How I edit PAINTERLY photos using JUST Lightroom

in this video what I want to do is show you just using Lightroom how you can create really painterly looking photos like this shop here [Music] I think everybody fantastic to see you again and the first video from my new campervan which I'm super excited about and the end of the video I should give you a little bit of a tour around and show you some of the elements of it I I needed to do a lot to it yet so there's a lot of things I just need to customize a little bit to make it to make it a little bit more cosy but I'm stopped at the side of a country road here in the fog which I usually get excited about but I'm on the moors so it's not fantastic and I thought I'd talk I was going to do this at back at home but I thought I might as well do it here I've got my laptop and I'm gonna talk all about painterly photos and how I edit and create my pain to the photos now something that people ask me all the time on Instagram how do you make your images look painterly and I suppose it's something that I didn't really think about but more and more the last three or four years I've taken a greater interest in artists and you know particular artists like Gainsborough and constable and Fredrik and these artists tend to have a look that I like to have in my photos and I don't know whether that's a bit of a coincidence or whether I've been influenced a little bit more than by them years and years ago when I did art but I think now it's it's more than a coincidence I do look at the paintings and I try and recreate some of the elements of those paintings now a lot of it comes in actually taking the photo getting out there getting that photo and it's trying to prove visualize that in your mind and I've done a video on pre-visualization and what you're trying to do is capture that emotion within the final edit so what I want to do is show you three ways I think you can edit your photo to create a sort of painterly look the things that are important but before I jump straight into Lightroom which i think it's probably best thing to do I'll just show you some images that I've taken that I think a fairly painterly [Music] no I don't think it is right so what I'm going to do is I'm going to jump in a one photo and then I'm going to go through some of the photos and show you the edits that I've done on those photos so the first one I'm going to edit is this one here so this is one of mass patria CERN in the Faroe Islands some amazing weather this was the shot I took and then the edited shots are the more painterly look I'm trying to achieve is this shot here so you can see there's a big difference between it mainly it's warmer but there's more nuanced difference than that so I'll go through what I do when I usually look at it and the three things that I'm looking to do is I'm looking to draw the eye with light and shade so I'm trying to create more drama in it from a light and shade perspective from dodging and burning using graduated filters I'm trying to match colors in it so I usually only like to use two colors and in my image in my images and I don't like blue so much I'm trying to reduce the blues and just tone the other colors together really really nicely and then the final thing is just to create that sort of soft look to it I tend not to sharpen things I don't use clarity a lot in fact to use negative clarity mostly and what I'm trying to do is just create that soft look because when you print it it looks amazing you don't need it to be too sharp okay so the first thing I might do on this one is just warm it up so I you know like right Lightroom is meant to be edited from the top down so I might just warm it up a little bit the exposure is looking quite good but I might just increase the exposure just a little bit that's good I'm just going to click this button here so that I can see whether I'm blowing my highlights and then what I want to do is straightaway get into doing some dodging and burning and I use a graduated fuller filter first so I'm gonna go ahead add a graduated filter on this bottom half here and I'm going to increase the exposure and then I'm also going to increase the contrast what can't contrast does it doesn't just increase the black and white contrast but it increases the color contrast as well so you get more saturation in your colors and that's usually how I add saturation in my colors by using contrast so that's okay for that I'm going to add another one on the sky so I'm going to I might move this later but I'll just add it about there I'm gonna increase the exposure increase the contrast of that as well reduce the highlights to bring out some of the texture and on that one I'll probably just add just a little bit more warmth because I want it to be a contrast between the warmth of the sky and that cold feeling of the snow at the bottom so yeah that's looking pretty good now the other thing I want to do is this area here that sort of reflected and it was quite calm flat feeling to the water and I want to sort of accentuate that in this area here so I'm just gonna have to raid your filter to this and again I'm doing this rough-and-ready but you get the idea and then there I'm just going to increase the kompozer of it I just need to invert that so I'm going to do it to about Val probably reduce that in a minute I'm going to reduce the clarity and I'm also gonna make it a little bit warmer so I probably expect a bit too much they'll just do the white so I don't increase the exposure for blacks that'll do so that's good now I've got this sort of area that looks really good and it just adds a bit more dynamic nature to it the next thing I want to do is just probably do some more dodging and burning but I'm gonna go to the colors I'm going to tweak the oranges and yellows and probably a little greens although great there's probably not a lot of green in this no there isn't so I'm going to just make the yellow a little bit yellow and I'm gonna make the orange a little bit more sort of orange and then I'm going to just notice a blue that way but I'm also going to desaturate the blue quite a lot because I don't really like that blue sky so I'm going to desaturate the blue and then probably add some saturation in the orange in yellow there now it's got to be careful even though it's not showing it I think it's getting a bit tight that area there so I'm just gonna drop the shut highlights of the whole thing no that's not gonna work so I'm gonna go back to my graduated filter and maybe just drop those highlights a little bit and add another graduated filter here just to darken the sky and bring your sort of bring you into the image a little bit so I think I probably just need to on that just drop the exposure a little bit that's good yeah that's better and now I want to add some more radial filters just to these areas here so I want to just darken these down so I'm just got a radial filter and I'm just gonna darken this area down again I'm gonna do this really quickly you'd obviously spend a lot more time doing this and another one here as well so we're getting closer now so the next thing to do when the color is split toning and it's something that I do on all my images so that's where you tone the lights and the darks to be what color you want them and the saturation of that color so in this case I'm going to tone the highlights to be a sort of a more orange color about there I'm going to turn down the shadows maybe to be a bit blue yeah probably just about there and that is not far off now I tweaked it a little bit more probably if I look at the one that I did before when I edit a photo it always looks different so what I did before was that one so yeah it's probably a little bit warmer oh I know one thing I haven't done actually so the one thing I didn't do is when I did this graduated filter here I want to reduce the clarity of this area here just to create a more ethereal look to it so I'm just gonna drop this clarity down reasonable amount yeah that's good so that just creates a softer look to the whole the whole image but if you zoom in you still have that detail there I'm not losing that detail I'm just creating a softer look I don't want those really hard edges yeah that's that's pretty good that's that there are three things that I would do so it's looking at softening the image down a little bit by reducing clarity in certain areas dodging and burning over different areas and just changing the and by doing that you can create really painterly images that can look really look really great now I never touch sharpening at all so I use the default sharpening that comes in from a camera never ever touch it anything that I do a clarity is always probably reducing the clarity or if I increase the clarity it's just in certain areas and reduce it in other areas I think what I'm gonna do now is because it's still looking quite foggy and I'm hoping that fogs gonna drop a little bit I'm gonna go drive maybe take some shots in some woodland and then when I get to the place I'm gonna stop I set back up again and we'll carry on and I'll show you how I bet it is some of these other painterly photos [Music] [Music] moving again everybody sits next morning now so it's because it was a fast night at my camper van last night and I just wanted to sort of concentrate on that and just see the sort of things that I needed so I'm sort of part of the side of the road now I've just taken some photos actually you can see it's a pretty amazing morning I've got my cup of tea so yeah so let's have a look at some other ones I'll just show you the difference between before and after and how I did that so we'll go to this one here so this is an image that I took in the Faroe Islands and you can see that again it's got a painterly look to it I've tried to reduce the colors a little bit I've not added too much saturation in this case I have added added some clarity but then in certain areas have reduced the clarity as well so the before was this you can see that here I had that the clouds have exposed it correctly I hadn't overexposed it but I'd always intended to sort of make that that area in the distance which is that blue sky which i think is distracting just burn it out so I burnt it out and the way I've done that and I'll just show you this on this particular image it's all I've done is I've just increase the the exposure there and significantly reduce the clarity of that area and what that does is it just creates a nice blend where you've got a blowing out area and it's a really good idea if you've ever got like Sun coming in from the side to do that put a radial filter on and just reduce this clarity so you can see all I'm doing is we're just reduced in that clarity and it creates that sort of soft glow coming from from this area here so that I wanted to show you the next one is this shot and which is an interesting one of pebbles on a rock looking out and I have to say that this was slightly inspired she's not anywhere near was good obviously but slightly inspired by Caspar Frederic who's sort of 18th century artist and if you look at his shot here and put it beside and the one of pebbles you can see that the color tone ian is the same so I've seen that one a cusper Frederic after had taken this shot and I tried to tone it the same so if you look at the before on this particular image so if I just click this image here we look at it before you can see this is the standard shot and I've just if I just flick before and after you can see that I've just toned it slightly differently so I've not really changed the image all have added some graduated filters one at the top one here just to crate probably should we use a radial that was probably just being lazy just to create a darker area here and then the key thing is is just here I've changed the hue of the purple in the sky so this just just changed it ever ever so slightly and again the blue and then I've increased the saturation of the yellow and what I often do in in in most of my shots is play around with the hue saturation and luminance to try and tone colors together what I'm trying to do is create maybe just a duotone image really and I'm trying to tone those images together because I feel that gives a more painterly look so that's that one I want to show you this shot here so this this is the after and this is the before so you can see that again it's perfectly exposing probably after probably under exposed to it just by half a stop or something but I didn't want to bring out this too much but obviously wanted to lighten this up and also cloned out these lakes here because I felt that they were distracting there's little I suppose little tonsillar on what they're called lockets probably in Scotland so you can see this is the after and again you can see I've changed the toning of the of the color here and then I've reduced the clarity somewhat on this particular image then increase the contrast then reduce the highlights and increase at shadows which is something that I tend to do quite a lot and then again radio filter that's the key thing of added a radial filter in there on this one the radial filter is just affecting all the outside and not this so what I did here is a left this central bit the same and darkened everything around it to create the emphasis on this bit of light over here so your eye so it goes down here and eventually just sees this little bit of light coming through so yeah that's that's that's what I did there I mean it's fairly simple really it's not a huge amount a huge amount to it and then again on this one here this is the after this is the before and you can see that I've added a radial filter I think I've just in just a darkened down all this and then on this particular one and this is something you may want to do in Photoshop rather than Lightroom because it gives you a little bit more flexibility but I've just masked in this road here and on this road I've had it I've increased the contrast and the whites so if I just deleted that you can see it's not done a lot it's just brightened up that road and then right at the bottom here obviously I've changed a huge saturation luminance but right at the bottom I have just added a vignette on it so quite strong one and then I also just brought out some of the detail in this in this island here but the key things to remember are you know worrying about dodging and burning radial filters graduated filters thinking about clarity and which elements of the image you're going to add clarity to and then thinking about the hue saturation and luminance and how you can you know reduce the number of colors in your image and just tone those colors together that's how I create my sort of painterly look on my photos and I think it works pretty well yeah is something that I think it looks good and it can add a really nice look to an image and it's something that looks fantastic when you printed it out I'm gonna drive home now and then when I get back home I think I'll show you around a little bit a tour before was it a real thanks for watching today I hope you found that useful there's so many different ways that you can edit photos and the most important thing looking at prints here and I've just been sort of stopped again and flicking through my prints again is it's just creating that emotional link that's the most important thing with a photo you've got to try and create an emotional link that you have with the photo originally and that the viewer has with the photo and I did a video here on emotion in photography so can take a look at that it was in the summer in my garden in fact okay so a bit bit of news the photo competition are going to announce the results next Sunday yep next Sunday so if you haven't entered that you still got time details in a previous video okay I'll give you a quick a really quick tour about my van I posted some photos on Instagram and I got lots of comments saying what fat is here and when did you get it etc etc so I need a slurp of tea so I got this van it's a Mercedes Marco Polo I got it four days ago now and I've been thinking about getting a van for a long time but I wanted to make sure I'd established my photography business first and thanks to you guys really well not just thanks to you guys I just couldn't I've got this van unless everybody watching supported me so thanks ever so much I really mean that because I from wherever when I started YouTube I just never in my wildest dreams expected to be able to earn enough money to be able to buy a camper van it would just not even I thought if I could just get by that will be great but through my masterclass and workshops and print sales and ad revenue on my youtube video all those little bits add up to make in what is now quite a comfortable living and I'm so lucky I travel the world I realize that but thanks ever so much to it to everyone that's that's watch the channel and supported me you really want to see the van don't you so it's Marco Polo it's a Mercedes it came out about three or four years ago I think I was going to do a custom fit van but then I just seen people having problems with them I didn't I don't have a huge amount of time doing videos and traveling and working out new ideas for things I thought my times best invested in a van that I can use straight away and get some benefit out of for my youtube channel so I bought it specifically for doing that and this has got everything in it I was going to get a VW California but I just couldn't sit in while I've got a really bad back I've got a trapped nerve in my back and I can't sit for long periods of time where's this van although it's too uncomfortable allows me to sit and drive you know for at least for an hour so I can sit do an hour drive and then stop which I usually do so that's good news and this is pretty much the same layout as a California so I'll show you grab the camera here and you can see where I'm looking here I've got my prints my computer and there's the cabin where you can drive and do things like that just drive really it's probably you do these rotate these seats here now the roof goes up as well but I've got a problem with a leisure battery at the moment so if I put the roof up then I'll probably never be able to put it down again unless I'm connected to electrics that's getting sorted next week and so if I just go through here you've got so if I go through here you can see if I look back then that is the roof area up there and then down here there's two seats in the back that turn into a bed and then there's this area here where there if there is things like a synced etc which is which is which is pretty cool so and then I'm gonna be sleeping up in this area here and and I'll leave this just set up and I'm going to set up all the cupboards with various things for you know all my accessories from a photographic stuff it's got a heater water all the sort of things you're inspecting a camper van I'm gonna pimp it up a little bit better because it looks it's really nice but it looks a bit clinical inside at the moment it just just needs a few home comforts and go outside says but this is cool electric door so if we just go outside now you can see that there we go so there it is and yeah it's pretty cool that's the camp of um great thanks for watching I'm gonna do a full tour we do a whole video on it by the way thanks for watching and until next Sunday bye [Music]

Channel: Nigel Danson

Views: 123,270

Keywords: photography, lightroom, how to edit in lightroom, lightroom editing tutorial, landscape, landscape photography, landscape photography editing in lightroom, editing landscape photos in lightroom, tutorial, nigel danson, Nigel Danson photography

Id: V5EnrvGHgMg

Length: 21min 58sec (1318 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 12 2020