To Adobe:

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A trend I've noticed - when contrast is high it can be much more difficult to find a balance between exposure highlights and shadows that suits the needs of all three regions (lows, mids, highs). And lower contrast makes the picture, well, not contrasty enough...

To Users:

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Tip o' th' day:

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Adjusting whites in conjunction with exposure will afford much more toning latitude.

When what you want is:

- Intra-shadow contrast

- midtone contrast

- highlight contrast

It can be very tricky indeed, since increasing one tends to decrease the other. One of the reasons Lr4 is such a big deal is it makes it easier (sometimes) to achieve a target contrast in each of the three zones.

However, I sometimes find it easy to perfect the tone in any 2 of those zones, but not the 3rd.

(oversimplified to make a point - it's not always that "neat")

Here are some things that have helped me accomplish my goals sometimes:

Increasing whites and decreasing exposure a little bit increases intra-highlight contrast with a relatively small impact on midtone or intra-shadow contrast.

AND

Increasing whites and decreasing exposure a lot increases intra-highlight contrast with a significant impact on midtone and/or intra-shadow contrast, which would otherwise be unachievable, and which you can take advantage of.

PS - I'm not saying that maximum contrast in all 3 zones is always the goal, but it is the hardest to achieve.

Rob

Definitely being willing to tweak the tone curve and/or dab on some brush strokes (after the basics) gets me to my desired result way quicker sometimes - thanks for the reminder.

(when you are picky like me, the tone curve and/or locals are sometimes essential)

Jeff, I appreciate your civility. I try to tune people out when they are being a$$-holes - getting much better at it too .

Rob

Hi Susan,

Thank you .

I agree that Lightroom 4 performs better when shooting conditions are more optimal.

I also take and process plenty of pictures that were not shot perfectly, which are more of a challenge to "polish up" using any software.

The tip I mentioned in my previous post has proven to be a big, big deal for me - hottest Lr4 tip yet, as far as I am concerned.

i.e. different combinations of +whites and -exposure can allow one to critically influence the midtone and even shadow regions.

It's the secret that is helping me out of many a jam using the basic controls - much less need for tone curve and locals using that technique.

To Adobe - that fact may be some good input for tweaks that could be made, since it's really an overly tricky thing to be doing for most people.

Rob

Sorry if I spoke too much for you Susan(?)

Susan S. wrote:

 

That's fine Rob - I don't think you misrepresented me. Maybe overstated my competence (but that isn't going to upset me any!)

R

Snow business.

PS - If white balance and/or split toning doesn't get rid of that cast, try the RGB channel curves, eh?

Indeed, heavy on the +whites was the ticket :-)

R

Eric, thanks for the info.

PS - No combinations of exposure / contrast that looked even half-way decent would have allowed me to accomplish my toning objectives for this photo (snow business), which were:

- Eliminate all blacks, shadows, and midtones.

- Ram the whites up against the wall, and shape the highlights exactly the way I wanted.

Save whites till last for fine tuning ya say? - Not me, but you can do whatever you want...

Try to do as much as possible using exposure & contrast, followed by highlights then shadows if necessary? That works sometimes...

Rob

Hi Hamish,

I took that picture while on vacation with some people who get very annoyed when I get all camera-buff on 'em.

Anyway, it was taken @0EV (exposure bias) and as you say could have easily been 2/3EV+. Also, I normally shoot with Active D-Lighting ON, which tries to help by lowering exposure even further - if thinking on my toes, I'd turn it OFF when shooting snow pics.

(also, that picture was taken shortly after sunrise, and I'm not a morning person . also, it was taken in the Eastern Sierra Madres (Mountains in California) in January (near zero temperature...) - keeping my hands warm while fiddling with the camera was a huge issue...  I have some more excuses too if you want... (PM me).

hamish niven wrote:

 

I see you are siting an example where you can't get the results you want from LR4...

Not at all!!! - I'm totally stoked about how that picture turned out! - Way better than what I was able to do in Lr3!! The fact that the image integrity held together so well despite the extreme processing is a testament to Lr4 improvments! Far more control over the nuances of highlight tone in Lr4 (via basic controls) than Lr3. And I think the auto highlight recovery also helped in this case (I'm not sure at the moment - maybe whites were jacked up so high there wasn't much auto-highlight recovery left (Eric would know) and maybe that's why they weren't flat, hmmm...). Please do not read anything in. My purpose in posting it was to point out that it benefited from the +white -exposure treatment, AND that this doesn't work for that photo:

- Adjust exposure so it's nicely exposed (or exposed for the midtones...).

- If necessary, adjust contrast so overall contrast is nice.

- If necessary, adjust highlights to taste.

- If necessary, adjust shadows to taste.

- Usually not necessary, but fine tune whites if warranted...

- Ditto for blacks.

Summary:

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Despite being underexposed to begin with, the final settings (which I am very, very pleased with) had reduced exposure. I would have never been able to come up with optimal settings for this photo by "following the rules".

Thanks - I realize asking Lightroom to make up for my shooting deficiencies is asking a lot .

PS - I understand why the controls stop where they do (at 100) - after that the image falls apart - no problem - could have pushed a little further using the tone curve (or an enhanced camera profile).. 100 was enough for this photo.

Yep, there have been a few "sub-plots" since this thread started....

2nd to Last thing - I arrived at the settings for this image very quickly - I knew what I wanted, I knew the secret, and I had the results optimized within a few minutes (no need to balance midtone and shadow considerations made this a very easy photo to work on - could hardly go wrong...).

Last thing:

hamish niven wrote:

 

I may be breaking your question...

There is no question - if you up exposure and down whites the highlights will be more compressed - it's a statement.

Rob

hamish niven wrote:

 

grand stuff Rob

As I said I've not pushed LR4 to extremes, but that is good to know that its holding quality with that much processing.

 

As for "following the rules" - that is a reason I left Englnd to come to South Africa, less rules, so I'm with you there.

I aim to make a photo look nice, real nice verging on the flipping awesome, if that means having a tone curve that would frighten Lee Jay, or as you've implemented, apparent crazy high settings and the results look good, you like it, friends and if professional, clients like it, then you've achieved, go pat yourself on the back and pour that whisky at end of day.

 

Rob Cole wrote:

 

There is no question - if you up exposure and down whites the highlights will be more compressed - it's a statement.

 

Rob

 

Mainstream commercial photography is ultimately an art, making things look good or better than they are, (like that amazing new product called fotoshop from adobé) start with a close approximation and manipulate, and LR is doing to do that much better.

For me, the technical details made by the brains incredible department make the software do 'kin amazing things, I dont need to know how knees and black curves and depressed highlights compacted with reverse engineered whimwhoms work. I don't care if my tone curves look less like a hysteresis curve and more like the curves of the back of the Lochness Monster, but as long as my edits work and the result is super.

 

Initially it did not matter if at 1st I did not get the results from slider 4 and 3 combined, I could fall back and try 5 and 3 with a little vibrance or tweak a curve, so many iterations and combinations of curves, sliders and numbers all interact with each other to wriggle that histogram and make it dance.

After some 600 images being run through LR4 Beta, its already not taking long to look at a pic and know,  - as you said with the snow photo, what I want to achieve from my image, and the processing is rapidly becoming intuitive, like playing the piano with new keys and different harmonics, its just a learning curve, and one that is a little like a giraffes neck -  steep, but not spotty.

 

 

As for annoying non camera buff people, I'm sure they have annoying non photographer habits.

 

I still get - "You take a long time to take a photo"

followed by

"Those are very good photos"

 

 

 

go figure

 

Message was edited by: hamish niven - typos

Well said .

R

Love the chiaroscuro drama! (you're from the north pole you say?).

How to maximize Love for Lightroom 4(b1), by Rob Cole

1. Adjust whites along with exposure.

     a. optimal ratio depends not only on how well highlights will like being spread out, but also midtone and shadow considerations (+whites -exposure expands highlights and left-shifts mids and lows...).

     b. set total "exposure" with that pair (initially) with the following adjustment of highlights in mind.

        ii. If you can see you're going to need to jack the highlights down, then factor in an estimated boost of total "exposure".

2. Set contrast lower than you think you'll want.

    a. highlights/shadows and the rest are easier to set when contrast is not too high, and will also affect contrast.

    b. finely tuned contrast is best done using tone curve anyway.

3. Adjust highlights / shadows & blacks...

5. Finish contrast adjustment using the tone curve.

    a. my tone curve adjustments are often more targeted at the bottom end, since Lr4 has more latitude in adjusting highlights via the basics, and the "help" afforded by auto-shadow recovery ranges from perfect to not-so-much.

    b. fine tune contrast to compensate for inability to perfect "type 1" toning issues (ref: previous page) using basics.

6. Add a touch of clarity maybe.

7. Final touches using locals.

    a. negative clarity for all the places where new clarity overbrightens or just doesn't look nice.

    b. increase contrast, etc... on edges to simulate the effects of old clarity, in the cases where the excessive edge darkening halo thing was actually a plus.

    c. intricate toning adjustments to brighten / de-brighten places where the local adaptive behavior has not been ideal (type 2 toning issues, ref: previous page).

    d. if you pushed a little hard with the +whites -exposure thing, spot reduce overboard highlights.

I'm still working on just how to integrate bottom end basics into all this - story still unfolding...

legend: you meaning me, and anybody else who may benefit...

Of course, my rules are made for breaking (or ignoring)...

Rob

Well, whites are similar to blacks, and highlights are similar to shadows (and contrast seems pretty symmetrical), BUT there is no equivalent to exposure on the dark side, which is why I normally use a tone curve to primp the left tones.

R