My Lightroom Processing Workflow for Wildlife (Birds)

hey guys this is Anthony Morgan tee I am mr. photographer dot-com in this video I'm going to show you my Lightroom wildlife workflow so that you could take an image that looks like this and make it look like this I'm going to be processing two different images of birds in this video in the past I have demonstrated my late room processing workflow for wildlife photography but like many people I've kind of changed it over the years and refined my technique a bit also with the last update to Lightroom they introduced the texture slider and I really believe the texture slider works great with wildlife photography and I've incorporated it quite heavily in my workflow hence I wanted to do an updated video and we're gonna start out working with this image I like to crop early in my workflow it really doesn't matter when you crop but I like to crop early it's just a habit most people tell you that you'd probably crop at the end and again it doesn't matter so I would start off by cropping the image and when I hit the crop tool you could see it's really doesn't need to be cropped I was fortunate enough where I got relatively close to this bird also I was using along it lens with the teleconverter if you're interested in all the gear I used the settings I used and the exposure info you know what f-stop what shutter speed all that stuff it'll be in the description below the video so you'll get a better idea what I was using where I was focusing where I was drawing exposure from and all that look in the description below the video now great I don't have to crop so let's just jump right into processing it my habit is what I do is I look at what the image needs most and really it's a pretty decent exposure it's got good focus but when I look through it right in here this little of these feathers in here they're very bright they are white feathers so there's not a lot of detail there so I want to do the first thing I want to do is try to get detail throughout the entire image so I'm gonna go to the basic tab and I'm going to bring the highlights down so I'm just gonna bring it down till I see some detail in there what I tend to do and those of you that watch my videos know my workflow for just about anything the first couple slider moves I'll do is really taking contrast out of the image I'm making the image as flat as possible I borrow that from videographers when videographers grade video first of all they'll shoot the video very flat and then they'll grade it at the beginning make it even flatter when you do it that way you'll minimize noise and you'll be able to then make that video look like anything you want you want it to be like a desert dusty look you'll be able to do it from there if you want it to be dark and new our look you'll be able to do it from there if you shoot dark a noir and then decide you want to make it you know dusty and desert II it's going to be impossible to do so that's why we shoot raw so we have kind of the flatter image and then at the beginning I'm gonna make it even flatter so I brought highlights more towards mid-tones and now I'm going to open up the shadows a little bit and bring those more towards mid-tones so in effect I've just made this image flatter next I'll start to introduce some of that contrast by getting a white and black point and I do that by holding the alt or option key and it's Alta pfpc option if you have a Mac and click on the white slider and I'll move it to the right till I see some color bleeding through that means I'm starting to clip the whites when you're clipping whites that means it's absolutely white no detail is there so I want detail throughout my highlights and white so I will back that off till all those colors disappear so I'll just keep backing it off backing off till doop they're all gone next I'll do the same thing for black so I'll hold the alt or option key again and ultra a PC option if you have a Mac click on the black slider and I'll move that and in this case this bird has a black eye I want that black so we'll leave that black like that and then I'll look at the image it's still kind maybe a little bit bit dark so I'm gonna just bring it up a little bit more this was dappled light as you could see there was like a shadow on the bird here it's brighter here so it's a little more challenging to process when you're dealing with dappled light but I kind of like that black point so I kinda as you notice those of you that are new to my videos I jump around I don't just go right from top to bottom if exposure was off I would probably move the exposure slider first but exposure was fine so I jump right down to highlight shadows first then I do whites and blacks now I don't like to add contrast with the contrast slider I prefer to get contrast with the white and black point and then if I need any more contrast I'll go to the tone curve and I usually will use the drop down and go to medium contrast see what that looks like or strong conjure now I'm gonna go to medium contrast that's actually a little bit too dark in the darks for me I'm just gonna push it up just a little bit so I'm gonna just modify it just a touch so this is the shadow side and pushing it up and we'll make it brighter so I just did a minor adjustment there now I'm going to jump down to the presence section of the basic tab and go to the texture slider and I mentioned that to me this is a game changer it works so great with feathers and fur I mean even at a hundred it's not really over baked I mean and look at all that great detail there so I'm gonna back it off though because I'll be doing other things to add some sharpness to it but I think yeah I I could go really high with texture it's unlike clarity if you go too high with clarity it starts looking like pseudo HDR so with texture though you could go very high so I kind of like that and I will add a bit of clarity clarity will affect the luminance values a little more so than texture will so we add back that off a little bit too so we have then D haze I'm not going to do anything with D haze here it's not hazy I'll vibrance and saturation I'm going to add some saturation just a little maybe around 10 I don't want to misrepresent the bird whenever you're processing wildlife you really shouldn't misrepresent the animals so don't make the beak more orange or yellow than it already is don't you know you just want really you know nice renditions of the animal that's true to what it was so I'm going to turn saturation up to +10 now I see I have a sensor spot right here so I'm gonna click and get rid of that just because it's bothering me I'm gonna resize it I'm using a Apple Magic Mouse so I'm just dragging my finger along the mouse to affect the size you could affect the size of course here with this slider and you could also use the bracket keys the left bracket key makes it smaller right bracket key larger I want that center circle just a little bigger than that spot no click on it and I don't like where it's sampled so I can move it there that's good all done got rid of the sensor spot so pretty good so far I like everything I did you know I don't want to do anything with split toning I'm going to jump down to detail now this was shot at relatively low ISO with a camera that has good high ISO performance there is a tiny bit of noise and I do noise before I do sharpening noise reduction before I do sharpening so there's a tiny bit of color noise I usually will do that first color noise there's kind of little if you look very closely I'm not sure you'll see it in the video though there's little mostly little red and blue dots sometimes there's little green ones too and I'm just going to move that until that color is gone so there's just dots gray dots not not red blue and green dots then I'm gonna take and that actually got rid of a lot of the noise so I'm going to take noise reduction and move it up now you don't want to overdo it with either the luminance noise reduction or the color noise reduction because you will soften the image and we just added all that texture and clarity to get that nice sharpness and we don't want to obliterate it with the noise reduction what you can do is go to the detail sliders he and bring back some of that detail by moving these to the right you may introduce some of the noise though so you just be careful with that wait you're better off doing is get rid of the noise then go up to the sharpening slider and now specifically I want to look at the feathers of the bird I'm not going to worry about the background and I'll tell you why even though I might be introducing noise when I do that but I'll move it up looks like hey go pretty high with this like 57 now I did reintroduce some noise in the background but that's okay what we're gonna do is we're gonna mask it with the masking slider hold the alt or option key and again alt if you have PC option if you have a Mac go to the right wherever it's white is being sharpened wherever it's black it's not being sharpened so I'm just gonna move it so it's mainly sharpening the blue heron and nothing else so so far so good looks good so I like it so far I think I'm almost done but now was dappled light and you know it might be because I'm a little fatigued staring at it but just this part right in here just looks kind of out of place dark and maybe a little bit in here so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna get a brush and I'm gonna have exposure up I'm gonna have feather and flow all the way up and I'm not gonna have auto masts chucked I'm gonna get a larger brush by using my magic mouse just drag my finger on it if you don't have a magic mouse if you have a regular PC Mouse they as a center click wheel just spin that wheel and I'm just going to paint in here now just to brighten it up a little undo that last one by hitting commands I think that is a little better I'm just gonna maybe tone it down just a little bit yeah I like that better there's before and there's after now it's not really misrepresenting the bird because that is just dappled light causing that kind of look the bird did have a darker spot right here in a it's still there I didn't like make that white now I'm gonna get a new brush I'm gonna click new and again I'm going to leave exposure up and I'm gonna come across the beak of the bird here make it just a little brighter I think I went off jump over to the erase brush I also could just hold the Alt key in take that edge away alright that looks better I think take that down a little bit there's before and there's after I think that looks much better now I'm pretty much done with the bird I just sometimes I like to add a vignette it helps especially when you have these brighter corners it helps draw the viewers attention more towards the center of the image where the bird is so I'm just gonna add a vignette a little bit sometimes I don't like the way the vignette does what it's doing so I might not add the vignette but what I'll do instead is I'll get another brush and in with this brush I'm going to bring exposure down and I'm gonna get a huge brush and I'm just gonna take I'm sorry flow down to like 50 and come in here and paint in a darker area over here I think that's where it needs it more so than anywhere else in the image they're just like that so there's um before all the brushes after all the brushes and I'm done so I'm done with image one I consider this one done well go to this image now this image has a slightly different issue it's kind of dark where is that other one was a little bit brighter in areas and I had to bring highlights down to bring some definition into the feathers this one's kind of the opposite now with this one a crop again and again I was fortunate enough to get close enough in a head gear this was done with different a whole different camera whole different lens actually and again all that info will be in the description below the video so with this one I don't need to crop but I'm gonna go it's dark right but I'm not gonna do exposure it's not really underexposed it's just that the darker feathers are a little dark so I'm gonna go to shadows and open those up now we could see some great detail on this guy right look at that nothing done to the image at all just and you can see how sharp it is and everything already so pretty easy now I'm gonna bring highlights down so again I'm making it flatter and bring in the shadows more towards mid-tone when I open up the shadows by moving the slider to the right take highlights down I'm bringing those more towards mid-tones so I'm making the image in effect flatter now I'm gonna go to the whites slider I'm gonna reintroduce some contrast hold the alt or option key in and move whites to the right and I'm starting to clip up here in the brightest part of the image he has nothing to do with our bird so I'm actually just going to look at the bird I don't want to clip any of the feathers so I'm gonna back it off till the feather stop clipping and I don't care about up here so we're good to go there now as far as blacks are concerned this is darker so we have some clipping right away now I'm not going to open it up I don't think oh maybe yeah why don't we do that we opened up blacks a little bit too so we have some detail throughout that bird next I'm going to jump to texture this magic new slider and I'm going to move it up considerably I think I move the other the previous one up to around 50 also if I remember right +43 and this one pretty high too in the 40s now clarity again maybe not as much on this one I don't think it needs it so I'm not going to do anything there I am going to bring saturation up just a little bit like around 10:00 almost that background is almost like too too saturated isn't it so I'm not gonna move saturation up at all I think it's adversely affecting the background so what I could do instead of that is go to the brush and I'm going to reset exposure I'm going to turn saturation here up to like 13 to start with we'll get a brush I'm going to stay on the bird I'm not masking it I have I got to put flow all the way up though just help bring out the subtle colors of the feathers of the bird come in here just gonna do a real quick but you can see that's kind of got that kind of blue sheen going on the feathers on the head we got little bits of yellow in the feathers and so I think that's good and it doesn't then adversely affect the background like I felt the other adjustment was doing um so I'm done with that I don't think I need any other brush adjustment don't need any clarity I'm gonna jump down to I don't I think it's contrast II enough I could try medium contrast here I I don't care for it I'm gonna leave it like that I'm gonna go to detail could see by default I have when I import images all the sharpening noise reduction all at zero there is a way you could do that so when you you might have noticed when you import images in Lightroom you'll often get a default amount of sharpening added a default amount of color noise reduction usually added I don't like that I like it to come in clean I do have a video that demonstrates how you could set up Lightroom so it will not give you any default sharpening or any other settings and I'll link that video in the description below this video if you're interested on having that work that way for you now as far as this image concern it was shot at a much higher ISO than the previous image and you could see there's a lot more noise a lot of color noise so I'll jump there first and I found this slider you really don't have to move it much I'll move it right to 20 and it really eliminated the color noise there's still noise but there's no more color dots then I'll go to the luminance noise reduction and I'll just move that to like 35 take a look it's kind of you kind of get to know by looking at the noise where you got to move the slider like I know just glancing at it somewhere around 40 it's probably going to get rid of it so I went to 35 and it got rid of most of it so if I move it to 40 you know it didn't really make that much of a difference so I'm gonna leave it at 35 I really again don't want to overdo it because I'll turn this off and you can look at the detail in the bird itself and you can see how we lose a little bit of that definition now we did get rid of the noise that was in there a lot of color noise and this one so that's good and when you zoom out you can't really tell us much little bit there a little bit so that's cool that's cool we'll bring it back with some sharpening I think somewhere sharpening around 40 is probably working and then I'm going to mask it so it's mainly doing the bird I'm again I'm gonna hold that altar option key move to the right and it's mainly doing the bird so there's before and there's a and we'll zoom in there's before and there's yeah so not bad I think that's good it was at a pretty high ISO so I think it did a pretty good job there all right now vignette I don't really want to put a vignette on it because I don't want the bird darkened down here but this white part up here is bothering me so what I will do is I'm going to do the spot removal tool and you're gonna need to do it in clone mode I'm gonna show you what happens in Heel mode but I'm just gonna get a larger brush that's going to you know cover this and I'm just going to paint over this area here alright let's let it do its thing okay I kind of you know move this up a little bit see this like dark area over here go to clone mode watch just click clone and it should look a little better yes it does so kind of got rid of that in a way I come over here okay kind of duplicated that I don't duplicate that that kind of dot there all right that looks better now I need to go on top and I have all these other overlays in my way so I'm going to go down here in the left-hand corner where it says tulle overlay Auto and I'm gonna turn that to never and then I'll be able to come in here and and do stuff a little better and what I'll do is I'll just keep kind of doing this until I get the background in these corners looking like I want it to look or at least better than what it was I don't want anything kind of overly distracting back there I just want it kind of you know blurred like it is like it was but just not white so that looks much better I'll turn the tool over lay back to auto and we when I'm over it they're all their clothes that tool now I don't want again I mentioned I don't want to add a vignette but I do want to darken it around there a little bit so again I will get the brush and I will come in with exposure down a little bit and I'm going to bring flow again down to around 50 get a humongous brush this time and come up in here and just kind of darken around there and every now because I have flow at 50 it's not coming on full strength it's going on lightly but I could turn that down a little bit and then I could come in every every time I brush across it adds to it so I think that's better okay let's do it before after theirs before and there's after before after go to the previous one I didn't do it before after there there's before and there's after before after you could see how I shifted kind of the focal point from the right side of the image more to the bird itself and similarly for this image here I just brought the bird out more prominent in the shot that's it that's my updated workflow for working with in this case feathers in future videos I'll do a workflow for maybe fur and things you know other different types of wildlife photography and maybe even like domestic animals like cats and dogs and stuff I'll do some videos on that as well thank you everyone that watches my videos I truly do appreciate it I'll talk to you guys soon you

Channel: Anthony Morganti

Views: 29,458

Keywords: photography, photographer, post processing, adobe, lightroom, photoshop, wildlife, wildlife photography, bird photography, birding

Id: ckRCL-fWcYw

Length: 23min 52sec (1432 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 08 2019