Click on any phrase to play the video from that point.
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[Lightroom for Travel Photography]
One of the challenges of travel photography
is that you’re often in a particular location for only a short period of time.
And during that time, you can’t control the weather and you can’t really control the lighting.
You can certainly choose to photograph a particular subject
at a particular time of day, for example,
but sometimes you'll still run into challenges.
And this provides us with an excellent example of a situation
where you might want to apply a targeted adjustment.
In this particular photo I have a sky that looks a little bit bland.
There are some clouds which are actually kind of nice,
but they are relatively bright and there is not a lot of definition there.
And so I’d like to add a little bit of contrast to that sky
so that those clouds really complement the overall photo.
Lightroom provides a couple of options for applying targeted adjustments to your images.
One of those is the gradient adjustment.
This allows you to apply an adjustment that affects an image in a gradient fashion--
for example, adjusting the top of the image but not the bottom of the image
with a smooth transition in between.
For this image that’s not an ideal solution
because I don’t have a straight horizon.
I’ve got some mountains over on the left and then this fortress over on the right,
and so it’s a bit of an irregular shape.
So instead I’ll use the Adjustment Brush.
I’ll go ahead and choose the Adjustment Brush.
And the way I generally work with the Adjustment Brush
is to apply an exaggerated adjustment
so that I can see exactly where I’m affecting the image.
And then once I’ve fine-tuned the definition of the area that I want to adjust--
in this case, the sky--then I’ll go back and refine my adjustment.
So I’ll start off with an exaggerated exposure adjustment.
I’ll just reduce exposure by its maximum value,
and then I’ll scroll down a little on the right panel to take a look at the brush.
I’m not worried about the brush size because I’ll adjust that on the fly in just a moment.
I want to make sure there is some feathering--in this case, not too much feathering.
I just want a relatively gradual transition along the brush edge.
I'll leave Flow at 100, but perhaps most importantly,
I’m going to take advantage of the Auto Mask feature.
I don’t want to have to paint the exact shape of the sky.
I want to let Lightroom do some of the work for me.
So I’ll move back out over the image.
I can adjust the brush size with the left square bracket key to reduce the brush size
or the right square bracket key to increase the brush size.
And with the Auto Mask option turned on, all I need to do is paint within the sky.
What I want to do is keep the crosshair over the sky, the area that I want to adjust,
and keep the edge of the area that I want to adjust
relative to the area that I don’t want to adjust within the brush circle.
So just like this I’ll go ahead and click and then paint along this edge,
being careful to keep the crosshair in the sky but the circle overlapping with,
in this case, the mountains and then the fortress
once I get over to that side of the image.
And by doing this, Lightroom will be able to automatically define the edge of the area
that I’m trying to affect.
So I’ll go ahead and continue my brushstroke all the way across the edge of the sky
with the fortress and the mountains here.
That’s looking pretty good, and I’m almost finished.
As you can see, I’m moving relatively slowly.
I want to be as accurate as possible here,
but I don’t need to work too terribly slowly.
Lightroom is actually making this task quite easy--surprisingly easy, actually.
Once I have that basic definition of the line between the area that I want to adjust
and the area that I don’t want to adjust,
then I’ll turn off the Auto Mask feature and then I’ll simply paint over the remainder of the sky.
And because I applied an exaggerated adjustment,
it’s quite easy to see which areas I’ve painted over and which areas I have not.
I can also turn on the checkbox below the image
that will enable the Show Selected Mask Overlay feature.
That will put a red overlay that is translucent into the sky in this case,
but I prefer to work with an exaggerated adjustment.
I find it’s just a little bit easier to see exactly where I’m painting.
That looks to be a pretty good mask.
I’ve done, I think, a very good job of defining the sky, the area that I want to adjust.
Now I can come back to my adjustments and fine-tune them.
Obviously, I don’t want to darken the sky, or at least not too much.
I do want to add some contrast to the sky, so I’ll increase the value for contrast.
I might brighten the sky up just a little bit more.
I don’t want to reduce the exposure too much,
but I'll increase contrast a little bit more.
I might even add some clarity just to add a little bit more definition into that sky.
I can continue fine-tuning those controls
until I’m happy with the overall adjustment for this area of the image.
At any time I can also go down to the bottom of the Adjustment Brush controls
and turn off the adjustment so that I can see the before version of the image
and then turn that adjustment back on--in this case, a relatively subtle adjustment.
I just wanted to bring out a little bit more detail, a little bit more texture, in that sky,
but thanks to that Adjustment Brush tool
I’m able to apply that targeted adjustment very, very easily.
[Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4]
