to infinity focus when the auto focus fails to find a subject to lock on to, and it might adjust image contrast and saturation slightly too. Worth a try.

I am also gaining confidence in the SX20s iContrast setting, which is supposed to handle high dynamic range shots better than the conventional Program mode. I have experimented with intentionally biasing exposures toward the sky in tricky landscapes with clouds, using the Canon’s Exposure Lock, leaving the foreground darker than I would like it, and then adjusting in Lighroom (as I generally did when using the Sony, even with the Sony’s high dynamic range setting on)…but I am finding that using the iContrast or Landscape Program mode (which seems to have some of the same built in) and letting the Canon do its thing, actually gives me images that are, in fact, easier to adjust in Lightroom, and which require a lot less Fill Light for the foreground. If it is a choice between Recovery for highlights for Fill Light for shadows, I find that Recovery does less damage at the pixel level by introducing a lot less noise. Then too, if you are not careful with Fill Light, you can get halos at high contrast edges. Better, in high dynamic range situations, to work the sky, even using Lighroom’s Graduated Filter Effect at need, than to over-work the foreground.

Shooting in the rain or on a rainy day, it is really all about mood. You want to capture the wet saturation of the colors (using saturation in its photographic sense) without letting them go dark, and you want to catch the drama of the sky. In my opinion, you do not want the resulting images to look like they were taken on a brighter day…you want to preserve the feeling of wet and damp…the cool tones…and the feel of the soft heavy air, even in images with brighter colors.

After exploring the tail up the cliffs and further along the coast I came back to the tide pools and braved the slippery rock to climb down to the rocky shore. The tide was too far in for much tide pooling, and it was too dark anyway, but the wet seaweed on the beach offered some nice close-up and macro opportunities. The colors were richer than they might have been in full sun, and the wet provided interesting highlights.

Before leaving the Tide Pool area for the drive back up to the Visitor Center and original Lighthouse, I spent a few moments trying for Pelicans in flight as they road the inner line of surf down the coast toward me. With the SX20 at full reach (560mm equivalent) and on Sports Program, I got a few interesting shots.

Finally I did make it back to the car and drove up to the top of the Point Loma for the view. As things turned out, I had no more than got out of the car in the Visitor Center parking lot when it began to rain harder…and, though I attempted to wait it out in one of the Whale Watching shelters overlooking the Pacific, I finally had to decide that the rest of the day might be better spent back at the hotel processing my Tide Pool images.

I took this one last shot out over the Pacific just before the rain became too dense for photography.

So out of a rainy day at Cibrillo National Monument, I learned to trust Landscape mode a bit more, even if I don’t know exactly what it is doing, and how to enjoy and capture the mood of a stormy California day. Not bad.

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Posted in Canon, Canon SX20IS, Lightroom, bridge camera, inspiration, instruction, postprocessing, super zoom

Shooting Snow!

Posted on January 10, 2010 by singraham| 5 Comments

Among the hardest scenes for the landscape photographer to capture, snow has to rank right up there at the top. In sunlight, a snow covered landscape exceeds the light sensitivity range of our eyes…let alone a digital camera sensor. Even in lower light levels, under overcast skies or while it is actually snowing, it is very difficult to balance exposure in camera to produce white snow with significant texture and detail, and true to life colors where color is showing. If the snow is right, everything else in the scene is dark gray to black…which is one reason so may photographers resort to black and white when shooting snow scenes.

Over the New Year’s holiday we got significant amounts of fresh snow here in southern Maine, so, of course, I was out with my camera. That first day I was out while it was actually snowing. Light levels were subdued,the sky was a dark grey blur, and there was a lot of snow still in the air, closing horizons like fog. I was out a few hours and had a chance to reflect on the process of capturing a snowy landscape.

In subdued light, without any direct sun, I find that my camera responds best if I simply leave it on Programmed Auto. This produces a balanced exposure with enough detail in the snow so that I can bring it down and out in Lightroom, and enough color in whatever is still showing color so that I can bring it up and out.

Here is a shot, just as it came from the camera (just resized for display here).

As you can see, the snow is kind of gray, and there is little to no color in the beach grasses.

A trip through Lightroom results in this image.

I applied Recovery to bring out what little detail is in the snow and sky, then Fill Light for the color. The Blackpoint is shifted right, and I added Clarity (local contrast) and Vibrance (selective saturation) and finally used the Sharpen Landscape preset. I increased Contrast overall just slightly.

This image is very close to my visual impression of the scene when taken.

Here is another, somewhat classic shot.

In camera exposure is not very spectacular…but the information is all there for post-processing.

Using almost exactly the same processing in Lightroom as the first image I was able to preserve the snow detail while bringing out the color in the evergreens.

One more from the subdued light series.

The differences here are more subtle but there is an increase in both snow detail and color.

The key here is that I am working with a balanced exposure, as provided by the auto exposure system in the camera, with no manipulation, then doing all my adjustments in post-processing. Of course this is only possible if you know both how your camera is going to respond to these kinds of scenes and what you are able to do in software afterwards. Both in camera exposure and post-processing are part of the creative process, and part of the envisioning of the image when it is being taken.

I can’t emphasize that enough. What you are going to be able to do in post has to be part of your exposure decision in camera.

Of course, eventually the sun does come out. It might be days later, as it was in Maine, but the sun completely transforms the exposure issue for snow covered landscape.

Most people require sunglasses to deal with sun on snow. I use a wide brimmed hat. Whatever it takes, even our unprotected eyes can be overwhelmed by the glare of light when the sun shines on snow.

If your eyes can’t handle it, there is absolutely no chance the digital sensor in our cameras can. With sun on show you really have no good choices. Either you expose for the sky and any color in the scene, and the snow goes completely white and featureless, or you expose for the snow, and everything else goes black. Even if you expose for the snow, you run the risk of getting grey snow with very few highlights, and that does not look real either. No good choices.

The usual way of dealing with snow and sun is to use Exposure Compensation. Most digital cameras, when placed in Programmed Auto mode, will allow you to shift the EV (Exposure Value) up or down by 2 points. Each 1 EV change is equivalent to doubling or halving the exposure. Some cameras have a dedicated button for this, or an easy to find menu option. Some have it buried in the menu system…though it is generally fairly near the top since it is often used.

Conventional exposure wisdom says that for sunny snow covered landscape or sun on snow details you should reduce the exposure by –.7 to –1 EV. Here are two examples of the difference that makes. Standard Programmed auto shot first then –.7EV.

As you see, standard Programmed Auto produces large areas of snow that is totally burned out…so white there is no detail left. It does, however, keep the dark areas in the scene reasonably exposed. Dialing down the EV to –.7 keeps more detail in the sunniest areas of snow, but casts everything else, including shadows on the snow, way too dark.

That’s okay though…we are not looking at these as finished exposures, but as starting points for post processing. The question is, with proper processing which will capture more of the detail of the natural scene?

This the first programmed auto image processed in Lightroom. I used heavy Recovery for the snow highlights, a touch of Fill Light for the shadows, blackpoint just to the right, added Clarity and Vibrance and Sharpen Landscape preset.

Here is the –.7 EV image processed.

Much less Recovery, though still some. Much more Fill Light for the shadows, and consequently blackpoint further right. Added Clarity and Vibrance and Sharpen Landscapes. Because the shadows are darker the blue cast common in sun on snow shots was much more pronounced in this image, so I used the selective saturation tool to desaturate just the blue of the shadows.

Which is closer to a naked eye view? Which is a better image? I prefer the second shot which started with –.7EV.

On the other hand, there is the theory that conentional auto exposure of sun on show sets the exposure too low…for the snow…and everything else goes dark while the snow looses it whiteness. This is especially true in shots of people against snow backgrounds in full sun. Here are two shots, one at 0EV and one at +.7EV

As you see, the snow is white in the +EV shot and the trees look more natural. However, with processing in Lightroom, the 0EV shot (darker) still yielded the more satisfying image.

Here is an extreme.

I shot this close up of an area of intense sun on snow at –.7EV.

Way too dark.

Processing in Lightroom, plus a little cropping, (with a good deal of desaturation of the blue shadows) gives us this.

In general I had more success processing –.7EV shots on this sunny day than I did with standard Programmed auto shots. I did not like the +EV shots.

So, what do you do if your camera does not have EV Exposure Compensation settings? Some don’t. Most do however have Scene Mode…and one of the Modes included is almost certainly Snow or Sand & Snow.

However, these Modes are based on the assumption that you are taking images of people against a snowy backdrop…they increase exposure, generally by .5 to 1EV. And that is good. For people shots or if your primary interest is objects in the foreground. For Snowy Landscapes, however, it might just be counterproductive…especially if you consider the in-camera exposure as only a starting point for post-processing. If, on the other hand, you are not going to post-process, the Snow Mode may indeed give you more satisfactory snow scenes.

Take these two shots right from the camera. The first is conventional Programmed auto and the second is Snow Mode.

The second shot looks a bit more natural to me.

Again.

and

If I were processing these…the first in each case would make the better image, given the tools I have in Lightroom. If using them direct from the camera, however, there is no doubt that the Snow Mode does its job and produces a better snow image.

So. Let it snow. Let it show. Shoot the snow.

Just know what your camera is capable of, and what you are able to do in whatever post processing program you prefer. Expose in camera for best post.

Let it snow. Shoot snowy landscapes!

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Posted in Lightroom, aesthetics, editing, instruction, postprocessing, snowy landscape

Emmon’s Preserve: Learning to Expose for Post!

Posted on August 15, 2009 by singraham| 3 Comments

Deep in the Green

Emmon’s Preserve, managed by the Kennebunk Land Trust, is one of my favorite places to photograph. It is also one of the most difficult. A river runs through it under a solid canopy of maples and pines, and depending on the weather can be anything from a trickle down over rocks and through pools to a raging torrent. The light is very tricky. Lots of shadow, from open to deep, and shafts of full sun illumination random patches of vegetation, a rock here and there, and select passages in the stream…often a single curl of water around a stone. It is any exposure system’s worst nightmare. Then too, the light is green in the shadows which gives most white balance automation fits.

And it is beautiful with an almost mystical beauty.

So I go back again and again to try again and again to capture what I see and feel there…with never any more than limited success. The dynamic range, from bright foliage to deep shadows under banks…from sun on water to shade under ferns, is simply too great for any sensor to capture. It does not matter whether you are using auto exposure in your camera, or computing manual exposure using the zone system, there are simply limits to what can be done.

This shot comes from an area of the Preserve I only discovered on my last visit. I don’t know how I missed it all these years, but a side trail loops up over a small ridge and comes back down to the river above the rapids and pools I know so well. This section is quieter, but with its own beauty.

Emmon’s Preserve is a great place to learn about exposing for post.

When shooting in Emmon’s preserve, I continue to experiment with different degrees of Exposure Compensation in the camera. Too much and you get great highlights but shadows that are totally blocked up and black. Too little and you get highlights which are burnt out and pure white. And of course the light in there under the canopy is never the same twice. You have to develop a sense of what will work. And you have to keep trying.

With a camera like the Sony DSC H50 that has true live view, you can judge, or maybe learn to judge would be more accurate, the effects of your chosen Exposure Compensation…you can see pretty much what you are doing.

With a camera like the Sony DSC H50 that has true live view, you can judge, or maybe learn to judge would be more accurate, the effects of your chosen Exposure Compensation on the LCD…you can see pretty much what you are doing.

Still, the proof of the pudding doesn’t come until you try to process the image back on the computer. Even if you use the camera’s exposure compensation, or manually compute a compromise exposure, an image like this requires post-processing.

I use Lightroom, and it has both Recovery and Fill Light tools. Both are tone mapping tools, in that they change the relative exposure values (tones) for a selected range of tones, and only that range. Recovery selectively reduces the intensity of highlights within the image. It is a simple slider and you can watch its effect in real time as you move it. Fill Light is exactly the opposite. As you might expect from the name, it increases the exposure level of only the shadows. Again, it does it in real time, as you move a slider.

Tone mapping is a powerful tool, bull all tone mapping tools, and Fill Light in particular, require restraint. Over use leads to strange and easily recognized halo effects at sharp contrast boundaries, especially where land meets sky. When you see a little whitish line running along the tops of mountains in some HDR images or outlining tree branches caught against the sky, it is the result of aggressive tone mapping (high dynamic range images are generally tone mapped to fit the expanded contrast scale from multiple exposures into the limited scale of the monitor or printing device).

In this image, heavy Recovery was needed to bring out any detail in the brighter areas back among the trees, and Fill Light was needed to open the shadows.

I have mentioned before that post-processing in situations like this is not used to save an incorrectly exposed image. In the field you expose the image knowing what you can and will do to it in Lightroom (or whatever software you use for post-processing). You expose it differently than you might if image editing software were not available. I used -.7 EV exposure compensation in the camera in the field to tame the highlights back among the trees. -.7EV is not enough to bring out all the detail in the highlights, and yet already it makes the shadows too dark, obscuring detail there. -.7EV is, however, the correct place to begin expanding the dynamic range with the tools available in Lightroom. All but the brightest highlights can be brought back in range by Recovery, and the Fill Light tool does a good job of selectively opening the shadows. You have to know this when making the exposure in the field. In a sense you expose for post, knowing that image as it comes from the camera will be unsatisfactory, but also knowing what you can do in post-proecessing.

This is exactly the method film photographers developed to deal with the limited dynamic range of their materials. Ansel Adams was perhaps it’s most noted practitioner. He called it the Zone System. He exposed the negative to make the best print, even though it might look like an underexposed or overexposed negative to a conventional film photographer. There was definitely a method to his exposure madness.

With today’s tools, you don’t have to know the Zone system: especially with Lightroom’s interactive tool set. With Lightroom, as noted above, you can see what you are doing. Changes are real time as you move the control. You see how much the highlights are brought back with the Recovery tool. You can see how much the shadows are opened with the Fill Light tool…and, just as importantly, you can see what the tools are doing to the rest of the image.

Both Recovery and Fill light flatten the contrast curve at the ends. They remap the tones at either extreme down into the range where the monitor or print medium can handle them. Overall you lose contrast, but if done carefully, it gives the appearance of expanded dynamic range. As in the image above.

Here is another example:

Run and Fall

I used the same -.7EV Exposure Compensation as a starting point. As you see maximum Recovery in Lightroom still left the highlights in the water too hot…not noticeable perhaps, but there to my eye. And I was not able to pull the shadows under the bank out without losing the dappled sun effect on the mossy rocks. Still, it is about as good as can be done with a single jpeg exposure.

After lots of experience in Emmon’s Preserve it is becoming easier for me than it sounds, since I have learned that, with proper EV adjustment, the Programed auto on the H50 produces an excellent, well balanced, beginning exposure. If I ever switch cameras (realistically when I switch cameras) I am going to have to learn to do this all over again.

And Emmon’s Preserve will be there, always willing to teach me.

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Posted in Lightroom, editing, inspiration, instruction, postprocessing

Lightroom’s Graduated Filter Effects

Posted on March 14, 2009 by singraham| 4 Comments

The original

For some years now landscape photographers have relied on graduated neutral density filters to control exposure where bright skies would otherwise dominate an image…or where the sky would go white because of overexposure when the image was properly exposed for the landmass.

With Lightroom 2.0, Adobe introduced a Graduated Filter effect as part of the local adjustments panel (along with some other retouching tools, including the Adjustments Brush). I have been experimenting with the Graduated Filter effect recently. Let me walk you through editing a sample, seen above, selected not because it is a great photo, to to show off the GF effects.

(Disclaimer: I am by no means a Lightroom expert. I am just learning as I go along. What I share here is just my first fumblings with this effect. I am sure there is a lot more to learn.)

As I have come to expect from Lightroom, the GF tool is amazingly powerful. When you first drop the panel down you see a menu of -/+ selections for Exposure, Brightness, Contrast, Saturation, Clarity, and Sharpness…plus a little color box. You can create a GF to apply any of these effects to the image by selecting the -/+ for that effect, or by picking the effect from the drop-down menu at the top.

Graduated Filter Effects Panel

Advanced control sliders

Or, to apply multiple effects to the same area, you can click the little switch icon next to the drop-down menu on the right.

This opens a series of effect sliders, one for each effect in the list. This is, in my opinion, the most powerful way to use the GF effect, and the most intuitive.

To create a filter you just place the mouse over one edge of the image, left click and drag the filter down (across or up) the image. As it expands you will see that there is a dark circle roughly in the center of your covered area, and a white line at either border. The white line where you started dragging is the beginning (darkest) area of the filter, and the white line at the other edge is roughly where the filter effect fades to nothing. The dot at the center is, well, the center of the effect. You will quickly realize that the filter can have any orientation to the image. It can be horizontal, vertical, or any degree of diagonal, just as you drag it out. The black center indicator is always there unless you hide it. It turns white when the filter is not selected (for editing).

Drag the GF across the image where you want it.

First filter effect

Once the filter is in place, you can make adjustments using the effects sliders. For this image I reduced the exposure to darken the sky significantly (for added drama). I also boosted the saturation and contrast to deepen the detail in the clouds, and added some clarity for the same reason. Clarity when applied to clouds seems to bring out the transparancy of the more subtle regions of the cloud mass. You can, of course (this is Lightroom) see the changes applied in real time, as you make them, without any worry about the original. Any change is reversible simply by resetting the slider, or you can remove all effects by clicking the reset button at the bottom of the panel, or, if you need another option, you can select the center dot of the filter and press the Del key to get rid of the whole thing.

The combined effects yielded this preview.

Preview of first set of effects...

An improvement, I think, but we can do more.

settings for the second GF

Applying a second GF, this time dragging up from the bottom, and angling the whole filter slightly, I again adjusted exposure, this time bringing it up slightly to pick up the details in the foreground. I also added good deal of saturation and contrast to make the yellows of the rabbit brush pop, and some extra clarity for detail.

It is important to realize that these adjustments take only seconds, and that you can see what you are doing in real time. You simply move the slider until the effected area of the image looks the way you want it to. Too much? Move the slider back.

This is the preview of what the second GF did.

Effect of second GF

Much improved! (IMHO). Note that the edges of the filter indicated by the white lines are not exact: generally the outer edge in particular, will cover the whole width of the image, even if, as in this case, it appears that a corner is cut off due to the angle of the filter.

Global changes...

The image is almost there. For final changes, I dropped back out of the GF panel, and made a set of global changes, using the Recovery, Fill Light, and Black-point sliders, and the Presence panel, as well as the Sharpen landscape preset.

Recovery pulled the sky back further, adding detail to the highlights. Fill Light brought up the foreground without lightening the sky. Sliding the Black-point to the right intensified the colors further. Clarity made the details really pop, and Vibrance pulled the yellows up even further without oversaturating them. Finally, I cropped out a bit of the heavy black clouds at the top for balance.

And here is the final image. Original first, for comparison, then the Lr version. Time invested: less than 3 minutes start to finish.

The original

Final: significantly different than the origianal in less than 3 minutes.

Still not a great image, but much more satisfying than the original, and, considering the dull day, and the inability of the sensor to do it justice, much closer to what I actually saw…maybe even a little better than I saw in real time…but I will never tell!

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