Photographer Travis Transient recently put together this helpful tutorial that might just teach you a thing of two about Adobe Lightroom. The video outlines three simple 'tricks' that Travis discovered by playing around with the sliders in Lightroom and really digging deeper than most of us ever try to dig.
These are the kinds of tips we usually see from Adobe itself—from enabling edge detection when using the brush tool to make a selection, to finding and eliminating color fringing by using the Dehaze tool to emphasize it. Check out the full video above and let us know which (if any) of these tips are totally new to you.
The video should have been entitled LR tricks for beginners, would have saved me the time. And are you sure that's a temple? Looked like the Museum in Phnom Penh
Most lenses will have some level of color "fringing", or in technical terms, chromatic aberration. It's an optical issue when the lens is unable to focus the various wavelengths of light to the same focal plane.
More expensive lenses will control this better. If you want to try and avoid this with your particular lens while shooting, then decreasing your aperture will typically help. But of course that's not always possible, which is why Lightroom defringe comes in handy.
Maybe someone already pointed it out, but the masking tricks also work in CR in Photoshop. Really neat, and I didn't know about them, so kudos to Travis!
Not always, but in some cases further processing to taste may enhance the spots if you're adding contrast, darkening sky etc. I've found it easier to fix spots sooner in the workflow than later when trying to find a similar texture to sample from.
I don't wont trick I want Adobe LR to address and fix the Fuji X-T2 PROBLEMS
like the mushy green trees or the mushy whatever simple request
I don't want to use other programs like capture one, on1, irdent developer, and other programs, I want LR to get fixed , is that to hard for the LR programmer's,??
The mushiness doesn't really go away in non-Adobe editing softwares. That's a myth. You can get similar detail in Lightroom by tweaking image sharpening in a certain way. The difference is obvious only when comparing the default settings, which is a very silly way to compare things anyways. However, even the video footage from xTrans cameras got this same typical mush and artifacts, meaning that Fuji themselves cannot handle it, because xTrans is the problem.
Nice. But what I really need is something to remove those damn arrows that hide the toolbars automatically. I keep clicking them by mistake. Really annoying.
I wonder if all the people who complain about slow LR use a single, massive library. I split them up, and don't experience this often-discussed problem on my four year old iMac. It may just be a coincidence - not sure at all if it's related.
On topic: nice video! To the point, and useful tips (though the one on removing otherwise invisible dust artifacts seems somewhat pointless).
I actually keep everything in a single library. It contains about 12.400 photo's. The thing is, when in Develop everything adjusts so slow. It takes a while before a change in a slider shows any changes in the photo. Using the spot removal tool, wand or even changing the crop can make the mouse jump around like crazy.
It would be interesting to see if there's actually a difference with a big catalog and a small one. Will try that, but for cataloging my personal photo's it's not really a great solution.
As far as I know Lightroom uses SQLite for its catalog file and that's normally a very performant local file database.
I keep hearing about performance issues but I've yet to see it. I'm running an i7/16GB/GeForce 770 and an SSD (OS and LR catalogue). I do notice a big increase in creating the full size previews after switching from a 16MB raw to a 20MB raw but that's about it. Raw file size possibly?
My PC is an i7 with 32GB and the catalog and Lightroom is on a SSD. The same with my laptop but at 12GB RAM. The PC has an Nvidia gtx 950 and the laptop has a gtx 760 if I'm not mistaken. On the laptop the performance is plain horrible.
It wasn't like that at first though. I got myself a Wacom tablet and it was such a fluent editing experience but on both systems using either a mouse or the Wacom tablet it's pretty much undoable.
Did you try turning on the High Performance mode on your PC/laptop? It's somewhere in the Power Management tools. My old i7/32GB(12GB-RAMdisk)/GTX670 is plenty fast for LR. Even for 50MP RAWs on 4K IPS panel.
I thought the first tip was good, although I really didn't see much difference in the detail but still useful for helping to reduce noise in the sky. The tip using the girl in the white hoodie was ... kind of not a tip. I didn't see any difference at all.
You mean enable profile correction and remove chromatic abberations? I have to agree with Lichtbild, it doesn't work most of the time for me. It may be the fault of my lens, though - notoriously bad with CA.
We're discussing the tutorial video above and the CA removal procedure is is needless complication. Nikon software has a 'remove CA' check box that I can batch process. No eyedropper tool. No per-image adjustments to just remove CAs. People who claim Lightroom is good in that domain, just lack a proper reference.
If we're discussing the tutorial above, why did you bring up CA removal in LR? I'm thinking you should stick to the Nikon software if it does what you want.
And if two clicks is too many, assign CA correction to a Develop preset so that it can be applied to a bunch of images taken with the offending lens in one swell foop!
Ok, ok it's heresy to state that Lightroom is bad in some way. Apologies to anyone, I did not intend to hurt feelings here. The tutorial above discussed a magic trick to remove CAs in Lightroom, I merely pointed out that the procedure is less than magic. Two clicks aren't much indeed, but an image specific precision click - note the guy in the video uses the loupe feature to click the blue fringe away- is too much in my view, since it can't be batched. I am using Lightroom since v2 myself and find it lacking here clearly.
This was really helpful. Thank you. FWIW, here are a few things I found going through these tricks that others may find helpful. - To see the red mask overlay, click the "Show Selected Mask Overlay" box at the bottom of the screen. - In the LR window there is an "Auto Mask" check off box. When it is checked the brush does edge finding by default, and the command key (mac) toggles it off. When it is not checked edge finding is off by default, and the command key toggles it on. - The Dehaze tool is not available in the latest non-CC version of LR. However it can be downloaded as a plug in and works as shown in this video. Download is here: https://cutthruthefog.wordpress.com/lightroom-6-dehaze/
Download the and unzip the plug in, copy it to a known location on your HDD (e.g make a folder /documents/LR Plug in/. In LR: file, plug in manager, add, navigate to location and select the plug in. Once set up you access it in LR via: Help, Plug in extras.
All these digital users are missing out on what real photography is all about. It's like trying to have a conversation about sport cars, only to find out people here drive automatic! It's lonely being the only adult with an internet filled with children! Lol
I'm not the one getting angry. You should try taking more pictures instead of playing captain internet police! I'm not sure why people on DPereview get so upset just because others want to enjoy photography the way it was meant to be! Lol
We all feel real sorry that DPR doesn't edit their content to your exact level of experience. I'm so sorry idiots like me, with less than a year of LR experience, are here to spoil DPR for you.
I have seen better tutorials on youtube - wonder why this appears on DP. Also he is maneuvering on images that don't really get any better and everyone would had out-selected in the first place.
Oh, I stand corrected. Still not interested because it integrates with an editing program that is not for sale, and there are so many other raw editing options. I don't see the fact that every photo website assumes everyone uses LR as a reason to get it.
Actually, buying the software still has problems if what matters is longevity, not price. If the vendor doesn't update it, it will become obsolete over time, something that may happen to the Google Nik suite. Open source software like GIMP is a potential solution, but even that is not future-proof. If the community that maintains the open source project moves on, users may not be able to maintain it themselves.
To RobertE. Yep I have several picture editors, and a few raw editors. One of those is Photoshop CS6 which I bought back when Adobe had PhotoShop for sale. That's fine for my needs. If I needed new features I'd buy Corel or wait for it to appear in GIMP. Even though I've now been informed that Lightroom can be purchased outright I just don't trust Adobe to keep it that way. My raw editors may not have immediate raw support for any future camera I might buy, but then neither does Lightroom.
Key phrase being "might just teach you a thing". And there "might" also be at least 100.00 other tips and tricks videos for beginners that already have this covered. The spot locating method is stupid, but maybe he hasn't dug deep enough in LR to find the visualize spots button. My god, it's almost as if people are paying DP to post slag content just to promote their brand.
First two are useful, third one is questionable. You basicaly enhance hidden flaws so you can correct them - but why, since they are already invisible.
Well, no. You enhance hidden flaws which are not easy to see but which would be obvious in a big print, for example. After finding the flaw you fix it, then cancel the enhancement. Job done.
LR has a dedicated tool for locating sensor spots, When the spot removal tool is active, the button under the image labeled "visualize spots" can be selected and this enhances the spots against a black background.
Plus, that shot was taken at f3.5 so I highly doubt those were spots on the sensor to begin with, let alone on the lens.
It was probably just a bug flying by, which of course is worth removing anyway.
Lensrentals has a really sweet article showing how dust really affects the image (https://www.lensrentals.com/blog/2011/08/the-apocalypse-of-lens-dust/). In my experience you'd have to shoot at f22 and crank the contrast all the way up for a lint to show like a light and big spot.
@Prairie Pal - Why do you feel the need to 'stand up' for Lightroom? It's not a human or animal, it's an application. If you don't like my opinion, that's fine, still doesn't change the fact that LR is for simpletons.
@composed - this is a quote from one of your recent comments: "Don't like being called out, do you? You know you can just 'walk away'... I think you like the attention, you sick *uck." You are far from "composed" !
@Composed, I wasn't standing up for LR - I hope you didn't think that, however every tool has a value if used well. I was just wondering what editing software do you use and would you be kind enough to show us (perhaps via a video) why it is so much better so we can learn through education and not cynical wisecracks.
What I want to know is how is his Lightroom so responsive? 100% comes into focus in less than a second and the sliders don't seem to lag, using a laptop. I'm on an OC'd, beastly desktop and it runs like crap. Granted it's an older i7 but it's running at 4.2ghz and everything else runs like formula one on this machine. Is LR that much better on Mac or what?
Two possibilities... He may have made 100% previews or maybe increased his cache and this is the second time he clicked on an image and it's coming up from the cache.
Mine works just like his. I have an 4790K, with 16GB ram. Probably what you have and no issues at all. Do have your OS and catalog on SSD? The only time I had issues was when I ran the catalog off an HDD.
Same here, 16gb also. I'm on an old i7 - 2660k. I don't know how big of a factor that is but I know I'm not in the minority with wondering why LR isn't screaming fast (and often borderline unusable) like everything else on my PC. That's why Photomechanic is collecting $150 from scores of people who use it to do something LR is already supposed to do.
I have a six year old MacBook Pro that runs pretty much like this in edit. Still takes a long time (~8 seconds for 16/20Mp image) to make a full preview once the editing is done though. Because of that lag, I actually do all my selecting/rating in the "Develop" bit because it's quicker to check focus.
I do have a SSD but only 8GB of RAM, i7 quad core processor.
I think it's ssd vs hard disk diff. Keep the catalog in ssd while lost editing archive into hard disk. So even new set of fotos alone resides in ssd. Archiving is a b though.
LR seems to suffer from extreme performance issues in a very random way depending on system configuration. The Adobe forums are full of computer savvy folks with very high spec'd desktops complaining about and in many cases showing with videos very slow LR performance while at the same time folks with five year old laptops and the very same cameras have no issues. Trying all the obvious things (preview, GPU, cache settings, driver updates, etc) often have no effect.
I actually thought the computer in the video was slow. Mine is quite a bit faster on all that he was doing. Mine's a simple Mac i7 computer with 8GB of RAM. I have found from my PC to Mac that the Mac can run much better and smoother with lower specs. That is why when people compare specs on computers, I really don't get excited.
This just makes me want to cry. I edit for hours every day. I'm doing weddings and spending way too much time fighting with LR. It would take me 1/3 to 1/4 of the time if the system weren't lagging at all. Maybe it's time for another complete windows reinstall. I'll try 10 this time.
See you mock it, but that my friend, it's a hipster look. It takes some of us, dentists or not so much, hours of dedicated work to get to that natural look.
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