[Christopher Sanderson Gold Member Posts: 362]

Adobe Lightroom & Adobe Camera Raw

on: October 8, 2020 at 4:30 pm

For those who may wish to ask questions about Jeff’s Lightroom techniques as seen on the two Fall 2020 Zoom calls

[Peter Gallagher Participant Posts: 29]

Re: Questions re Jeff Schewe’s LR Edits Zoom calls

Reply #1 on: October 11, 2020 at 4:24 am

Ok. I’ll kick this off. I’m grateful to Kevin and Jeff for their efforts and time and to Jeff for sharing his edits.

What did I learn? First of all, I’ve exposed my own (recent) LR routine here: https://photopxl.com/forums/topic/my-processing-in-lr-classic-9-3/

So that’s my starting point (for LR on its own: like JS I sometimes take the ACR route to PS). Now on Jeff Schewe’s lesson:

1. Jeff spends a great deal of time/care on contrast management in local adjustments. Dozens of ‘buttons’ on some images. Seems pretty clear it pays off.

2. He does not seem to use de-haze as a contrast tool as much as I do. I should probably learn from that.

3. He really didn’t bother showing us much on global adjustments, which suggests to me that they don’t account for much in his final images one way or another. I tend to use AUTO and then tweak. Maybe this is all a global adjustment is worth.

4. (Related to 3) JS didn’t seem to focus much on the histogram in LR whereas I tend to use dragging-in-the-histogram as one of the main tools for gross adjustments. (On a similar point: I’m not sure what his view of ETTR is — he seemed sceptical — but I found it works for small sensors 20-24MP).

5.  JS made a couple of brief but really important (I thought) observations about contrast manipulation and saturation. I should pay more attention to that.

6. Cropping for the story. I try to avoid/minimise cropping because I use a µ43 camera. I try to get the frame right in the first place because I don’t want to ‘waste pixels’. But it’s crucial as JS reminded us when it’s needed.

7. Gradients in LR. Couldn’t agree more with JS. They need to be just a bit more flexible. It would improve their utility ten-fold.

8. Jeff didn’t show us much local spotting/cloning (because he was working with some nice RAWs from PhotoPxl readers). But these are the weakest ‘ tools in LR (compared, eg. to pixel-editors such as Affinity or even PS). ‘

9. Unless I’m mistaken, I don’t think Jeff even mentioned the curves adjustment. He seems to prefer using only ‘targeted’ local adjustments (also possible, in a way, using the curves panel). I use it as a matter of course. Will need to review that.

There’s’ more, but those are already more remarks than you wanted. I could be wrong, too.

I always enjoy seeing artists at work. More of Jeff and others on “post”, please Kevin.

Peter

 

[Jeff Schewe Gold Member Posts: 136]

Re: Questions re Jeff Schewe’s LR Edits Zoom calls

Reply #2 on: October 12, 2020 at 3:42 am

Peter,

 

Pretty accurate deductions…I usually don’t spend too much time on global adjustments because, well, they are global and therefore self limiting. I also don’t spend a lot of time, usually, with the Curves panel because the main effort I find important globally is to tame the White/Black points and the Highlights/Shadows adjustments. Once those are adjusted I’ll then touch Clarity (which strongly impacts the Shadows) and from there tend to move right into local adjustments, with Gradients or Adjustment Brush. I use Radial Adjustments less often and usually use the Post Crop Vignette t darken criers. But will use Radial sometimes to punch up areas as needed.

That said, I know HOW to use the Curves panel and will sometimes resort to very specific and precise Point Curve adjustments and sometimes have to use the RGB Curves to tweak color casts although I now tend to use the new Color Grading tool for that..of course, you guys don’t have that yet–sorry :~) But it should be released really soon..

I’m sure there will be some additional questions once the video is posted and people can see what I did to people’s images…it was actually very interesting and some of the people submitted their versions which made for a fun challenge to meet or exceed what they did. I’ll also post some additional info and urls which might be of interest…

[Robert-Peter Westphal Participant Posts: 16]

Re: Questions re Jeff Schewe’s LR Edits Zoom calls

Reply #3 on: October 17, 2020 at 8:31 am

Hello,

first of all, I want to thank Kevin and a jeff for taking the time and effort to do these two zoom meetings !

For me, and I’m sure also for many others, Jeff is the most interesting and precious source on information and the most experienced guy on working on images in LrC  I know off ! I hope that a Kevin will let Jeff do more interesting tutorials on this topic in near future !

Jeff, during the last second part of the tutorial, you mentioned a script by Marc Hamburg ( I think) for advanced usage of clarity. As far as I understood you right, you’ll be able to share it with us, so please, if possible, add the link to download the script here.

Many thank in advance Robert

Best regards Robert
Want to see more of me, watch my images at https://www.naturfotografie-westphal.com

[Peter Gallagher Participant Posts: 29]

Re: Questions re Jeff Schewe’s LR Edits Zoom calls

Reply #4 on: October 18, 2020 at 4:18 am

Jeff’s remarks about curves adjustments in LR are no doubt correct: it’s probably better, most of the time, to use other local adjustment tools because the curves adjustments in LR — despite coming in slightly different flavours — are always global even when the objective is guided by a ‘targeted’ adjustment.

It’s an entirely different matter in PS as Kevin’s conversations (on the L-L site) with Charles Cramer demonstrated. Cramer’s approach was an eye-opener for me and I’ve used it with good results ever since, although my technique is less refined.

I, too,  an interested in more advanced use of the clarity adjustment if that’s possible. But if I had a request for Jeff — should he want to do a future )(maybe short) video tut — would be to demonstrate his use of each of the local contrast tools in LR: clarity, dehaze and texture and the differences he knows (but I only suspect) between their potential in different circumstances.

Best wishes.

[Peter Gallagher Participant Posts: 29]

Re: Questions re Jeff Schewe’s LR Edits Zoom calls

Reply #5 on: October 18, 2020 at 4:21 am

Jeff’s remarks about curves adjustments in LR are no doubt correct: it’s probably better, most of the time, to use other local adjustment tools because the curves adjustments in LR — despite coming in slightly different flavours — are always global even when the objective is guided by a ‘targeted’ adjustment.

It’s an entirely different matter in PS as Kevin’s conversations (on the L-L site) with Charles Cramer demonstrated. Cramer’s approach was an eye-opener for me and I’ve used it with good results ever since, although my technique is less refined.

I am interested, like Robert, in a more advanced use of the clarity adjustment if that’s possible. But if I had a request for Jeff — should he want to do another (maybe short) video tut — would be to demonstrate his use of each of the local contrast tools in LR: clarity, dehaze and texture and the differences he knows (but I only suspect) between their potential in different circumstances.

Best wishes.

[Jeff Schewe Gold Member Posts: 136]

Re: Questions re Jeff Schewe’s LR Edits Zoom calls

Reply #6 on: October 19, 2020 at 12:32 am

Robert-Peter Westphal wrote:

Hello,

first of all, I want to thank Kevin and a jeff for taking the time and effort to do these two zoom meetings !

For me, and I’m sure also for many others, Jeff is the most interesting and precious source on information and the most experienced guy on working on images in LrC  I know off ! I hope that a Kevin will let Jeff do more interesting tutorials on this topic in near future !

Jeff, during the last second part of the tutorial, you mentioned a script by Marc Hamburg ( I think) for advanced usage of clarity. As far as I understood you right, you’ll be able to share it with us, so please, if possible, add the link to download the script here.

Many thank in advance Robert

Actually, it wasn’t Mark Hamburg-he did the Background Erasure which was the basis for the Adjustment Brush Auto Mask function. The fellow that made the MidTone Contrast action was R. Mac Holbert of Nash Editions fame-printer to the stars and midtown contrast was one of his secret weapons!

But, as fast as the Photoshop Action (.atn file) this download is a modification of the basic midtown contrast action but with variants that run from a radius of 12-100 for the HighPass blur step. This is a .atn file for loading into Photoshop as an action set containing the 5 actions I’ve included. If you know actions, you shouldn’t have a problem loading these in versions from Photoshop CS2 all the way through the most recent PS CC 21.2.4. There is an easy way to load the actions (I know this works on Macs, not sure about Windows) is unzip the file and double click the .atn file. If that doesn’t work, you can keep the action sitting on the desktop and from the Actions panel, choose Load Action and select ‘MidTone-Contrast-Adjust.atn’. Once you load the action set, you can move the .atn file wherever you want for storage.

Play with the action…it will always use all visible layers and end up with the result sitting on the top of the layer stack with a 20% opacity. Season to taste. I find the 12 and 25 versions really useful for enhancing smaller detail similar to the Texture slider in Lr (not the same mind you). The Clarity function is loosely based on a midtown contrast with about a 100 radius blur. Depending on the needs (and the resolution of the image you’re using, you might find doing a 200px and perhaps a 500px version of the action.

[Jeff Schewe Gold Member Posts: 136]

Re: Questions re Jeff Schewe’s LR Edits Zoom calls

Reply #7 on: October 19, 2020 at 12:45 am

Peter Gallagher wrote:

Jeff’s remarks about curves adjustments in LR are no doubt correct: it’s probably better, most of the time, to use other local adjustment tools because the curves adjustments in LR — despite coming in slightly different flavours — are always global even when the objective is guided by a ‘targeted’ adjustment.

It’s an entirely different matter in PS as Kevin’s conversations (on the L-L site) with Charles Cramer demonstrated. Cramer’s approach was an eye-opener for me and I’ve used it with good results ever since, although my technique is less refined.

I am interested, like Robert, in a more advanced use of the clarity adjustment if that’s possible. But if I had a request for Jeff — should he want to do another (maybe short) video tut — would be to demonstrate his use of each of the local contrast tools in LR: clarity, dehaze and texture and the differences he knows (but I only suspect) between their potential in different circumstances.

Best wishes.

Peter, it would be interesting to do a drill down on the carious local adjustment controls and what they do the same and different than their global cousins. There are some controls like Exposure and Contrast that are pretty much 1:1 both locally and globally. Highlights and Shadows vary a bit between local and global..the global adjustments are image dependent and therefore vary a tiny bit in their algorithms because I’m pretty sure the local versions are less image dependent, if at all.

The local sharpening controls are basically the same as the Amount slider in the Detail panel except from -50 to -100 locally, it introduces a lens blur.

The new version of the local control is different in that it has a Hue adjustment tweak which is really useful and there is no global control for Moiré and the Defringe in the Lens Correction panel is different.

So, lots of power in the local adjustments, which is why I spend a lot of time doing them even before taking an image into Photoshop. Of course, sometime you really need the capability and precision of Photoshop’s masking capabilities as well as other tools. It ain’t like Photoshop has lost its usefulness completely for me :~)

[Rand Scott Adams Silver Member Posts: 287]

Re: Questions re Jeff Schewe’s LR Edits Zoom calls

Reply #8 on: December 30, 2020 at 11:22 am

I second the “thanks” for these sessions!  I still have and often watch the original “From Camera to Print and Screen” (or vice versa… can’t remember) videos Jeff and Michael did years ago.  Still some of the best materials “ever” on all things digital.  Right up there with Jeff’s books.  The more recent video on PhotoPXL re soft proofing is another gem.  So, I also say, “More, more, please!!!!”   I know Kevin now mainly uses C1 and seems enamored with Luminar AI – but there are still, I suspect, a majority of us who are LrC / PS users.

I participated in Charles Cramer’s print workshop after being very impressed with the video series created on LULA when Kevin visited Charlie.  One of the fascinating demonstrations Charlie does, to demonstrate what the various Basic Panel sliders “do in general”  is to use a greyscale step wedge image.  It creates evenly spaced “spikes” in the histogram.  When you move the sliders it gives you an idea of what LR is doing with the tone placement.  Expanding, contracting, moving all evenly in one direction or another, or compressing one end or the other, or having an impact on the amplitude of the “spikes,” or some combination of these.   A demo like this from Jeff, with his intimate knowledge of the actual “guts and feathers” of what LrC is doing “under the hood,” would be fabulous.

Rand

Rand Scott Adams Rand47

[Kevin Raber Silver Member Posts: 1311]

Re: Questions re Jeff Schewe’s LR Edits Zoom calls

Reply #9 on: December 30, 2020 at 12:05 pm

Rand and others . . .

Much of what you are asking for and more was something we had planned to do in 2020.  The pandemic kind of shut a lot of that down.  while some could be done virtually it’s not the same as doing a full-fledged multi camera set up and doing it right.  Beleive me when I say, once we are out of this pandemic and can do things as a groups safely that we are going to pull out all the stops.  We will have in person workshops on printing and image processing as well as multi-part tutorials on a variety of topics.  We will travel and do location photography with photographers and bring you along for the adventure.  We have our own series of workshops (rockhopperworkshops.com) and lots in the works for 2022 when we know it should be even safer.  I’m excited to get back to real work again.

P.S. Just for the record, I like Luminar AI as I see it as a glimpse into the future of image processing.  IMO I will be sticking with Capture One.

I’ll put my head together and see if there is something that Jeff and I can add for right now.

Kevin Raber
Owner and Publisher of photoPXL

[Rand Scott Adams Silver Member Posts: 287]

Re: Questions re Jeff Schewe’s LR Edits Zoom calls

Reply #10 on: December 30, 2020 at 3:06 pm

Kevin,

Thanks for the response.  It’s great to have exciting stuff to look forward to.  I might even show up at a workshop you may have with Jeff so that he can pick on the “Wine Boy” some more!  🙂

Rand

Rand Scott Adams Rand47

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