Comments on: 8 Steps to Crafting Images in Lightroom

By: nick

nick — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 02:46:52 +0000

Hi Helen,
Since I read and follow your articles on L3, I have more and more saved pictures. Before I saved 1-2% from a shooting and since L3 and you got on my work habits…I’m saving 20-30% of the shots.
Still on the learning process and get this L3 to work for me…
Thank you for sharing your experience and knowledge with us.

By: Alex

Alex — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 14:45:55 +0000

Great information, thanks! Been using the trial of Lightroom for a couple of weeks now and was undecided if I wanted to keep using it once my trial is over. I really like some of the tools in it and all of your guides have been very useful.

I particularly like the saturation picker. Click on part of the photo and increase/decrease the saturdation of associated colour(s). Great for making an object stand out!

By: Thabo Buthelezi

Thabo Buthelezi — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 10:07:49 +0000

enjoyable as usual, man pliz, pliz help i take pictures of cars during the day using Sony@350 or @200 please tell me how my settings should be everything from white balancing,aperture, shutterspeed, P, M. Auto or what help me out i look up to you and your readers

By: Helen Bradley

Helen Bradley — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 14:06:43 +0000

@elizabeth halford – Hi there!
The Graduated filter only works from the edges of the image inwards so it has to start at an edge somewhere – similar to how a graduated filter would work on the camera. So, you can’t remove areas from the edge per se. However, you can use the Adjustment Brush to paint over the areas to remove from the Graduated Filter’s effect and set the Adjustment Brush settings to counteract the effect of the graduated filter. So, if your Graduated Filter adds Brightness then set the Adjustment Brush to remove Brightness so the nett result is no change.

You may reach the point where the benefits of using Ligthroom are outweighed by its limitations and you’d be off to Photoshop to make your image. But until you get to that point, Lightroom lets you create images like this far more easily than you could ever do in Photoshop.

Hope this helps?

By: Elizabeth Halford

Elizabeth Halford — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 13:46:23 +0000

@Helen: you know in step 4 how you dragged the grad filter over the sky? Well it also has to cover the top of the roof. Is there a way to erase spots affected by the filter which you want to remain unaffected?

By: Alysa

Alysa — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 03:25:47 +0000

I’m in the process of figuring out which photo editing software i should purchase. The end goal is a business in wedding photography.

I’d love to hear opinions on the best photo editing software out there – i’ll say i’m not the most technical person in the world, so if there are two similar products but one is definitely more user-friendly that would be helpful to know.

Any information would be helpful.

Thanks,

Alysa

By: Reiad

Reiad — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 20:34:14 +0000

@mikael: I think she was just trying to illustrate her point as indicated by the last sentence of the introduction.

By: Amber Johnson

Amber Johnson — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 20:10:26 +0000

Great tutorial! I have one question that you might be able to help me with or someone on here can. When you were useing the Graduated filter I noticed that after you were done with the filter it left the white dot behind. I know why it is there and how to use it but my lightroom 3 that I have stopped leaving that white dot behind. So now I can not go back and adjust the settings or if I want to pull it back and forward I can’t do that either. I have only been using lighroom for about a year and I noticed the problem back in lightroom 2. So I have not been able to use the Graduated filter for 3 months or more. So once the filter is in place that is it for me. Lightroom doesn’t let me even slect the edit button like it use to once I apply the filter. I don’t know what happened. I can still use the adjustment brush just fine and it leaves the dot behind so I can go back to it. I thought that once I upgraded to lightroom 3 from lightroom 2 that maybe the problem would go away but it didn’t. So is there anyone who knows what I can do? Has anyone else had this problem. Please someone shed some light on this.

By: Mikael

Mikael — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 13:34:16 +0000

I don’t see why the sky should be so dramatic. It draws attention from the rest of the image and looks unnatural and amateur.

By: Sylvia

Sylvia — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 20:44:57 +0000

HI Helen,
Great tutorial! I am a professional portrait photographer, and after much debate with a fellow photog, I decided to add Lightroom to my workflow, what a difference. I still do creative postprocessing in PS3, but I now have LR to help!