Click on any phrase to play the video from that point.
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[Lightroom for Travel Photography]
When I'm done photographing for the day during a trip,
I like to sort through my images, both to get them organized
and also to find some favorites that I might like to optimize a little bit and share with others.
This particular photograph was captured from out on the water in Hallstatt in Austria.
You can see it's a little bit underexposed, it could use a little bit more kick,
and, overall, just a little bit of a touch-up.
I'd like to improve the appearance of this image so that I can share it with others.
So I've selected this image.
I'll go ahead and switch to the Develop module,
and I can take a look at some of the adjustments that are available to me.
In many cases, you might find that the simplest approach is to simply use a preset.
I'll go ahead over on to the left panel under Presets, for example,
and we can see that there are a variety of options available to us.
And of course you can also create your own presets if you'd like.
For this image I think I'll simply reset the adjustments
so that I have no adjustments applied.
And I'll work with the basic adjustments in order to optimize the appearance of the photo.
I generally start by adjusting whatever I feel is the biggest adjustment that's needed,
the biggest problem, you might say, for the image,
and here it's certainly exposure.
The image is a bit dark, and so I'll increase the value for exposure
in order to open up, to brighten, the overall image.
I think I'd like to also have some contrast,
so I'm going to increase contrast--not too much,
just enough to give the image a little bit more impact.
Next I think I'll take a look at the color temperature.
For the most part, I'll adjust the Temp slider,
the temperature that allows me to shift toward a more yellow appearance
or a more blue appearance.
I think I'd like to warm up the image just a little bit,
so I'll shift it a little toward yellow but not too much.
I don't want to lose the cooler tones in the background, for example, in the rocks.
So I'll keep that adjustment relatively minor.
I can also take a look at the Tint slider.
This shifts between magenta and green.
And generally, I would only use tint
to try to compensate for any problematic green or magenta appearance in the image.
That looks pretty good, but I'd like to get a little more impact.
I'd like to improve the presence of the photo.
And so down in the Presence section I can increase clarity,
which is sort of like reducing haze.
I could also reduce clarity to get a more ethereal look to the image.
But for this photo I want a little more snap,
so I'm going to increase clarity a bit, and I think I'll also increase vibrance,
which helps to intensify colors without getting an artificial appearance
which is sometimes possible with saturation.
That's looking pretty good.
I think I might brighten up the image just a little bit more--
not too bright, just enough to get a little more impact
so that I can see some more detail in the photo.
I think I might warm up the photo just a little bit more.
Right about there it looks to be pretty good.
There are certainly many other adjustments that are available to me in Lightroom,
but in this case, just the basic adjustments seem to be all I need
in order to really optimize the image.
In fact, let's go ahead and take a look at the Before & After view.
I have the before image on the left and the after image on the right,
and you can see we have an image that's much better exposed,
the colors are more vibrant, and it just overall has a lot more appeal.
And that is much closer to the way I remember things.
So now I have an image that's ready to share with others
so they can get a sense of the experience I had in Hallstatt.
Taking a look at another image,
I want to demonstrate some of the capabilities of Lightroom
in terms of highlight and shadow recovery.
I'll switch back to our full view of a single image here,
and in this case, looking at an image that has a relatively high degree of contrast.
We can see relatively bright clouds in the sky
and, essentially, a silhouetted object here in the foreground.
The top of this building is silhouetted in the foreground.
We don't have a whole lot of detail available in either the highlights or the shadows.
And yet sometimes it can be a little bit surprising
just how much information we can retain through some simple adjustments.
And the new Highlights and Shadows adjustments in Lightroom 4
really make this task very, very simple.
In this case, I'd like to reduce the brightness of the highlights,
to bring those clouds down and hopefully recover a bit more detail there.
And so I´ll move the Highlights slider over to the left,
and you can see that that's toning down the highlights, the clouds, just a little bit
so that we can see more texture there.
But perhaps even more importantly are the shadows,
and, in particular, the silhouette in the foreground here.
There I want to brighten up the image, and so I'll move the Shadows slider over to the right.
I'll start off with a very strong adjustment here
so that you can see there really is quite a bit of detail that we can extract out of an image
even when it appears that there is very, very strong contrast.
I don't need quite this strong an adjustment in this case.
Maybe right around there, for example, will give us a good balance
between retaining contrast but still having a good amount of detail in the photo.
And this, of course, is just one example of how you can use some of the adjustments
available to you in the Develop module in Lightroom
to really make your travel photos look their best.
And of course by spending just a few moments optimizing the appearance of an image,
you'll make that much more of an impression when you share your travel photos with others.
[Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4]
