Wednesday Q&A - When To Use Lightroom And When To Go To Photoshop

I've been seeing a lot of keyword searches bringing people to the gallery asking about when should you stick to either Adobe Photoshop Lightroom (LR4) or Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) and when should you go to Adobe Photoshop (PSCS6).  I'm not going to give the "right" answer, because there is no "right" answer.  It depends on all sorts of factors.  One would be what are you comfortable with.  We're talking about the Develop Module in LR4 or using ACR.  If the only reason you're considering buying a copy of LR4 is the Develop Module, don't do it.  The Develop Module in LR4 is exactly the same as ACR.  The only difference is where they put the tools.  That's it!

If you're interested in LR4 for the fast (super fast) sort and cataloging of the Library Module, go for it.  If you want to use the Map Module and Geo Tag your images, go for it.  If you're interested in the Book, Slideshow, Print or Web Modules, go for it.  But if you're only interest is the Develop Module, fo git about it (as they say in New York).  To find out about the workflow of today's image and when it goes from LR4 to CS6 and pingpongs back and forth, hit the "Read More".

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Sometimes It Just Ain't A Photoshop Thing

Why not?  The shot could be taken from just about anywhere, stick a tree along the left side, put a little grass along the bottom and you've got a pretty reasonable composite.  Easy to do in Adobe Photoshop CS6 (or earlier versions).  Then again, every once in a while, the shot is really there.  That's the case with today's image.  It's a one position panorama.  I say a "one position" because it is a three shot from the single position.  It's a three shot, but not an HDR.  Confusing enough yet?  Let's get started on how today's image was worked.

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Dealing With Details In Lightroom 4

Little bit of a celebration before we get started.  We've just pasted 400 posts here on The Kayview Gallery.  Not a bad accomplishment (I think?).  There's been "about" 400 different images.  I say "about" because a couple posts had little sketchy kind of things (like the other day) to explain how something was done and I think I updated the processing of one image with new techniques.  So, like I said, "about" 400.

We were at Buttonwood Farm in Griswold Connecticut over the weekend.  They were having their annual charity event and the place was mobbed.  Literally, you couldn't get near their ice cream stand and the line for the rides through the fields must have been one hundred people long.  The big "prize" for photographers is the fields of in bloom sunflowers.  The farm is at the 90 degree intersection of two roads and the fields occupy all four quadrants surrounding the crossing.  They must switch off where they plant the sunflowers, but there's always acres in blossom.

Today's image is at the edge of one of the fields.  The sky was pretty dramatic, so I didn't have to drop a sky into the composition.  The image did take a very short trip over to Adobe Photoshop CS6 to use Content Aware Fill to take out a road sign on the far right.  It ended up being an unnecessary excursion, because the area with the sign got cropped out back over in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4.  That's where all "the work" was done on today's image.  That means that (for me) it's a pretty darn straight image.

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Fighting With Photoshop CS6's Adaptive Wide Angle Filter

Okay, guess what?  The Adobe Photoshop CS6's Adaptive Wide Angle Filter (Filter/Adaptive Wide Angle) won.  What a shock!  Okay, maybe not so much.  It's new in CS6, I was playing with a pano and selected the Panorama option in the dropdown asking "what type of image are you working on".

Today's image is a five shot panorama.  The shots were taken vertically to get me the most of a very dramatic sky.  As is usual when shooting this type of pano, the wall in front was bowed,  It looked a lot like the landscape was smiling.  Made, what could be, a fairly serious landscape shot look rather comical.  The corn field at the crest of the hill appeared to be a crewcut hairstyle.  All that would have been needed was a couple of eyes to produce a landscape "smiley face".

The Fix:

Since the shot is made up of four images, CS6 couldn't figure out what (single) lens was used.  Once multiple shots are combined, CS6 drops the lens info from the meta data that goes along with a single shot.  Seems logical.  The computer can't keep track of if the combined image comes from a cohesive sets of shots (as in today's image) or if it's made from a combination of unrelated shots.  I chose to do the pano, as I have to live with that limitation.

It's a pano!  CS6's new Adaptive Wide Angle Filter has several choices when it wants information about what you're trying to do.  The dropdown is titled "Correction".  What you do is draw a line along the curve you'd like to straighten.  When click the dropdown and you see "Fisheye", "Perspective", "Panorama"  and "Full Spherical" to pick from.  Well I made a pano, so naturally I picked Panorama.  It turned the broad smile into a sly grin.  Not exactly what I was looked for.  That when the fighting started.  I tried anything I could think of.  I came to the conclusion that I just didn't get it.   I finally left it with its "sly grin" and thought I was asking too much of the Adaptive Wide Angle Filter (AWAF).

After a night's rest I thought I'd look at it again.  I'm a big fan of NAPP's Photoshop Guys.  One thing they all advocate is pushing buttons.  Sure, that's what it's "supposed to do" , but what happens if you try ....  What the heck, there's four choices and I'd been fighting with the one that seemed reasonable.  After all, I shot a pano and the AWAF had a panorama choice.  I couldn't "hurt" anything by pushing buttons.  I figured "it's not a Fisheye, it's a pano".  What's the worst that could happen if I selected Fisheye?  Make the grin back into another "big smile"?  Nope!  The wall instantly became straight as an arrow.  Just what I was fighting for. 

The "Morale":

If any version of Photoshop gives you choices, try them all.  You can't screw things up too bad.  You may get the effect you were trying for.  And, if nothing else, you'll learn a little more about Photoshop.

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Adding Drama To A Face Using Photoshop Curves

We had dinner with some friends last night (she's an excellent photographer and photoshopper) .  They're moving to Florida at the end of the week and it was our last time to get together.  During the course of dinner the subject of adding drama to a face came up and the fact that I routinely "enhance" a person's face using Scott Kelby's Curves Adjustment Layer "trick".  I've been playing with it since hearing SK explain it not too long ago.  She asked if I would let her in on Scott's secret.  It wound up too hard to explain just verbally, so I said I'd make today's post about it.   The easiest way I could come up to clearly show what was going on was to "cartoon" it.

Figure 1 is the little cartoon I made up in Adobe Photoshop CS6.  I'm a photographer, not a sketch artist, so don't laugh about my crude cartooning ability.  Hey, it's got two eyes, a nose and a mouth (sort of).  Think of it as a model with little to no makeup, flat lighting and a straight on shot.

Figure 2 shows the finished toning.  If you take a look at any of the shots with the Layer Panels showing you'll see that I copied both the shadows Layer and the highlight Layer.  In a real situation you wouldn't duplicate the Adjustment Layers.  I just had to do it so the highlighting and shading would be visible.  If you do it right (on a human) you won't see the changes unless you turn on and off the visibility of the Layer.  So, don't freak out about the copy Layers.  It's just so you can see what happened.

Figure 3 just proves that I did it in PSCS6.

Figures 4 through 7 is where the magic happens.  In Figure 4 we're looking at the Properties Panel for the Curves Adjustment Layer.  You can see that the Curve has been brought up very high in the highlights area.  This will give the overall image a really blown out look.  The Layer Mask is then Inverted (CTRL I [eye]) making it black and getting us back to a normal look to the image.  The "trick" is to use a small (5 or 6 pixel), hard (I was at 96%) brush and draw lines where ever the highlight needs to be emphasized.   In this case I went under the mouth, along the centerline of the nose, the cleft of the chin and above the eyes.  Since this is an Adjustment Layer of the original image you'll see variations based on the lightness of the shot.  I parts of the shot that are bright already the lines will look pretty faint.  In the highlights of darker areas of the image the lines will be pretty pronounced.  Because you're taking the cues from the images itself everything will match up well.

Figure 5 is just the opposite.  The Curve is pulled way down giving deep tones.  The same principle applies.  Anywhere you need to emphasize a shadow, put a line on it. 

Now here's "the secret".  Feather the Mask.  In CS6 you have a Properties Panel for every (I think it's every one of them) Adjustment Layer.  You can control either what you're adjusting and its Mask.  Click on the Mask icon and you have sliders for Density and Feathering.  Keeping an eye on your image, slide the Feather Slider until those lines are blurred enough so they become either shading or highlights.

A few of the recent posts here have used this technique.  You can see it used in the post of the girl blowing bubbles, where it was used to define her chin and her cheekbone.  Others were in the 6/25 post and the 6/27 post putting emphasis on the uniforms

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Lightroom to Photoshop to Plug-Ins And Back (And Forth)

I decided to play with some Plug-ins, got half of what I was looking for, backed out, went to Adobe Photoshop CS6, played with a couple Alpha Channels , go more of what I was looking for and went round and round to come up with today's image.

I know, it's a run on sentence, but that's what working this image was like.  Let me take you through it.

I shot the image yesterday, thought it had something to it, so I played with it this morning.  I straightened and cropped it to taste in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4.  Tweaked the Color, the Clarity, the Vibrance and the Exposure.  I thought it might gain something, so I brought it into Nik's Color Efex Pro 4 (Photo/Edit in/Color Efex Pro 4).  Looked at a couple presets and combined a couple.  There were three used.  One was a detail enhancer, one said something about an early morning glow and I don't remember the third.  It gave me a little of what I wanted, but the grassy area and the sky were just too garish for my taste.  The barn and fences looked pretty interesting.  So, I clicked the "Do It" button and fled back to LR4 before I really screwed things up. 

Once back in LR4 I highlighted the original and the "Nik'd" copies and took them into Adobe Photoshop CS6 as Layers (Photo/Edit In/Open As Layers IN Photoshop).  Because they were based on the same cropped image I didn't have to worry about any misalignment. 

Using the Quick Selection Tool (W) I made Selections of the barn and silo, and the lower fence.  I then put a Layer Mask on the top Layer.  It happened to be the "Nik'd" Layer, but it really didn't matter which was the top Layer.  It would have just determined what I wanted the Mask to cover.  I filled the Mask with both Selections, leaving the structures converted and the grass and sky back at their natural state.

I took out the gold color on the barn sides and fences, leaving it only on the roof using a Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer clipped to the "Nik'd" Layer.  From there it was back to LR4.

I used LR4 (you could just as easily use ACR) to darken the entire image by two stops using the Adjustment Brush.  I then went back and flipped the Brush from the Apply Mode to the Erase Mode and erased away everything the needed to be brought back to the exposure.  I applied a controlled vignette this way.

I did take one more trip into PSCS6 and created a New Layer.  With the Brush Tool (B) I used the Color Picker to get the gold tone from the roof of the barn.  I "painted" the "sun facing" surfaces of the cupolas and silo and then changed the Blend Mode to Color.

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Working With RAW Files In Photoshop CS6

I was over at a friend's studio the other day and as I got there she was working on one of her amazing images.  Great photographer, great post processor, she just comes up with images that blow me away.  Some are amazing in their simplicity, some in their attention to the fine details, some in content, others in concept, but always something that makes you say "WOW".  We were sitting around, flipping through some of her recent shoots when I stopped her and said a particular shot had some great potential.  She decided we should kick it around, tossing each of our ideas around to see what we could come up with.  That's when the fight started.  Here's this lovely woman and we almost came to a fist fight... over RAW file handling.  ???

We co-developed the image in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4 until we wanted to take it into Adobe Photoshop CS6.  The first thing she did to the modified, but still a RAW file was save it under another name.  The second thing was to make a copy of the Background Layer.  Then the verbal  fists began flying.  I asked what the heck was she doing.  Her reply was that she wanted to save the original file and she "always" worked on a copy.  Then she "always" made a copy of her Background Layer so she could get back to "ground zero" if she really made a hash of things.

We probably spent a half hour debating RAW files 101.  Whenever I do any one on one teaching I try to use a "guided discovery" style.  One of the first things you hear when you start using RAW files is that a RAW file (and I can't stress this enough) cannot be altered.  Short of tossing a grenade into your computer, a RAW file is a RAW file is a RAW file.  It's always going to be a RAW file.  In LR4 you can make nondestructive adjustments, but you have the ability to hit the Reset button and get back to the As Shot condition.  The RAW file is always there.

When you take a RAW file into CS6 (or any PS version that supports Raw files) the original RAW file stays put, if it's coming from LR4 (or any version of Lightroom) or from Adobe Bridge.  You can add Layers, Filters, Adjustment Layers, clip things to specific Layers, Liquefy parts of the image, turn it upside down, flip it horizontally and whatever other torture you'd like to apply to the image.  But (and this is the key) when you do a simple Save (not Save As) you wind up with another file sitting right next to the original RAW file. 

It goes back to the fact that a RAW file cannot be changed.  In my own workflow I bounce back and forth from LR4 to PSCS6 multiple times.  Every time I bring the latest iteration of what can best be done in LR4 into PSCS6 and Save it back to LR4 I get a new file.  I end up with 123.ABC.tif_Edit, Edit Edit, Edit Edit Edit, etc.  I saw a limit of three (Edit Edit Edit) in PSCS5, but haven't found a limit in PSCS6.  It just keeps going.

BTW:  Today's image IS NOT the photographer talked about in today's post.  It was just used to get your attention.  She was at a Renaissance Faire, hence the costume.

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