The SIMPLE LIGHTROOM EDITS I use - editing your amazing photos

hi everyone and fantastic to see you all again for another midweek video I am blown away by all the people at tag lair photos hash 2020 and this week what I'm going to do is look at editing some of those and show you how you can do really simple edits and it can make quite a big difference to the photo [Music] so I've gone around seven or eight photos that I chose and you guys have sent me the war files so I'm gonna have a look at those first of all I've just got this from Nikon which is the Z 50 twin lens kit and this is the top prize in the world landscape photography competition so if you haven't entered it's only ten pounds a few people have asked what charities is going to one image UNICEF and how UNICEF are going to help the children that are affected by Kobe 19 but to have a chance of this you need to enter and you've still got a few weeks to do it so I'll just put that and let's just go straight into these images the first one is this amazing woodland shot here from tedious Cooper's I probably pronounced that wrong I'm really sorry and it's already got a lot of atmosphere it looks it looks fantastic so on this shot I think there's a few things that we can do to sort of it improve it a little bit and what I'm going to do is I'm just going to go into the develop module here and I usually look over my preset so I'll go through my presets and see which one I think works well for this but in this case I'm not going to just apply a preset obviously I'm going to I'm going to go and edit it from the beginning so first of all what I want to do is I just want to just apply a vignette to it so I'm going to just do that with a radial filter and all I'm gonna do is just dark on the outside of it I'm not going to crop it at the moment but what I am going to do is just remove this branch down here because I just don't think it quite I think it's just a little bit distracting now I'm doing this really quick you'd obviously spend more time than I'm doing on this so once I've done that I'm just going to have a little bit of play around with the exposure the contrast and shadows and I'm probably going to do more of this with the s-curve so with the curve I'm just going to create a s-curve which just increases the contrast and I'm going to flatten the blacks just by moving this up so the blacks aren't truly black so that's a little bit better there and the big they want to do with this image is I actually want to mess about with the colors so I'm just going to go to the hue here of the colors and I'm just going to play about with them a little bit until I feel I've got something so but basically what what I want to do here is I want to make the earthy tones a little bit more earthy and I'm going to just pull out a little bit the Greens here as well so that's all I'm going to do there and then I'm going to split tone it as well so what I want to do is I want to bring out some of the warmth in the highlights so I'm going to just go here and probably just want to bring out some of the green colors in the highlights as well so about there for the highlights and then the shadows I just want to make them a little bit bluer so maybe about there so that just gives it a nice atmosphere to the image I think that's that's looking a lot better now that the the final thing and all the only other thing I'm going to do to this image is I'm just going to crop it a little bit so I'm just going to crop a tiny bit off that side tiny bit off that sign it's tiny bit off the bottom and I'm going to just tweak the white balance a little bit low I just want to cool it down a little bit once I've done that I might go back to the highlights and just add a little bit more warmth in and that's it that's all I've done so I've gone from that to that so you can see that vignette had a big impact on it because it draws your eye into the middle of the scene I quite like to do that with woodland scenes it's also good if you have just a white area in the distance that you can see through to it gives it adds a bit of mystery to it but I yeah I think that looks really nice now it's a fantastic image okay on to the next one from Paul so this is a sort of a Lakeland scene here I've got this lake and this tree and some nice clouds so first thing I'm going to do on this one is I'm just going to go in and crop it so I'm going to crop it about there my crop it again afterwards I don't really mind these distractions at the bottom because I'm gonna tone those down a little bit but what I want to do is is darken the whole image first of all so I'm just going to go in and dark and the whole image and I might brighten some areas up again I'm gonna darken it and you can see that this is really well exposed got all the detail in there in the highlights here so I'm not bothered about this blowing out at the moment I'll deal with that in a minute I'm also going to do a grad on the sky so I'm gonna darken the sky even more have a grad warned the sky up a little bit and I'm gonna just desaturate it a little bit which I usually do and just because I don't want to darken that tree anymore I'm just going to go into a luminance mask here and just say don't impact the dark tone the really dark tones of this image and that will stop it darkening the top of that tree so that is that and then I want to just remove some of the green in this mossie because I think it just distracts it's not in keeping with the image so the easiest way to do that is just just go into the saturation of the green I'm just gonna drop that down a little bit maybe of the yellow a little bit as well and then what I want to do is bring back some of the light tones here so what I want to do is just add a radial filter here I'm obviously doing this really quickly but I'm just go around a radial filter invert it and then just increase the exposure here maybe just reduce the highlights a little bit I might warm that up a tiny bit and I'm going to reduce the clarity just to soften it off a little bit so I've just created a little bit of a drama in there where you can see this bright area coming through now I've got to just sort out the bottom of the image because this is blowing out here so I'm just gonna do a graduated filter there and I'm going to just reduce the highlights and I'm also going to do a radial filter here and I'm going to darken this bit down so I'm gonna do quite a big one invert it and I'm just going to reduce the exposure of this bit here just just to soften that I'm gonna probably I want to keep the contrast there so I added some whites back in but I've reduced the exposure and that isn't far off I think now I just want to play with the color balance so probably just tone it down a little bit and then finally the final thing I'm just going to add a I've been yet on it so I'm just going to and I'm further vignette on it on it all just to create a little bit more drama and that's it so my before and after that's before that's after just really simple edits can make a really big difference okay on to the next one which is an image from Robin from Germany and actually Robin just sent me an email when we sent me this photo he sent me an email with a really amazing blog on his area of Germany which is called saxon switzerland don't know why it's called that but it's in Germany but I'll put a link below to his blog just gonna have a look at it it's got some amazing images there but also it's a location in Germany I'd never heard of and it looks spectacular so definitely recommend go and having a look at that below but this is one of Robins images again this is unedited it's perfectly exposed it's not blowing out where it shouldn't be blowing out and not bothered about the Sun there and this is a good example of where just a subtle bit of editing can make a really big difference now if I go into this you can see that if I just exposure then there is detail in the rock but I don't want to open up too much of that detail so what I do is I just mess about with the exposure to see what I want to do and then I'll put that back and then all I'm gonna do is put a graduated filter on that again I don't want it to affect any of the highlight so I'm just going to drop that down and then all I'm going to do is I'm just going to increase the exposure and contrast and whites and all I want to do is I want to pull out some of the detail in the lighter areas of the rock I'm not too bothered I want the shadows to stay dark because the sun's over there the shadows are gonna be dark and if I open up the shadows too much it's gonna look really odd so I'm not gonna mess with the shadows at all all I'm wanting to do is just pull out some of the detail there I'm gonna cool it down a little bit I might come back to that though and then the other thing on this is the Sun it's just a bit too like a spot so what I want to do there and I've talked about this in this video here about using a radial filter I think was one of the first five and five videos are dead but all I'm going to do is I'm going to do quite a big radial filter and then I may do a smaller one I'm going to increase the exposure and I'm going to increase a color temperature I'm going to reduce the highlights a little bit so what I want to do might just increase the feather a little bit what I want to do is they just want to soften that out now the way to do that is just reducing the clarity when you reduce the clarity you get that softness to this now it may also add a bit more saturation in that as well maybe a little bit more warmth and then I'm going to add another one another radial filter here a bit closer to the middle and then in this one I'm going to do it even more just invert it I just want to soften that out and on this one I'm gonna color it a little bit and what I'm trying to do here is I'm trying to and I can just reduce the D haze as well I want to create a really soft glow from this Sun that's much better so what I've done there is I've gone from this quite harsh ball of a Sun to a much softer glow it looks much nicer and then the other thing I'm going to do is I'm just going to put a graduated filter I'm going to make sure I don't affect the tree so I'm just going to move that up a little bit and I'm just going to reduce the exposure now of the sky a tiny bit and maybe warm it up and then maybe also increase the saturation a little bit that is looking pretty good so I've done is I've gone from that to that her Robin did a probably better job than me on it so he's already edited this so go and take a look at his images below they're fantastic right on to the next one so this is a quick one I'm gonna just apply one of my presets to this one just to show you because this is a good example of the shot that I take quite a lot and just to show you how if you have some presets it can make a really big difference now I always say you should make your own presets but if you haven't got time to do that and you should have time because we're all in lockdown then you get my presets down below and there's a discount code for them but what what I do is I just go through them and think okay which one's gonna look good for this and then I'll edit based on that then maybe I'll star this one called helm crack so this is one that just brings out some of the brown tones and softens the greens in the image and I'm going to crop it a little bit to love the image this I really really like it's so simple of this tree just going across agonal look really good when there's lots of verticals and then what I'm going to do is I'm going to add a radial filter in the middle and I'm just going to reduce the exposure of the outside just to draw your attention into the middle a little bit and then I'm also going to just reduce the clarity a little bit and probably just increase the exposure of the whole image and then reduce the color temperature what I want to do on this is add some highlight toning and I'm going to do that some orange highlight toning so I'm just going to add some orange highlight toning to bring out a little bit more of those brown colors but I want the the shadows to still be blue so I'm just gonna drop in some blue tone on the shadows and that's not far off I think I could probably on the view this is a fantastic image this one here those are more so the previous increase so this image back from James is just a look and that's very nice it's so but it's made a big difference and let's have a look okay now we take that to that and on the same note using that radial filter and again I do this a lot and that's why I'm showing it on a few a few images because it's something that I do a lot in my photography okay on to this image here which is from Christopher and to be honest you could do nothing to this image and it'd still be gray now it's interesting because he Christopher sent me three images because he'd done a a stack of it this is just one of them and he rightly taken three images because it's quite a big contrast range between the highlights of the Sun and the shadows of the reeds but if you look at the histogram up here you can see that I've got everything in I'm not blowing anything out and because I'm not gonna be pulling up the detail in the shadows too much otherwise it'll look really odd I think we probably don't need to do a HDR on this we don't need to stack the images we can just work with this one image and all I want to do is just do a radial filter in the middle and again just soften that Sun a little bit so it's going to be a simple case of just adding a radial filter there making sure it's just affecting the middle area and then just I'm just going to increase the exposure increase the temperature warm it up a little bit reduce the highlights and I'm going to just color it a little bit as well and all I want to do and then by just adding reducing the clarity here I can just soften it all which looks really really nice all I'm trying to do is just draw your eye to the Sun a little bit more making that more attention so the only other thing I need to do on this is probably just darken the sky down so again I'm just emphasizing that sunset so just a quick case of darkening the sky down I don't even think this needs much of a crop but if anything I probably just crop it in from there like that and this is just such a beautiful image but sometimes you feel like you have to over edit images but this is one that doesn't need that and finally I just want to go through these two images now I'm not going to edit these images because the I chose them because I felt that they had really good edits already so the first one is this one which is a fantastic image that was taken with a black-and-white four in mind the reason I know that is that Ian's profile all these photos that he takes on there are all black-and-white images so he's gone and taken this image knowing it is going to convert it into black and white and I think that's something you should really think about when you're taking an image you shouldn't go back and then just try it in black and white you should go out with the intention of taking a black and white image and then you'll end up with a much stronger shot so this image is great because it's got a blue sky which got really dark and contrasts really well with the white fluffy clouds we've got strong texture in the grasses and we've got strong leading lines with this fence going down into the into the distance so it just works really well as a black and white image and quite often when you shoot images in harsh sunlight and you get harsh shadows they don't look great as colour images but there's black and white images they can look really good you know just take she one took her for example and the street photography he does he uses that shadow and light to create those really strong shapes which then create really strong black and white images because it shapes and texture and light and tones that you want to work with in black and white so I want to show you that one I also wanted to show you this shot here by David is is fantastic and it's a really good example of something that was just edited so well you know he's captured this shot and and rather than keeping the sky in the top of the image he's crop that out so your eyes they're not distracted but that creates a really strong image and he's got a fantastic strong line through this image as well from the bottom left through following the river through to the amazing waterfall in the distance I've been blown away by the shots that you guys have sent in so keep doing it and make sure you enter world landscape photographer we've got a few weeks left before before we sit down and start judging the photos I'll definitely be doing some videos on our judging process as well so you know even if you don't win a prize you might appear in one of those videos okay I think that's it thanks ever so much for watching keep adding your photos to hash 20/20 nd I'll keep doing videos using those photos in the mid week and I'm now going to concentrate on Sunday's video which is going to be a belter of a video I'm so so excited about it so until then bye [Music] you

Channel: Nigel Danson

Views: 204,818

Keywords: lightroom, photography, lightroom tips, lightroom editing, before and after, lightroom tutorial, lightroom tips and tricks, editing your photos, nigel danson, Nigel Danson photography

Id: pXXPf1gGjlI

Length: 18min 32sec (1112 seconds)

Published: Thu May 07 2020