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Bob Killen is the Adobe Education Curriculum Director for the California Center for Digital ... Numerous video and print
Bob’s Fool Proof Workflow for the Lightroom Develop Module Bob Killen is the Adobe Education Curriculum Director for the California Center for Digital Arts, an Adobe Certified Expert, and an Adobe Certified Instructor. Bob teaches Lightroom, Photoshop, Specialty Application programs for photographers, and directs the Center’s Art Photography program. Visit Bob at www.bobkillen.com and follow his Art Photography page on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Background Numerous video and print tutorials teach or instruct photographers techniques for enhancing images in the Lightroom Develop Module. Some are good— others not so much— and of course, you can develop your own workflow which may achieve good results, because there are no rules about how to reach the results that you may want to accomplish for any given photograph. While there is no ‘correct way’, there are best practices that professionals follow to attain consistent, duplicable results every time. Consistency and creative predictability are two traits that separate professionals from amateurs. Prior to digital photography, professional photographers used precise capture and chemical lab systems to achieve predictable results. With the advent of digital capture, we processed our images in Photoshop initially and relied on curves and levels adjustments to create color and contrast corrected digital negatives or files. When Camera RAW and Lightroom became available (the Develop module is identical for each), we now had a powerful digital darkroom and the ability to process our images with a workflow that was efficient, creative, and foreseeable. However, take it from someone who has been doing this a long time with great creative and financial success, you need a Best Practices Workflow, something that is foolproof, for creative control and efficiency. The basic foolproof system described herein brings discipline, efficiency, and creative flexibility to your work, and is what I teach in my Lightroom for Photographers Class.

Why you need a system? Most Lightroom users, and many teachers, push sliders this way and that in the Develops module’s basic panel until they arrive at an acceptable or pleasing image configuration. This process often overlooks the creative potential of the image and it is not possible to use random slider pushing in conjunction with a disciplined capture processes. The two must go together. When you capture an image, awareness of the exposure as well as the composition is critical to creating a strong, finished piece of work. You may intentionally underexpose or overexpose an image for effect, capture a balanced image of lights and darks, or some combination therein. Regardless of the capture, the image will have a black point wherein anything less than this point will have no shadow detail and appear black. The same is true for the white point. Your photographic goal is to deliver as much detail in the highlights and shadows as possible unless the elimination of this detail adds an artistic dimension that further informs or moves the viewer with an extended emotional range.

The Fool Proof System Concept Fool Proof is a powerful term, one that indicates without error and or incapable of error. The concept behind this system is to create a foolproof way to establish black and white points that reveal as much shadow and highlight detail as possible from the image file, carefully position the midtones, and determine the intensity of colors and color hues. It does not mean that you have a foolproof composition or the world’s most exciting subject.

The benefits of this system are: 1. Defining the black and white point defines how much detail we can reveal or hide for our viewing

audience in each case. 2. Establishing black and white points in the image often eliminates or reduces colorcasts. 3. Once we have created a strong base line image we are free to then to explore other creative possibilities by tweaking and or making significant adjustments to any one of our adjustment sliders. 4. We can also create virtual copies of our base line image and use these as exploration images.

The Process Open any of your own images and follow these steps or download the practice image. Lens Correction- We start here because we need to correct for any lens issues. Click on the lens correction panel and enable all three lens’ correction buttons and the auto button to straighten and align the image. If needed, use the transform tools to straighten the image further. If you have multiple images, that you have just imported then synchronize the others and get this important task out of the way for all of your images. (Note: In cases with severe color issues Step One is to Correct White Balance, which is not covered in this workflow pdf).

Detail- Click on Detail, then adjust capture sharpening and noise if needed. If all of your images are similar, synchronize this task.

Study and Analyze- Open the basic panel and study the image. Make sure that your clipping warning lights are on by tapping the letter J. This tells you if you have a highlight or shadow issue. Blue overlays indicate shadows are completely black and red overlay indicate that highlights are completely white or blown. You may also hold down ALT and drag your sliders so that you can see individual clipping data by channel. .

Set the Black Point- Adjust the black panel slider in the tone section. This will set your black point for the image. Setting the black point neutralizes your colors in most cases and creates a base line for the darker ones. We drag the slider to the left or right until the blue clipping warning just disappears.

Set the White Point- Adjust the white slider in the tone section. This will set your white point for the image. This creates a base line for the brightest tones. We drag the slider to the left or right until the red clipping warning just disappears.

Adjust the Shadows- Adjust your shadows to determine if you need to add a bit of detail to the shadows. Adjusting shadows and highlights reduces contrast so look at your image carefully as you proceed to see the effects on your overall contrast.

Adjust the Exposure- If you have a reasonably well exposed image, you may not have to adjust this slider. If you do, know that the exposure slider adjusts midtones and shifts the midtone data towards highlights or towards the shadows. Generally, for most photographers these adjustments are small but in difficult over or under exposure situations you may have to move this and other sliders significantly. You may also want to overexpose an image for effect such as high or low key.

Tweak- Tweak the sliders to arrive at an image that has the best detail possible in the shadows, highlights, and whites. However, consider the image mood and ambience. You may not want shadow detail or wish to reduce the highlights if they are specula. There are other basic panel adjustments in Presence and White Balance but we will come back to those in a few minutes.

Click the letter Y on your keyboard- On screen you will see a split screen with your original image on the left and your image with adjustments on the right. With just a few adjustments, you will see a notable improvement in the image one that you developed with predictable workflow practices.

Next Panel- Now move down to the HSL Panel, which is Hue, Saturation, and Luminance

Adjust the Luminance- Begin with the Luminance panel and adjust the sliders as necessary for the various color ranges. We begin with luminance because it is important to adjust the measurement of brightness in our colors to set the emotional range or key. Use the targeted adjustment tool to find the colors in the image.

Adjust the Hue- Adjust the hues of any colors that you wish to alter. We do this second because this adjustment affects the emotional range of the image at large. Hues describe the full range of a given color and thus, they affect the image’s expression and our perceptions.

Adjust the Saturation- Adjust the saturation if necessary. Increase saturation and we affect the boldness of the hue, or a desaturated hue may bring quiet and a subdued emotional range. Remember that when you make HUE, SATURATION, AND LUMINANCE adjustments that they are GLOBAL. Therefore, a yellow adjustment to a sandy beach may also affect the skin tone of someone standing on the beach. In many cases, you may want to skip a certain adjustment here and do it locally with the adjustment brush, or complete the process in Photoshop.

Tweak- Revisit the Basic panel and tweak the tone sliders as needed. This is because changes in hue, saturation, and luminance may affect the tones in the image that require a further tweak in the image. Usually these changes occur in the blacks and highlights.

Color Temperature- You may want to adjust the color temperature. Move now down to the HSL Panel, which is Hue, Saturation, and Luminance. *Note in cases where we have severe color temperature or colorcasts this may be Step One. I recommend that if the color temperature is in line that you do this step towards the end of the workflow and consider that you can make white balance adjustments for creative effect, not for WB accuracy.

Global Clarity- You may want to add some global clarity, but go easy with this control as it adjusts midtone contrast and it is easy to overdo the effect. It is often better to add this in certain areas of your image using the local adjustment brush.

Summary You now have a strong baseline image and we can extend the creative range of this image with our local brush, gradients, and other tools. Want to learn more about Lightroom and its power to make your images stunning? Join me in class!