Did you know this? Adobe Lightroom

1. INTRODUCTION WATCH FIRST: Hey guys, welcome to this tutorial about Lightroom. Now, this is the first chapter. In the first chapter, I want to explain some stuff. Now, there are many tutorials about Lightroom and Photoshop. Let's be honest, most of the things are pretty clear, like giving stars, creating albums, importing images. I don't want to create a tutorial that's about the basic stuff. I wanted to create a tutorial in the trend of, did you know? In other words, all the stuff that I use during my normal workflow where I think like, hey, I wonder if everybody knows how this works and if it's easier to do it this way. So in this tutorial you can find the standard stuff, of course, like importing files and sinking folders. But most of all it's those little things that you may or may not know about. Light room and of course there will also be a Photoshop version of this tutorial. Now, how does the tutorial work? You have several chapters, and I number those chapters one to the end of course. So watch them in those orders. Or maybe if you want to watch them in a different order, that's no problem at all. Just pick the ones that you like. However I want to highly stressed to first watch the extra videos. And we label those with letters, so chapter A and B, but there's also an extra video on color spaces. Now if you watch those videos first, you will have a proper grounding of what I talk about during the other videos. If you have any questions, of course, you can always reach out on social media and just ask any question you want. Most of all, I just want you guys to look through the videos with an eye like, hey, there are these little tips in there that I may or may not know about light room. So if you're ready I'm ready. I'm going to take you with me in my workflow for light room. Did you know that? Let's start. 2. CH A Setup Adobe Lightroom locations: Now everybody is different in how they set up their light room catalog. In my case, what I like to do is keep my catalog on a very fast SSD, externally from my laptop, but they always bring it with me on that SSD I'm using, so called Smart previews. That means that I'm always carrying all my images with me. But in Smart previews so they don't take up a lot of space. It also means that with smart previews on location, I can just retouch my images inside of light room of as soon as I'm home and I connect the hard drive again, in my case, the sonology, no. All those retouches will be, of course, transported onto the original images for the very simple reason. It's in the catalog. But how do I set it up? Again, your mileage may vary. Everybody has their own workflow, but this is how I set it up. I'm using one as as a backup and one as as a main. On the As, I have several folders. In my case, I have a photo beat, which means retouched images and of course also a photo Umeat, which are my raw files. I will make everything separate per year, so I have previous years, and I have my 2,023.2024, And underneath, I will create my folders with private studio behind the scenes or I. This is, I think, very important to find stuff back. Of course, you can also use smart albums and we'll talk about that later in another chapter. But how do I get my images in? Well, there are a few ways to do this. This is the part where you can go very, very wrong. Let's start a very simple, the first thing you have to realize is that there are two different ways to store your images. One is you can do everything in the catalog from light room. This is how most people start. And I don't think it's smart, because as soon as you stop using light room, you have that catalog where you have to get your images out. And that can be a little bit tricky. The best way, in my opinion, is to keep all your images raw files, retouched videos on a separate drive. That can be a directed tech storage or it can be a Us, like a phonology Us. And always make sure that you have at least two backups, one on location and one in the cloud getting the images in. First things first, there are a few ways to do this. You can dump your card, just very simple. For example, in the fold the way you want it. Let's say you dumped your card in 2024 in behind the scenes. The only thing you then have to do is hover over behind the scenes, press your right mouse button and say synchronize. Sorry, synchronize a folder. At this moment, it will start scanning that folder for new images and it will start adding those images. In this case, there's nothing there, so I can press synchronize, but nothing will happen. Now let's say that you want to add images that are on a different location. For example, on my desktop. Let's go to file. Let's go for import photos and videos. In this case, I just want to do something on my desktop. I have this Users Frank Desktop folder logos. And let's do only the click backdrops logos, but only one. There we go. Now it becomes tricky and this is the part where you really have to be careful. When you see here you see a lot of options. Where do you want to store it? Where do you want to keep those images? Well, that's because I'm still on Move. Move photos to a new location and add to catalog. We don't want to do this, we also don't want to copy it, but we want to add it at the locations where they are. Don't move the images, just add it to the catalog. At this point, you can choose to build previews. Of course, we want standard previews or one on one. We don't want minimal or embedded, we just want standard or one on one. And in this case also smart previews. With the smart previews, of course, you can retouch your images also on location when there's no drive attached, and that's really awesome. Don't suspect a duplicate goes without saying and add to a collection. In this case, we don't want to do this. You can also use developed settings. For example, a preset to all your images you import or meta data or keywords. In this case, we're just going to leave it like this, but make sure it's on at, at this moment I say import and it will now immediately add my Macintos HD here, and I will see my click backdrops image. Awesome. But there were two images there, right? Okay, click backdrops, right mouse button, synchronize folder, Now it will find one new image and I will synchronize it. The cool thing is it will now first show me that one image that was important, but now when I go here, I will see the two images next to each other. Now I might wonder, hey Frank, there will more folders there. How do you see those folders? How far over your click backdrops, right mouse button and say show parent folder. In this case it will show logos. Maybe you want to see another parent folder. Show parent folder this way you just work your way up. Now if you say, I don't know, I don't want to see folders and logos, don't worry, just parent folder. There you go. Now you only see logos. Now, the way that you set it up, again, make sure that your catalog is on a very fast SSD connected to your computer. I wouldn't do it on the internal SSD, but on an external SSD because your catalog can grow very big. And when you change over your laptops, well, it's easier to just plugging a hard drive with your catalog instead of copying everything. And also when you use a light room in combination with, for example, time machine, it's just better to have that on an external drive and just back up that external drive separately from your time machine. At least that's my opinion because otherwise time machine takes a lot of time and we want to make it fast, right? Okay, so this is the set up. Now let's talk a little bit about what kind of drive you should use and why enough system. The reason we're using enough system is because with enough system, you have a lot of storage, it's all in one compact unit. And the main reason is that it's a rate system. And rate means that you use different hard drives as one big volume. But if you want to upgrade your volume, you just take out one hard drive, put in another one, and the nuts will do everything automatically. Or you just have to say like, okay, add this drive to my storage pool. It's very simple and very easy to do, but most of all, when something goes wrong, no system is a delight. Let's say one of my hard drive fails, the nos will send me an e mail or it will start beeping. Let me put it this way, it's dead annoying that you will notice it and you will see which hard drive is defective. You take the hard drive out, put a new one in, and you can just go to sleep and well, the nuss will back up itself again. Very, very nice and very handy. But most of all, it speeds up your workflow a lot. Okay, Now that we've set everything up, let's dive into light room and let's see what we can do. 3. CH B The Colorchecker workflow: Now one of the most important things of course is to make sure that you have a proper workflow. So every time you take an image and you run a preset, it should look exactly the same, right? But it doesn't in most cases, when you shoot on the fluorescent lights or on the tombston, there's always this slight difference in your presets or maybe a lot of difference. So how do I get it correct? The first thing of course is the light meter. The light meter make sure that my exposure is correct so I don't have any blown out highlights, I don't have any clocked up shadows. It all looks exactly right. Doesn't mean it's the right look for that shot, but my base is right. The other thing, of course, is the color checker. When you look here, you see that we have one part for white balance and one part four colors. Now during this torial, you will hear me a lot talking about RGB, our primary colors. And of course, also about the X, y and the big Y, U, saturation and luminus. Now those are incredibly important for accurate colors. It's all connected. It's like a little bit of a puppet, if you take one string off, the whole puppet doesn't work anymore. And that's the same with color and white balance. Now to get everything in correct order, you can do a few things. You can cut some corners and just do this. You shoot the color checker, you go for your white balance picker and just go here. That already cleans up the shut a lot. Right now if you've an all the color checker you can also do this. Just pick one of those squares there. Right, done. But of course we want more. Now, all these squares have coordinates that are known by the software. In the case of a color checker, it's just a color checker. In the case of a calibrator, you put in front of your monitor, it will just project those colors. And then we'll read those colors. It knows what those colors are supposed to be. It reads something else. So it creates a correction profile. We call it ICC profiling or DCP profiling. In the case of Adobe, we use DCP profiling. The color checker software can do both. But if you want an ICC profile, you have to start up the desktop version. Now, when you buy the color checker from X T or Calibrite, this is the calibrite. Of course, you can very easily download the software, but if you download the software, you have to make sure that you also download the light room plugging. If you have the light from plugin installed, it's very easy. You just go to file, you go for export, and you just choose your color checker camera calibration. Now in my case it's still called X, right? But nowadays of course it's calibrit. Let's do this. Sony test for tutorial. There we go. And we just do export. Now it's important that you shoot the color checker as flat as possible. And of course, with the same light that you use in your final retouch, unless you're using gels at that point, of course, you have to take the gels off or turn those lights off and only do it with your main light source. Because if you use gels, it will infect, of course, that image with color. Okay, we have our pop up that it has been generated. Light room must be restarted to activate the plug in. Okay, no problem. Press Okay, we just quit lightroom classic. We skip. We can immediately just open up light room again now because we screen recording, everything goes a little bit slower. So with the previews just bear with me. So when we go down, this is where you in the old light room versions could change your presets or your profiles. And in my case, that didn't make any sense because this is the part that you should do the first set in your whole chain, right? Because now you create your colors. So let's go all the way up now. You can actually find it the way where it's supposed to be, up here. Now as you can see here, we already have our profile, Sony test. But let's just do that to Adobe Color. You can immediately see that the whole image changes. So let's correct the white balance. For now, it still looks a bit flat, right? Let's change it for something a little bit more vivid. Ada vivid, doesn't look right either. Let's do some white balance. Yeah, if you have the older color checker, you can also do it here. Doesn't look right. You can do, of course, here, browse. But it's way more fancy to just press these four. Now you open up your whole profile and preset section. Now here you can see that we have some presets created. This is of course the Sony test for tutorial. You select. After that, you just select all your images and you, s, let's close this for now and just say sync images. And let's do absolutely nothing. So check none except white balance and synchronize. But did it change the color checker? No, of course not. So let's do that again, sync, don't just do white balance but also do treatment and profile. And now when you synchronize, now it will actually take your color checker profile. So don't forget this, a lot of people only do the white balance and they go like it still doesn't look right, but what is the difference now? Okay, let's go up, just for fun, let's do proper white balance. There we go. I always advise, after you do the sink, just do a white balance just to be sure. And of course, when we go for our Adobe, look at the difference in colors, this isn't funny anymore. This is totally different. Of course, if you want to see it faster after each other, you just go here, go clear, and try to find the one that's correct because they're all different. So which one should you choose, right? Maybe we will trust Adobe. Of course we can trust Adobe. Adobe color, Adobe landscape. But they all look a little bit weird. It just doesn't look right. And then as soon as we go for our own, there we go. Now everything clicks. Now, the color checker isn't cheap. Of course, you have to replace it every three or four years. One of the things I highly advise with the color checker is to keep it closed. Don't open it up in the sun and just leave it there. It will destroy your color checker soon as you use it, close it right away or keep it in a pocket where sunlight can't hurt it. Then after about 23 or four years, just check your color checker and then you have to replace it. If you have a color checker that's six or seven years old, that one won't be accurate anymore. Okay. So now that we have our base, this is the part where you can use any preset that you created and you will get the same look. Because with wide balance, you take out your tungsten light, your fluorescent light, or your outside light. And by using the color checker, you actually create a profile. Now when you're at an event and one shooter is using cannon, one shooter is using Nycon or Sony. In the end, those images will now look the same or approximately the same because of that color checker, very vital part of your workflow. And you should actually watch this video first. Let's go on and let's see what light room can do more for you. 4. CH C Colorspaces: Now let me start off by the most asked question. Why should I calibrate monitor if my client doesn't use a calibrated monitor? The answer is actually pretty simple. Your client is used to that non calibrated monitor, He sees every image on that monitor. So make sure that you calibrate because otherwise your images on that client's monitor will look weird. Of course, we take into account that most photographers, especially professional photographers, do some sort of color calibration. So that's why it's important, even if your client doesn't have a calibrated monitor, you have a calibrated workflow. But what is the calibrated workflow actually? Well, we have to make sure that red shows up as red, right? We have to make sure that the red in real life also translates to what you shoot in your images and what you see in print. And that's why we need a certain agreement upon where those colors are. It's actually pretty simple. Those coordinates are divided into a color space. Color space has three coordinates. It's a three dimensional space. The first one is x, y, and the big Y U. Saturation and luminance for all color space is the same. Now the coordinates of where those colors lay, that's a little bit different. Now, the most known color space, of course, is RGB. It's a relatively small color space, but we also know Adobe RGB, which is a bigger color space, as you can see up here. Now there's also a third color space that we use for monitors a lot, and that's three. Let's do that. When we talk about the monitors, we now know that we have three coordinates which determine the color space. And we know that we have color spaces that determine those coordinates. It makes sense, right, To make sure that everything that we should, that it fits into that color space and is calculated towards that color space. But how do we do it? Well, let me start off by explaining to you guys how we do it for the camera. Now, of course, as a photographer and doing video, the first thing we have to make sure is that our cameras are calibrated, right? But how do you calibrate your camera? Do you open it up with a screwdriver and change some stuff? Luckily, you don't have to. What we use in our studio and also on location is of course the calibrate color checker. Now in our case, we're using the color checker duo because the color checker duo also supports video and photography. It's a little bit more expensive, but it's still cheaper than buying two color checkers, one for photography and one for video. Now when you look at the color checker, you see all these colored squares. And it's very important to understand why those squares are there and also why the gray ones are there. Now when we look at calibration, we actually look at different parts and let me simplify it. The first part is of course, a three dimensional color space. We have to make sure where red, green, and blue, our primary colors are located. But also cyan, magenta, and yellow, our secondary colors. But all those colors are also in a balance. And that balance is actually through our white point. I might wonder, like Frank, where's that white point? Did you ever heard about gray scale calibration or white balance? That's your white point. Now with photography, we often choose the white point at D 65, 6,500 degrees Kelvin. But is that also right for the camera? That's the first mistake a lot of people make. No, because if we're shooting on a tungsten light, we have a different color temperature than, for example, fluorescent light or let lighting. But we still have to take into account that we have a proper gray scale. Our proper gray scale for us with calibrations is a neutral gray scale. So we don't have any color infections like for example, a reddish tint or a blue tint. We all know those tints, right? They're very annoying. So we have to make sure that our gray scale is 100% neutral. Luckily, in the digital system, that's very simple. We have three coordinates in Photoshop, RGB. To have a proper calibrated workflow, we have to make sure that that gray balance is actually neutral. In other words, let's take 18% gray. We all know 18% gray, right? We love it. That's 1281 to 81 to eight in Photoshop. Now if those three coordinates are exactly the same, we're talking about a neutral gray scale. Now do remember, that doesn't have to be the perfect gray scale, right? Because we are creative people, we like tinting. But to make a start, we have to make sure that that gray scale is 100% neutral. The gray scale, we now is neutral. Then we have those other coordinates for all those colors and defining the color space. We call that the color management system without going into depth. As you can see here, you place an analyzer in front of your monitor and that actually calibrates those settings. But hey, we're still talking about the camera, right? Yes. So, how do we make sure that the camera does the same thing? Well, that's actually where that neutral color comes into place. The first thing you have to do is make sure that on location and in the studio, your color balance is right. But hey Frank, if we shoot raw, can we do that afterwards? Yes, absolutely. That's why we shoot the color checker duo. Now when you shoot the color check and make sure that you light it as flat as possible. And of course, with the same lighting as you do your model. Now, in other words, use a light meter because you remember those three coordinates, the X, the y, and the Luminant. The Big Y. Yes, that's where the light meter comes in. Because if you change one of those values, including the exposure, you will get other coordinates on those other settings. They're all interact with each other like a little puppet. If everything is correct, you can move the puppet around. But if one of those strings isn't really nicely attached, the puppet will do strange things. That's the same with your color space. Now for the color, we use the color checker duo. In light room, you can create a so called DCP profile. Now the DCP profile is especially for cameras. Now, you may also have heard the term ICC profile. The ICC profile is actually a slightly older profile and we still use that, for example, for our monitors. Now if you have a raw converter that doesn't support DCP profiling, you can still create an ICC profile with the external software from Calibrite. Now you have to realize one thing, and that's very important. A DCP profile is more advanced for cameras, meaning if you create a DCP profile, we can use two different illuminations, for example, outside and inside. To make it really simple, we can still change the color balance afterwards. If you use an ICC profile, that's only for one elimination. In other words, that's fixed. So you can't change it for photography. Using a DCP profile makes a lot more sense. In Adobe light room, we use the color checker Duo to create a proper setting for the camera, in other words, neutral gray and the proper coordinates for our camera. But at that point, we still haven't determined a color space. That's what we talk about later on in the video after the monitor. So now that we've done the camera and that you understand DCP and ICC, let's switch over to the monitor calibration. Now, when you look behind me, you can see our bank monitor and you can see my laptop. And both look exactly the same, right? You can't judge that now, but trust me, they look approximately the same. You hear me saying approximately. And that's because, well, in all honesty, even when you do a proper calibration, you will never get all your displays and all your devices looking exactly the same. We have to make sure that we come as close as possible to perfect for the camera. We use that color checker. But for the monitor, Yeah. Well, we actually use exactly the same technique. We use a color checker on. The problem is, in this case, the color checker isn't in your hand. It's software that runs on your computer. Now, what does that software do? That software actually first asks you like, hey, what do you want to do? What kind of illumination do you want to do? What kind of grade point, what kind of light output, what kind of profiling? Now, we're going to skip everything for now. If you want more information about that, we can make another video about calibrating your monitor. But today we want to make sure that everything fits together. In the video, there are two options to calibrate your monitor. The first one is software based. Now, of course we all know the calibration of the monitor. You start up the software, the software shows you those different squares and of course also gray scale. It does the calibration for you and at the end it creates an ICC profile and you load that in your operating system. That's the software based method. One of the disadvantages of software is, well, it's software. Every time you open up the computer, it has to load that certain ICC profile for your monitor. Meaning if you use the same monitor on a different laptop, you have to do the whole calibration. Again, if you use an ipad on that monitor, it will not look right. What is another option? Another option is actually hardware calibration. Now, with hardware calibration, you have one huge advantage, and that's that the calibration is done inside the monitor, and that's a big advantage. Think about this, I'm now using my Macbook, but what if I want to use week's Macbook? I don't have to do another calibration because the monitor is hardware calibrated. Now, of course, there are differences between laptops, between GPUs, between, well, everything actually influences the color, but in all honesty, that's a little bit of nit picking. If you have a proper set up system, you can probably switch over laptops without any problem and still get a way better performance on your monitor than without any calibration. I mean, way better. But the hardware calibration in the monitor doesn't stop there. Think about this. You can even use your ipad on that monitor. That's nice, right? But it doesn't stop there. Now, when we open up Photoshop, for example, and we use an eight bit file and you start pulling those curves, you can see that you see artifacts in your image. In other words, you use too much bit depth and the bit depth isn't available, so you get artifacts. And about the same thing can happen with calibration, depending on how much you monitor has to be corrected when you do the calibration. Inside the monitor, there's a hardware lot lookup table. In essence, that means that you don't lose any colors, you don't get any artifacts. Let me just put it this way, It looks way better and it's way faster if you have the option. Always go for a monitor with hardware calibration. So now we have two profiles. We have the DCP profile for our camera, and we have the ICC profile for our monitor. Remember, the monitor doesn't have to change any illumination. It's in your system and you don't change color balance on your monitor, right? So ICC profile works great for that. So now that we have our monitor and we have our camera calibrated, how the heck do we put everything together? What do we open up in Photoshop? So let's take a look at what we open up in Photoshop. Okay, so we have an ICC profile for the monitor, we have a DCP profile for the camera. How do we connect everything? Well, the first thing you have to realize is that those two you don't need anymore. No, you don't need them. As explained before, we have proper color spaces who are already divined by, of course, the institution that divines the color spaces. For example, Adobe or whoever divines that color space. Now if you look at your computer, you can see a lot of color spaces. You can see Adobe RGB, S RGB Pro Photo RGB webcoded encoded, and the list goes on and on. And you just go like, what the heck should I select one of the most made mistakes and I actually understand that mistake, is that when you go from light room into Photoshop, you already have to determine your color space. And most people, well, they start out with, what should I do there? Should I do the calibration from the camera because I'm actually editing that image right? Or should I use the color space from the monitor because I'm looking at the monitor? Well, both are wrong. You have to realize that every calibration you do is designed for that object or that camera that monitor, so you don't even use it anymore. The thing that you do is in light room, when you edit your images, you're in raw. Of course you select the preset for that image. In other words, if you shoot something with the soft box and you have to color checker image, you sync that color image to all your images that you shot with that soft box. When you switch it over to strip light, you shoot a new color checker and you create that profile again and you sync that to all your images with that strip light. That's it. That's done. You don't touch that anymore. Now as soon as you go from light room into Photoshop, then you determine the real color space. And the real color space is Adobe RGB or SRGB. In most cases, we will use of course, 16 bits Adobe RGB. Now as soon as you're in Photoshop, that means that your file is now determined to that color space that you choose. In our case, we love to work an Adobe RGB because we get more vibrant colors. It's a bigger color space when we publish for the B, we can literally just convert our Adobe RGB to S RGB because it's a smaller color space. The camera profile is a DCP profile, the monitor profile is an ICC profile. The ICC profile is handled by the operating system or inside the monitor with a hardware calibrated monitor. The camera profile you only use in light room or your raw converter to make sure that your camera is showing the correct colors as soon as you start editing in any software, being it Adobe Photoshop or affinity or whatever you use, that's when you use the proper color spaces that are determined, like Adobe RGB or SRGB. How do we fit everything together when we want to buy a monitor for photography? How do we choose which monitor we buy? So in the next chapter, we're going to talk about the monitors. Now the monitor is actually one of the most important devices we use in our photography. It's the device that shows our images, is the device where we actually do our retouching up. And in all honesty, I trust my bank monitor more than I trust any other monitor, even if I have a calibrated laptop. Now, why do I tell you guys this? Well, as you know, I love working on tablets. I use the XP pen, for example, and when you're used to retouching on a tablet, especially your screen tablet, you never want to go back to anything else but that screen. It's a really, really good screen, but it doesn't show me all the shadow detail. It doesn't show me the proper colors. The Q monitor is flawless. It shows me everything perfectly. So what I do when I retouch, I always look at the XP Pen display for retouching. And then as soon as I do something with color, that's when I have everything set up on the Q monitor. So all the software that uses tinting, like for example Exposure software or Boros, Epix or DXO or Luminar. That's where we look at our Q monitor for the colors. And as soon as we're done and we start retouching again, that's when I look at the SPN, although they're all calibrated. So why is that Nq monitor so much better? Very simple. All the displays are, of course, priced in a certain range. Now you can't expect a display that is used for a pen tablet to be a 100% Adobe RGB because that pen tablet would be incredibly expensive. And in all honesty, you don't really need it because you're retouching on it and you probably have a proper monitor to do color balance on. Why spend, let's say, 1,500 euros on a tablet where you can get the same tablet for 500 euros with a limited color space. When you buy a monitor, where should you look out for? Well, the first thing is, of course, make sure that you buy a monitor that's designed for photography or video. Those monitors don't really care about leg time, which is very important for gamers. And they don't really care about getting a lot of brightness out. Normally, 100-20 CDM and 130 DM is more than enough for photography and video. If you have more, you probably are taking away contrasting your image. And when you print, it just looks very, very dull. And you see that a lot with people that use gaming monitors or that actually retouch on a laptop with the screen on full power, you will underexpose your images because it just looks so bright. A proper photography monitor already is taking into account dead part. What can you buy. The first thing, of course, are the cheap monitors. Those monitors are often S RGB and they are great if you only do stuff for the web and if you are just a hobby photographer, those monitors are okay. But of course, the better monitors, that's the Adobe RGB monitors. Those monitors have a huge color space and you can see all the colors in their beautiful brightness and saturation. But what if you don't have money for an Adobe RGB monitor? Is there anything in between? Well, you already heard me talking about the P three color space. Now when we look at Adobe RGB, again, look at this diagram. You can see that the Adobe RGB is pretty big. It still doesn't cover everything that we can see, but at least it's a huge color space. Look at the SRGB, you can see that it's a lot smaller. So that means that our colors are a little bit less vibrant. Now there is a color space in between, and that's the three color space. Now, those monitors are very friendly priced and they give you a way better performance than an SRGB monitor. But they don't show you everything that's an Adobe RGB monitor capable of. If you use a P three monitor, shoot you edit in a three color space. That's the question. Now if you've calibrated everything correctly, remember the puppet with all the strings where you pull one string and it looks okay, and when you pull another one, it will fall down if it's not in balance. That's the same thing when you switch between color spaces. If you use a color checker duo for your camera. If you use a proper calibration tool for your monitor and you choose the right color space in Photoshop, Adobe RGB, Adobe will make the translation to the other color spaces without any problem. You can add it in Adobe RGB on a P three monitor. You have to make sure that you don't clip any color channel, so make sure that you use proper setups for that. But after that, you can switch without any problem to an Adobe RGB color space, to an SRGB color space. Or if you want to work in Pro Photo RGB, well, be my guest. As long as you have the proper calibration, those conversions will be done without any problem. Now, the main advantage of having a workflow that's fully calibrated seems to be the big question. Why is it only for your clients? Yes, but there's something else. In light room, and of course also in Photoshop, we love to use presets. Why invent the wheel twice? Right? If we have a look that we really, really like, why should we make that look the same thing over and over again? We store that as a preset. But if you colors constantly change, for example, because you don't use a color checker, that preset will give you different results every time you run that preset. And that isn't really reliable, right? We want to make sure that if we use the preset, it gives me the same result over and over. So that's why calibration is so important because now, because we have the proper set up, we have the proper gray scale neutral, we have the proper coordinates for our red, green, and blues, and we have the proper luminance at that point every time I run that preset, it doesn't matter if I shoot on the tungsten light or lead lighting or fluorescent lights, That preset will give you exactly the same results over and over. So it's not only for your client, it is actually to speed up your own workflow. Now I hope in this video I gave you a little bit of explanation about how color spaces work and how calibration works. 5. CH1 Settings: Hey guys, let's first step into light room to change some settings, because this is where we start, of course, making sure that all the settings are correct. You go into your light room, classic menu, you go into Preferences, and this is where you can change all your settings. Now I'm just going to go through the ones that I think are important. And the first one of course is external editing. This is where you go to if you press that command E. So in other words, if you have done all the settings in light room and you want to go into your external editor, for example, to clean up your backdrop or to change some stuff that you can do in light room. This is where you set up your external editor. Now in our case, we're of course going to edit in Photoshop, but you can also select Adobe Photoshop Beta. Of course, the file format you have to choose between Tiff or a PSD. Now I've set it up on Tiff, but if you want to use PSD, that's fine. Of course too. The next part is your color space. Now this is important. I'm working on a bn Q Adobe RGB monitor, so I'm also selecting the Adobe RGB color space. Now if you have a proper calibrated workflow, you could choose Pro Photo RGB, although in all honesty, I prefer to use it on Adobe RGB because that's what my monitor shows me. And it's also most of the time, how I will print my images. And when I delivered to the client, it's always S RGB because I want to make sure that nothing goes wrong. So editing in pro photo RGB with a monitor that doesn't show you all the colors. In my case, it's a little bit overkill. So I'm just keep it on Adobe RGB. The next one is vital. This is the 16 bits setting. You can choose between eight or 16 bits. Now, a lot of people think that you edit in Photoshop with your raw files. And although it might seem that way, you are not editing your raw file, you are editing a Tiff Adobe RGB 16 bits file. And this is because the raw conversion is done, or in Adobe Camera raw, or of course, in a light room. As soon as you open up Photoshop, you are not working in a non destructive environment anymore. So that means that every setting you do will change that picture just a little bit. And this is why it's important to use that 16 bits component. Because otherwise, if you start pulling on your curves or you change a lot, your file will break down. The next one is resolution. Now this is important when you deliver to a client that has certain demands. For example, if you deliver for a client for a billboard or for a poster, or for your business cards, they often say, hey, we need 300 DPI on this and this size. Then it's important to deliver exactly this because some can't handle the bigger files and they will just send it back to you. It's very frustrating, so just use that resolution in that case. But most of the time it doesn't really matter where it sets. Some people will have a standard on 240, some people will have it on 300 or 72. In the end, for digital work, it's all about the pixel count. If you go to print, that's where the resolution is important. Now, compression, of course, we don't want any compression, or if you are running into problems with hard drive space, you could use Ip. But in most cases I will just use none. You can also set up an additional external editor, for example your Borosopix, your DX few pint, or your exposure. It just depends on what you want to use. And here you can also change, of course, your Foil format. And here we also go for Adobe RGB, 16 bits and compression. Of course zero. Okay, Here we have an option called stack with original. Now if you make virtual copies or you edit a copy, it will actually stack that with the original. So in your Lightroom catalog, you will see 12 or three. Now, in my case, I have this disengaged because I have a separate folder for my retouched image and a separate folder for my raw files, and I still want to see it next to each other. So I don't stack it. But if you want to stack it's a 50, 50. Some people love it, some people hate it. The nice thing is if you have a stack, you can always unstack it by just standing on that stack using your right mouse button and just say unstack. But standard, I just have it selected. The file handling, same thing. You can choose your file extension for DNG or D and G in capitals. Some software will prefer the capital. That's why they have that option there, probably. Here. Can you use Jpeg Preview size? In my case, I just leave it like it is the interface. You can change everything in the interface. Now the reason I'm showing this is the lights out version. I preferred it to be black. Some people prefer white, although I think that hurts your eyes. So here you can do the lights out version. Performance is also a very important one. If you run into problems with light room, it feels sluggish, it doesn't really work well. You could try to disengage or engage your graphic processor. Now on the X, I mostly have my graphic processor auto. It works like a charm, but I had some issues in the past with a Windows laptop where I need to turn the graphic processor actually to off to get a lot of gain in my processing speed. So if you feel like your light room is sluggish and it doesn't perform, check that graphic processor. Same here. You can here perch your cache. Of course, you can also set up where your cache is. For example, if you have a slower internal hard drive, it sounds a little bit weird nowadays. If a very fast external set up, you can set that case on your external set up. In most cases, if you work on a laptop, you actually wanted cash on an external SSD to save drive space. If you run into drive plumbs, of course, same here. You limit your case size for video and you can also perch your cache here, as you can see here. And this message will be disabled when it's perched. Okay. And you can set another options here and optimize your catalog. Okay, then light room sync. This is in a different chapter, but this makes it possible to connect your light room that you use on your tablet or on your phone to connect to your lightroom classic and all the files that you shoot on location. You can now drag into your original file locations on your hard drive and your nuts, so you don't have to do anything difficult with using cloud surfaces externally from light room. You can just do it inside of light room, but there will be another chapter on that. Okay. And of course now you have your display. You can use two displays and your network settings. Okay. For now, those are all the important settings. Of course, you general and your presets, which I didn't do yet, but those I mostly just leave on standard. Okay, let's dive into light room and let's start with the fun stuff now that we have set everything up. 6. CH2 Hide and Show parent folders: Now, when we look at the interface of light room, it's all very simple. It's all very basic, and that's great, right? Because that means that you can start working right away, even if you don't have any experience with light room, it will just flow, and it will just work out itself. Well, there's one thing that you may or may not know. And that's actually over here. So this is where we added all our folders and all our drives. But did you know that when you open it up and you see all this, that you can actually just go on one of those folders, click your right mouse button and say, show parent folder. And now you actually see the folder inside those folders reside. So that's a very, very easy trick to sometimes just clean up your workflow. But when you need it, you can still open it. So, for example, if you want to clean up your workflow and you don't want to see that parent folder, you just go like external height parent folder. And this just makes it a little bit cleaner to work in light room as you can see here. So did you know that you could do that? Maybe you did. Maybe you didn't. 7. CH3 Create a preset from scratch: Okay guys, in this chapter, let's take a look at how I create my presets. Now the first thing, of course, you have to go into your develop module. So the library module is where you store your images, where you select your images, create albums, and whatnot. More. The develop module, that's where you start to develop your images, hence the name. Right now, I absolutely love the workflow that Adobe mentioned for you and it just flows very nicely. So let me show you how I create my profiles. Now the first thing, of course, is your color temperature. Now for the color temperature, we're using color checkers. And you will find a chapter on those also in the video. So I'm not going to do that here. But let's just go through everything. Let's first reset all the settings. You can see underneath you have a reset button, So everything is now a reset. Okay. So let's start with the top. Now, the first thing of course, exposure, now we're using light meters on location. So that means that the exposure normally is spot on. There is, however, one thing that you have to take into account, Spot on means that the exposure is spot on, but it doesn't mean that your exposure for your vision is spot on. Sometimes it's very nice to just overexpose a little bit or underexpose still on location. I highly recommend using a light meter and just shoot the image correctly because you can always, in light room, overexpose or underexpose an image. But if you shoot it overexposed and you lose detail, you can't get it back really easily. Now, modern day cameras shoot raw, of course, and they have a lot of dynamic range, but if you overexpose too much, even in a raw valve, you will destroy your image. Now this is also where the preset comes in, and this is why we talk a little bit about this before I show you the presets. If you shoot everything with a color checker and a light meter, you know that your base is always exactly the same, so correct. And that means that all your presets works. So if you love to overexpose it just a little bit, still shoot it correctly, and then create a preset where you overexpose it a bit. And this means that also the images where you didn't overexpose, you can run that same preset and you have your overexposed look. But that's my workflow. Your, my lets may vary, of course. Now the first thing I'm going to do is contrast or not. Well, in this case not. And this is the only thing that I don't really like about the workflow in light room or which I think should be the different way around. The first thing I always do is highlights and shadows. So I will pull down the highlights and I will add shadows. This will open up the image. Now, I'm not going to do this on all my images, I'm going to do this on this image because I want to show you something a little bit more extreme. Now, when I pull down the highlights as you can see, I also lose a lot of, well, the light output of the image, it becomes darker. And this is because when I've done this, I've created more dynamic range in my image. Now I'm going to use the exposure slider, which I normally don't touch, But in this case, I want to bring it back to the level. As you can see here, I opened up the image completely. It's a totally different shot, more open. Now I might wonder, hey Frank, you shut it with strokes. So you like that darker look, right? Yes, of course. But now we are creating a more creative preset. So in this case, I'm going to go a little bit more extreme. You guys, of course, can tone it down or maybe do it more extreme depending on what you want, the whites and the blacks. I'm not going to touch in most of the images where I create my presets for the very simple reason, the same with Hayes. It can work great as an effect, but not on all images. The other settings I'm using are most images, they work fine and they will give you the same results. Hayes, and the whites, and the blacks. Those have much more impact on your image, and especially on the whole way that your image is presented with all your gray tones that I'm not going to use those. Now, I will show you very quickly what it does. Your white point just changes your white point as you can see here. And the danger is, of course, that you clip it and the blacks actually exactly the same. It will open up the blacks or it will crush the Blacks. Now just in between, I don't know if you knew this, but there are many ways to change those sliders. In light room, you can of course, just hover over it, click, hold, and change. But did you know that you can also double click anywhere on the bar and just jump there? Or just double click on the icon itself and it will reset to zero. You can also hover over your setting and just change it with the mouse like this. Or you can just double click on the number and just type it in as you can see here. Same here. Just type it in. Of course, if you want to reset one area of your workflow, just hold the old key and you can reset tone, or you can reset presence. If you go all the way down, of course you have your main reset button. Okay? You don't have to scroll down, by the way, let's go on now. I like the way that Adobe actually gives you the work flow. Literally, it flows very nicely. The next part is the presence. This is where you start to make your image pop a little bit more. Now of course, we have texture and clarity which will give you more sharpness and more of in your shot. Now for those I actually zooming on my model and I will just first start with the texture. A full blast so you can guy see what it does. It makes your image really rough. It adds a lot of sharpening but it just doesn't look right. With texture, I often will just go a little bit over zero. I will concentrate on the very small details. For example, here, as soon as those start to show up, look at the difference here. It looks a little bit flat. I will just go here and it really pops. I'll do the same with clarity. I'll just open it up. Clarity for me is a little bit more rough. And there we go. Now the thing of course that I have to check is how does it look on the whole image? It looks pretty good. I don't see any problems with this. Yeah, it looks nice. Okay, next part is of course, vibrance and saturation. Now for fibrans, you can go a lot further. Fibrance will protect the colors that will actually start to oversaturate, or we call it clipping. And saturation is more global. Saturation will just do everything. Ibrance is a little bit more like a surgical saturation. Just add a little bit of fibrance to the shot and maybe add a little bit of saturation. There we go. Gives you a nice of in the shot. Don't overdo it, of course. Now let's go down and let's go to the tone curve. Now as you can see here, by the way, you also see an eye where you can literally just show it before and after the tone curve. We can use to add a little bit of contrast. For example, by just pushing it down. Of course, we have to go for the global settings. You can push this down and add a little bit more black. And push this to add a little bit more highlights. As you can see, it's subtle, but it just gives you a little bit more op to your shot. Now this is the global, of course. We also can do that for this channel and this is a more rough there we go. But most of the times I will actually use the curve to do something completely different. Mainly change the color of the image. As you can see here, the image looks great, but it doesn't have that special look. It doesn't feel like it's shot on film or it has that certain mood. This is where we start to imagine a little bit with color. What is the mood that we want to do? Well, it's an industrial area. Maybe we want it a little bit more bluish like the future. A little bit more distance. So let's go for the red channel. And let's take some of the reds out in the shadows. And just add a little bit back in the highlight. So we don't want the skin tones to be too much affected by this. There we go. So this looks already different. And let's go for a blue now. And let's go for the middle part. Let's push that up just a little bit. There we go. Look at this. That already looks a lot nicer before after you can see totally different look Now the green, I normally won't touch because when we look at our eyes, we are most sensitive for green. We see a lot of red and a little bit of blue. Green is a very powerful color. Most of times when I retouch and create presets, I won't touch that green. Let's go further down now. The color mixer, in this case, we're just going to totally skip. The reason is very simple, We already did this with curves, I'm going to skip this one. For now, let's go for color grading. Now, color grading is where I start to do it, a little bit more surgical, Let's say you can choose for your shadows, the shadow areas. Let's give that a little bit more of a blue tone like we discussed. Now I want to make sure that of course, in this area we want a little bit more red. There we go. Finally, of course, for the highlights, we want to make sure that we add some reds back for the skin. Mid tones and highlights mostly just leave a little bit for the skin. In this case, we push the mid tones all the way to the blue. But I corrected that a little bit here with the shadows and the highlights. I can, of course, use your blending and your balance just depending on what you like. If I look at the face, I really like the blending a little bit here. I hope on the video you can see, just experiment yourself. Okay, Now I said I would skip this part. That's because I first want to do it in your color grading. Now this part is very interesting because you can use the color mixer in your black and white. We're going to do a chapter on that too, but you can also use it to fine tune your settings here. The nice thing is that all colors consist of three coordinates, x, y, and a big Y, U, saturation, and luminus. Everything you change in those three settings will change the color. Logical. Right, Let's first go for our aluminum. In luminous, we're going to change the brightness of the color. In this case, let's go for a red and just a lower, the reds. As you can see here, it doesn't look right, but. If you look very closely, you can see that I can actually change the appearance of the face. Let's balance that a little bit and also use orange. There we go, and yellow, see what happens to the trees. This is why I first do the color grading, and then I do the color mixer. In some cases, I will do it the other way around, but it really depends on the image. You can of course, also use that green to really make that tree stand out or maybe just lower it. And in combination with the yellow gives it a little bit of a more of a weird, surreal look. Aqua for the sky blue depends blue in this case, you can make the sky bright or darker. In this case, let's make it a little bit darker. Now, let's see if there are any purples. I would normally just go for the maximum and minimum and just see what happens in an image. In this case, there's not a lot of purple there. And in that case, just leave it in the middle. Don't change anything, especially when you create a preset and there's a color that doesn't do anything, leave it at zero. And then when you create another image and you change that slider, you can always override your preset. Same with magenta. Okay, cool. Now you can go for your saturation. Just lower the saturation for red a little bit or just raise it. We, of course, want to make sure that those red lips really shine. There we go with the blue. If you don't like it, you just take it out a little bit and make it more well, a little bit under saturated. But in this case, yeah, I don't know, Let's just leave it in. There we go, okay. And of course, you can change the hue. Now, in this case, we don't want to change the hue, But let's say that you don't really like the sky. You want to make it funky. Let's go for blue and just change the whole hue of blue. You can see here, it looks funky, but I don't think that's the way that we want to go for this image. Okay, so let's see what we changed a little bit, but especially on the face you can see here, it just looks weird at the moment. And as soon as we changed it back, you can see that we have a lot of weird artifacts here. So this was before and this is after. Now you might want to stress like, oh my, what's going on here? Just go back here, go into your curse. And you will quickly see that when we change the curse back, nothing happens, right? So it's not really in the color. So where could it be? Well, maybe go back to your presence and your texture. Look at this. If I change those back, there we go. That looks a lot better, right? This is why those settings are very dangerous. If you don't check constantly back to your image, especially with faces, we don't want it too much. And this is the part where light room, of course, has something really cool. Let's pull this back. Let's do something else very quickly. Let's go into our selection and let's do a brush. Let's just brush all over her skin. I'm going to do it here. You can do this really rough. It doesn't really matter. Let's see if we have some more skin somewhere. That's okay. You can still do it there, of course. So let's zoom in. Let's make the brush a little bit smaller. And there we go. Now you can invert as you can see here. And now we can just add that sharpness. Oh sorry. Now we can add texture as you can see here. Now the skin isn't affected anymore, just check it on the face and the arms. Great. So now we can add a lot of clarity and texture to the scene without affecting the face. Very nice. Now, in a later chapter, I'm also going to show you guys how you can retouch the skin very nicely inside of light room. But for now, we're just going to continue with creating our preset. Okay, so now we did some selection. We looks a lot better, but I still want to make sure that my model jumps out at me. What am I going to do now? Well, I'm going to skip the noise reduction. We're going to talk about that in a later chapter. We're going to skip the lens correction. We're going to skip the transform, of course. We're going to skip the lens blur unless you want some real funky stuff. This is our early excess lens blur. But for now we're just going to leave it there. We're going to do the effects and this is where we're going to make our model jump out a little bit more. We're going to create a vignette, and there we go. Now I have a different chapter on the vignetting, but for now I just want to show you how in a preset, that vignette really just brings everything together. Because if I disengage the effect, look at this totally different look. Now, of course you can add some grain. In this case I'm not going to add any grain. And here you have your calibration. Your calibration is more if you want to find, tune your colors or if you're not happy with something, you can do it here. Most of the calibration that we use, we actually use the color checker and of course the light meter. Okay, now let's say that you really like this preset. You can now save it and you can use it on many different images. And as you can see here, I already have a lot of those preset sets. And in all honesty, if you buy presets, don't overpay for the presets. The presets are a starting point, and if you pay ten or 25 euros for a preset pack, that's great, because it saves you a lot of work. You don't have to figure out everything, and maybe you like to look and you just have to change a little bit. But I often see online preset pecks for 200 Euro, 250 euros. That's ridiculous. There's no magic going on. You can create everything yourself. It's not difficult, so don't overpay for presets. Okay, so now we created the preset. Again, you can store it. Let's dive into something more that you can do with light room. Okay. 8. CH4 Creating export presets: Okay, so you created your masterpiece, being a photo or a digital art piece, and you want to get it out into the world. Now, you have to export your file. Now, there's a few things we want to run through with you guys. So let's start our export. File Export. And as you can see here, we have our user presets. Let's remove our test for now. Okay, so I'm going to build one just from scratch. I'm going to explain to you every step of the way. The first thing is choose your folder. Now, I find this very, very easy to do because I'm not always saving to the same folder. Sometimes I want it for my client on one drive. Sometimes I want it on my n for my own backups, and sometimes I just want it on an external drive. So for me, it's very easy, of course, to use one folder and then drag it. But it's much easier to just choose the folder. It depends on your workflow, of course. Maybe you find it easier to just always do it to your documents or your home folder or a specific folder. With me, I just want to choose it. File renaming, you can do this, but in my case, I want the original file names. And of course, this is the part where it's important. If I send to my client, I will always send JPX. Those are readable by almost any device on the world. And well, the client knows how to handle JPX. They're small. They're very easy to handle, and almost all so fair will recognize the file format. Now, the quality, of course, when you save for yourself, you want the highest quality possible, maybe T 16 bits, or if you're running into hard drive problems, maybe JPEG 100% or 90%. For our clients, well, let's keep it at 75% or maybe 70. I won't go below 70, mostly just 75%. It looks great. You don't see any artifacts, but the file size is manageable, especially when you e mail files. The color space, this is very important. Now, when I save for myself, I will save in Adobe RGB. That's a nice, big color space. It's the same as my monitor. We have nice saturated colors. I know exactly what I'm doing because I see it on my monitor. The problem is, however, that a lot of customers don't know anything about calibrating monitors. They know how an image should look, they look at the monitor. If it looks the same as what they're used to. They're fine and your golden. So how do we make sure that when we send a file to our client, it looks great on all operating systems, Windows, Mc, it looks great in Safari or Grom or Internet explorer. It doesn't matter way you look at the image, it looks fine. That's where we choose the color space SRGB. Now, some browsers and operating systems are what we call color management. That means that they read the file, they see an Adobe RGB color space, and they will show it in an Adobe RGB color space. However, most browsers or operating systems also have some parts that aren't color managed. And then when you open up an Adobe RGB image, it just looks really weird. Some people like it, and they go like, Well, I love that look, but it's not how it's intended to be. So when you export for a client, choose that SRGB output. When you export for yourself, you probably know best, and you choose, for example, Adobe RGB. Now, in this case, we don't want any image resizing, but if you want, you can resize to fit width or height dimensions and long edge. Now, if you have to deliver, for example, a surface where they go like, the file can't be longer than this. This is where you use long edge. If you have to fit your image into a certain area, you, for example, can use short edge or long edge. And you can also choose percentage. It just depends on what you want. Adobe gave you all the options. In our case, we don't want to resize anything. We don't want any output sharpening and in our mata data, that's actually what's stored inside your file. So, for example, if you're shooting with a cannon or a Sony or a nikon or a Footsie, it will store inside that file, that you shut it with this camera, that lens, that aperture that shut speed that white balance, et cetera. Now, sometimes you don't want those informations to end up with your client for whatever reason. So you can say, Okay, my client can have everything they want, but I don't want them to show, well, that some of those images during their wedding, I shot with my iPhone. You just take out all the information and just leave in your copyright. In my case, well, my client can show anything that I well, I don't have any secrets, so I will do all mata data. You can, of course, remove your personal info or personal info, and your location info. To give you all the options. You just choose whatever fits your purpose. Okay. And of course, you can do watermarking. Now, watermarking is really interesting if you deliver something for a client and you don't want the client to make screenshots or safety image and can use it. Now, nowadays with artificial intelligence, a small logo somewhere doesn't work anymore. So if you really want to make sure that your client doesn't steal your images, just a big fat text over your image that will make it totally unusable, but also very difficult to judge. So most of the time, we just trust our customers, well, that also sometimes goes totally wrong. Okay, let's go for a simple watermark and just go edit our watermark. Now, we can choose a text watermark, as you can see here. You just type in your text. You can do your fonts, adobe clean or garment or something a little bit more weird. You can change your setting, for example, bolt. You can change shadows or whatever. But most of the time, I won't use text. Text I will mostly use when I give samples, and I really don't trust the client. I don't want to copy it, then I will just go something like this. I'll just go very quickly, and I'll just go for a sample. So you can Let's make this bigger. There we go. And then just change the opacity. So the client can still see what we're doing, but it's a little bit more difficult for the client to copy my images. There we go. So you can still judge the image, but you can't use it anymore. Most of the time, however, we will use graphics. Now, you can choose whatever you want. So in this case, let's go for our signatures, and let's, for example, take one that's a JP. Now, of course, we want to make sure that it's not too big. Let's move that here. And let's now just do the opacity in 100%. As you can see here, that doesn't look right, right? You have this beautiful image and you have that white block underneath with our studio logo, and you just go like, Hey, that's really obnoxious, right? That's the nice thing about light room. And the same thing goes for light room on your iPhone and tablet, by the way. You can also choose for a PNG. Let's go for that one now. Let's go for another one. Let's go choose. Let's take one that has the name PNG, like for example, this one. And now you can see now it's transparent. So now I can make it smaller. There we go. Change the opacity. And now we have a logo that still gives the attention to the creator, so people online will immediately recognize the logo there, but it isn't obvious and obnoxious. Now, I do get a lot of questions like, Hey, Frank, why the red logo always on that side of the image? Why not on the right side? Why always on that left side and underneath. The trick is, this is how we are trained to read. In the Western world, we read from left top to right bottom. So that means if I have an attention point on the left bottom side and it's red, it really jumps out. The viewer is actually being trapped in that logo, and it will just keep looking at that image, and it can't leave the image. So I'm actually keeping my viewer longer engaged with my image. So that's why the logo is actually there. You can save the logo in this case. We're not going to do it. And you're actually done. So let's say that we want to save this. So let's give this a name test. And let's create it. Okay. For now, we're just going to do done. Let's say that we want to export some images. Let's say we want to export two let's say and and that one. You just go to file, you go for export. In this case, we're going to go for test port. And it will just ask you where, on my desktop, let's create a folder called tutorial. Let's create and there we go, and open. And now it will export those seven files to that folder. Now, sometimes, of course, it happens that you export several files, and maybe you add one extra, and you forgot about it. So let's say I also want to export those files. File export. And I'm going to do export with previous. So I'm going to use the same preset, same location. Or do I export. Same location, same preset. There we go. But there are already files there. So let's do open. Hey, there's one file that's already there. And now I'm doubting, like, did I export that file, or maybe I mis named something because maybe it came from another direction. You can do a few things. You can do skip. You can do overwrite, and I highly recommend not doing any of those. Just use unique names. Now when it exports. And I'm going to open that folder. You will see that one of those files will actually have a little two next to it. So let's open that folder. And now you can see that, hey, this file has two. And now it's very easy to see this is one, this is two, compare the two, and now you can see if it's really a double file, or maybe you missed something which you're renaming. Okay, so that's creating your presets. Let's go to the next chapter. 9. CH5 Adobe Lightroom mobile to Adobe Lightroom Classic: Now, over the years, the mobile phone has become one of the most used cameras in the world. Let's be honest. It's awesome, right? You have it always with you, and the quality of modern phones are amazing. But how do you store those images? Well, you can use, of course, your film role and then use itunes or your backup method, whatever you prefer to get those images off your phone and into light room. But there's a much easier way now. When you subscribe to Adobe, you actually get storage. And most of the times the 100 gigabytes is more than enough. Now during the day, you, of course, take a lot of images with your phone and on your phone on Android and on IOS. Of course, you can use the Lightroom mobile app or Lightroom CC app. But did you know that you can incorporate that Lightroom mobile directly into your Lightroom Classic? Because let's be honest, Lightroom Classic is where most of us store our images and use in our systems. How do you do it? Well, here we have Lightroom Classic. Let's go for Preferences. Then you will see this little thing over here called Lightroom sync. Now in this case, you will see my information which that blurred out, of course. And you can literally just see here where it will download your images. You can do a specified location for light room sync images, in my case, on my external drive, in the light room sync folder, you can also see that it's been sinking. How does it look in light room itself? Now, close this. Now when you go all the way down, you will see here collections. You open this up, you will see a lot of your collections. Right? And maybe you don't see it right away, but here from a light room, you open it up and here we have all our lightroom mobile stuff. This was something I shot on a little second hand store. As you can see here, some of the images are retouched. This was shot with my phone. Let's say that I really like these images. I want to select them all and I want to bring them over to my original location photos Bert, which means a raw files. Let's go to photography 2024. Let's go for street travel photography. And let's create something inside called flea markets, second stores. We just create that folder, of course within that folder we can also do secondhand stores. There we go. And then we just drag all these images right into here. And there you go, very easy. And now you combine a light room on your system or your system, depending on what you use. A system is of course, a system that's approachable via your network. And a system is a direct attached storage. And that can be a simple set up, like one hard drive, but it can also be, for example, two or three hard drives combined into a rate system. If that goes over your head, don't worry external hard drives or on your as it just depends on where you store it now it's safe. What I can now do is actually go into my light room on the phone and just remove everything. Now, it will be removed from that collection. I will say no here. It will be removed from my phone and tablets and from the cloud, but it will still be of course on my system. This is the point where I start to rename my images. So I can just select everything file, rename, sorry, library, rename photos and you can just rename it. For example, we can do this second and store, I believe this was in Rotterdam and it will automatically put the date here. Now, how did I do that? That will be in the next chapter, press Okay. And everything is renamed. So you want to know how I did the renaming? Well, let's go for the next chapter. 10. CH6 Renaming files the easy way: Now to find back your images, it's of course important that you name your images, right? And that also helps, of course, if you add keywords to your images. Now we're not going to dive into anything about keywords or smart albums because, well, this chapter is about renaming your images. So first get those names right now. Of course, you don't want to type in everything like 1234, you want to make it automatically. But did you know that there are a few tricks that can help you a lot by finding back your images, but most of all seeing when an image is taken. So let's go for library, let's go for Rename photo and let's go for custom settings. Now of course you can start out with a custom name, just do edit. Now in Edit we can do whatever we want. We can say a custom text. Now that's most of the text that I will type in. For example, the name of the model or the name of the store that we visited. After that, I will use one space. Then I will include a sequence starting at one or one number. You can also do 01001, but in my case, I just want a sequence with one. After that, I will use a little bit of a minus symbol. And then I will include the date and year. The month I want in full letters. Then the day, of course, in a number, and the year also in four numbers. But you can choose whatever you want. Now in this case, it's very easy to select. For example, let's say you want to include something else. Let's do a minus. Let's say we want to include some meta data. For example, the copyright. So you just injured copyright, bidding copyright, of course. You can also change whatever you want, supplocation or whatever you want to include. Now in my case, I don't want that. Of course, by adding stuff, you can literally, the next time you rename your image. As you can see here, we have a sequence and a date and a month. Let's do done for now, let's just rename the image. Now whatever you type in. As you can see here, we have untitled. But after that, the sequence is one. The date, January 18, 2024. Whatever I type now, for example, secondhand store, it will now type before that part, and this just saves you so much time by renaming your images. This is my preferred way. First the name of the image, then the sequence, and then the date of the month. The name of the month, the day, and then the year. Very easy way, but you can customize it whatever way you want it, but this makes it way easier to find back your images. Let's go for the next chapter where we can actually show you how to create keywords and smart albums. 11. CH7 Creating smart collections: Now, of course, you want to make sure that you find back all the images that you shot. And my memory is pretty good, but I don't know what I shot in 2019. Or if I look for a certain image with, for example, a black umbrella, I don't have a clue, in all honesty. Now here we have some images from Chewy. Let's just create a smart album. So now when I use a smart album and keywords, and that's the key element actually in a smart album, it's very easy to find back all the images that I want. So let's start by selecting all our images from Chewy. And let's just add a keyword. Now you can type it in like a Chewy, but if you already have a keyword, it's much easier. You just selected keyword and now all those images have a keyword. But what can you do with that keyword? Well, let's go for collections. And let's press the plus and create a smart collection. Now in the smart collection, let's call that Chewy. We want to make sure that all the images that are shot from Chewy are actually appearing in that smart album over all the years. And well, I don't want to look for images, I just want to see them in one big album. We have to make sure that we match all of the following rules. Keywords, where do you find keywords? You actually find keywords under other meta data. You can do title, caption, or keywords. In this case, we're going to do keywords. Now of course, we have to make sure that the keyword contains a, contains words or doesn't contain, start with or are empty. Now, in this case, contains, we're going to type in, and we already did it here, Chewy. Now the only thing I have to do is create. As you can see here, we have a new album appearing called Chewy. And indeed, all the images, unless maybe if I misplaced the keyword, are from our dog. This is so easy because now you don't have to look for images anymore. In what year did I shoot that one? You just go through this and you can find all the images of your favorite pet or your favorite modifier in this case. In our case, actually we use some for calibrate for all the color checker images, we use some for click backdrops. We also have one big folder which is actually called a slide show studio FD. This is the folder where I have all my images that are ready for publication. These are images where I stand behind for 100% If somebody want to use those images, well, you can just use them for publications or interviews. And this makes it a lot easier for an assistant to actually find images that are okay to use because otherwise they have to call me every time like, hey Frank, can I use this image? Can I use this image? And I go like, no, don't use that image. Use the other one. Which one? Yeah, I don't remember what year was it shot. And that gives you so much time that you lose by just using keywords and smart albums. They know everything they select from this album. That's okay. They still have to run it through me that it fits of course in the interview, but these are all images that have the approval stamp. Okay, so smart albums very easy, but there's a lot more in light from that you can do. So let's continue to the next chapter. 12. CH8 Syncing folders: Now one of the most frustrating parts can be importing your images. You have to copy them on a folder, then you have to go into light room. You go into import files, you get the import dialogue. Isn't there an easier way? Did you know that there is an easier way in light room to actually sync everything at once? We let me show you. So I created a behind the scenes folder in 2024, and as you can see here, it's not there. So of course I can go to file and import, and go through the whole hoops of importing images, but there's an easier way. You go to 2024. You right click and you go for synchronize folder. Now it will start counting your images. As you can see here it found ten new images. And I can scan formata data, just press synchronize, and now it will import all the files that are new, but we're not yet in the library of light room. This is much faster and much easier than going through the whole import dialogue. Because as you can see here, it already creates my folder behind the scenes and it also imported all the files that I changed for my client. Much easier, Much faster. Plus, and now I can see all my new images without seeing them in the folders. So of course I can still see them like here, behind the scenes and my studio salons, one of our clients. It's a very, very simple way to just synchronize that folder instead of going through all the hoops. I hope this tip will help you by synchronizing your folders a lot faster. 13. CH9 HDR from one shot: Okay, now this chapter is not really a serious chapter because it's called HDR from One Shot. And we all know of course, that ADR means highly destructive retouching. Yeah. Now it means high dynamic range of normally, when you do an HDR shot, you take several exposures of the same scene in different exposure levels. For example, two stops under 02 stops over. Then you combine them all together and you create one very high dynamic range shot. But a lot of people still doubt between shoot, shoot in J peck and save space on the card or shoot shoot in raw. And of course professional photographers, they shoot raw. But on your phone there's also the option Raw or a J pec. And of course, on your phone you need that space, so you shoot J peck right wrong. Also on your phone, you should use Raw, of course. And why? Well, very simple in the Raw fell, there's much more dynamic range, and light room is perfect in getting that dynamic range out. Let you just very quickly show you how we do it in light room. And again, this is not really a chapter. It's more like, hey, did you know that you could do this? And there's more dynamic range than you think when we look at this image. It looks a little bit blend. It looks a little bit overexposed in the sky. The shadows are a little bit too dark. So how do we improve that image? Actually, pretty simple. You go for your highlights and you just push it all the way down. You go for your shadows, and you push it all the way up. There you go, and that's hidden in that file. Now add a little bit of contrast to the file, and there you go. Or a lot in this case, it can take it, maybe change the exposure just a little bit. There we go, make sure that you don't blow out any high lights. And now comes the trick. When we look at this image, the sky looks a little bit too bright. Right. Now, in a previous chapter, I already talked about tone and tone curves, but also about the color mixer. Now here we're going to use the color mixer again, because this is a vital part. Because it just doesn't look right. It looks too flat. So let's go for saturation, and let's go for the blues in this case. And let's just bump it up a little bit. There we go. That looks maybe better. Go for the reds. For the rust. There we go. That looks also really nice. Almost like blood nice, right? Of course, we can also luminus. Let's lower the luminus for just a little bit. Or maybe make it higher. Now, just lower it, the same for blue, creates a nice deep blue sky. Of course, we can still use our nice fgnetting to create a little bit more attention to the middle of the frame. You don't have to overdo it like this, but just very subtle, just make the corners just a little bit darker there we go. And maybe finish it off with a little bit of clarity and look at that. And that's all from one shot. So if you find an image on your phone or on your camera, you go like, oh, that's way too dark. I don't know if I can risk you that this is what's all there in the file. So light room is very good in getting that exposure perfect for you. So even if it's under or over exposed, there's a lot more than you can think. So let's go for the next chapter. 14. CH10 BW conversions: Now let's say you created an awesome shot in color and you want to make it black and white. How does it work? Well, you can, of course, in your developed module, go for saturation and just lower that, but that's not really the way to do it. Let's first get into our black and white workflow, black and white. And as you can see, it looks pretty much the same right. Now what I like to do in black and white is always just add a little bit of shadow detail, take out a little bit of the highlights, and then just bump off the contrast as you can see here. And use exposure to just make it right. But in all honesty, when I look at this image from Cloudia, I think her face could just need a little bit more bright. And maybe her hair, which was bright red, maybe it needs a little bit more brightness or maybe darker. You can still do that. Just go down. And here you can see your color mixer her red hair, just lower it or make it more stand out, there we go. That's nice. And for the skin, I mostly use orange and yellow As you can see here, we can really just change the way that the skin looks and fine tune it, maybe make her hair just a little bit darker. There you go. Now you have to remember that everything that we see consists of three colors, red, green, and blue. Those are our primary colors. Now we also have secondary colors, can agenda and yellow. Now, when we look at the technical part, like I explained in the chapter about your color spaces, all those colors are connected through the black body curve. Now this is a little bit technical, but just remember that normally when you change, for example, your color temperature or your tint or your vibrance or your saturation, you're doing it on all those colors. What you're doing in a channel mixer is pretty awesome, because now you can just pinpoint one color and change it. And that's a really powerful technique. It has nothing to do anymore with color spaces, but literally between just enhancing one color or the other. Now of course, when you're in black and white, you can still use color grading. So let's say I want my mid tones a little bit more red. You can just change that. Now, in this case I don't want it, but you can still do all the stuff that you can normally do on a color image. Very powerful in light room changing your black and white. And if you didn't know it yet, that color mixer is really powerful to get the exact kind of black and white that you want. And remember in the past when we shot black and white film, we used different filters in front of our cameras. For example, a red filter in light room. You don't need to filters anymore. You can just manipulate to your heart's content. That's the part that I love about light room. It's very, very extensive and it still looks incredibly simple. So let's go for the next chapter. 15. CH11 Point color: Now it's well mystery that color evokes emotion. Hollywood does it all the time. Think about a movie like Titanic and now think about that movie just in plain color. It just doesn't give you that mood of Titanic. Or think about, for example, Terminator. Just think about that being a normal color. It also doesn't make any sense. Color evokes emotion, and color can set a mood. Now, we are not working with film, we're working with still images. That means that if we want to give the message over, sometimes it's easier to do it with one image. But it can be much harder if you want to incorporate tinting because that image is stable, so it's constantly there. So we have to make sure that we pig point everything perfectly because, well, it doesn't move. So the viewer is literally focused on that image. Now we all know that of course, HSL U satration and luminance influences the colors, and I've showed you that in black and white. I've showed you that in color. But what if you need something a little bit more specific? Well, under your color mixer, if we just go there, there's also something called point color. Now if you go there, you can just get your picker and for example, select something in her hair. Like for example, let's say the red hair. Now you can see that you can change that color any way you want. You can do the range, for example, you can say like I want a smaller range or I want a larger range. In this case, let's just do it a full 100% and then just visualize the range. Now you can literally see in the image, what is the range that I selected? Let's start at zero. You can see everything that is being colored is actually the range that you selected. In this case, let's only do a part of the hairs, there we go. We can change the U, of course. We can change the saturation shift to make it a little bit more saturated. And we can change the luminance, make it more bright. Now when I disengage this, you can see that it has a total effect on the image. It just gives that hair in that one tiny piece, just a little bit more oomph. In some images this will work like a charm. In some images it just takes over too much also of the skin. And at that point, you can of course, go into Photoshop or use masking. But overall, the point color is a very handy tool if you want to change just one color in an image and want total control over that color, then go to Point Color. Okay, let's go for the next chapter. 16. CH12 Color manipulation with curves: Now, we actually already discussed this tip in the Creating Your preset. But I still wanted to do an chapter on it because it's one of the tips that I found when I teach workshops. A lot of people know manipulation of color and they use their own actions in Photoshop or presets. But when I'm showing this one, they go like he really, is that possible? That's easy and that's simple. Let's just do a separate chapter and it's going to be a short one on using curves for your color manipulation. We're going to leave everything as it is and we're just going to go to curves. Now when you see your curves, you of course ho or over and you can see what it is. So you have a paramedic curve, you have your point curve, and that's the one that we love to use. And you have, of course, all your different channels, your red, green, and blue again. Red, green, and blue are your primary colors. If you want to manipulate color, we often dive into the color mixer or color grading here in tone curve. That's actually where I started doing my manipulation for color and I still use it today. Now, I will normally leave green alone and I will just go for the reds. And depending on the look I want, you can just take, for example, red out of the shadows, add it into the highlights. You already have a slightly different look. And of course you can use blue, for example, to just level this off and just create something a little bit different. So for example, this is the original one. This is the retouched or revamped image. The reason I'm doing this is color evokes emotion with color. You can literally just tell a story differently. But there's also something else. We are used to the images coming straight out of our camera. And it looks well, normal and standard, right? And our eyes and our minds are a little bit tingling and a little bit like, hey, what's going on if you use different colors? And this is one of the main things that you can do to get your viewer to pay more attention to your images by using the right color scheme. By using the right tints, you can make an image more warmer or more colder, meaning creating more like, hey, come in more opening or maybe a little bit more distant. But most of all it tells you to tell you, It helps you to tell your story. So that's why I wanted to do a different chapter on that. Column manipulation with the curves. Because the curves are in almost every row converter. If you're on your phone or your tablet, or using different software from Adobe, the curves are always there. And in almost all cases, you can manipulate your color very, very good with those curves. Okay, let's go to the next chapter. 17. CH13 Noise reduction in batch: Now I think one of the biggest enemies of digital photography is of course, a noise. And of course, also from film photography, and video and whatnot. More, we don't want noise in our images. Now in the past of course, you had noise killers. But you often ended up with more like a pastel painting. Now, light room already had a great noise engine on board by just using color noise or a normal noise, and you could fine tune everything. But the new noise in lightroom is really a totally different beast. This one is amazing. But did you know you can also do it in batch? Let me show you very quickly. Now, this concept was a few years ago and I was still shooting with a camera that wasn't that sensitive. It's actually pretty good camera. But ISO 5,000 Well, as you can see here, we got some noise. And the same thing with this image. Yeah, there's a lot of noise. I can't publish this to a client. This is just something I can't do now. Of course, I can add a little bit of noise reduction from the old light room. Just go a little bit into manual noise reduction and maybe color noise reduction. It looks okay, but let's say we want to use the new one. Let's do noise. But again, did you know you can do it in batch? Watch this. I'm going to select both images. I'm going to do Noise. There you go. Let's zoom in on the face, so I'm going to make sure that it looks okay. A little bit too much. Let's tone that down. Let's tone it down a little bit more. It can be a little bit rough, we don't want to. Nice. There we go. Now you can create a stick or you can just enhance two images. Let's just do enhance. Okay, it's done. I'm not going to joke you guys, this takes a while. Now, we recently did the concert for 2023 from VB. Also in Bet, I had to do about 100 images, and that's the point where you just put it in Bet you just go and a few hours later you come back and it's already done. Normally, it will take anywhere between 1 minute and 4 minutes for an image, depending on how much noise there is, of course how high the resolution of your images in this case. Let's look at the difference. This is the noise reduction version, and this is the original one. In all honesty, that's a totally different image. This one I can deliver to a client. This one, it's a little bit noisy. So let's take a look at this one. This is the original image and because we screen recording now, everything is a little bit slower. You can see a lot of noise over here. Let's go for the noise reduction version. There we go. Now look at that. All the noise is gone, even the hot pixels are gone. And I can't say that the image looks any less sharp, the original one lot of noise. And the bets version, and as you can see here, even the original color is restored in the bag here, it gets that really nasty blue. And you can't really see what's going on. And then you go for this one. And there you go. Isn't that magic, right? But the thing that you probably didn't know, or maybe you did, you can do it in batch. So let's go for the next chapter. 18. CH14 Retouching skin: Now retouching the skin. That's the fun part. If you believe some people, you need a pen dipped in dragon's blood at midnight to retouch skin the proper way. Other people will tell you, why should you retouch the skin? This is the way that the model looks, right? Some people will go for the Barbie look, some people will go for the over smooth technique and then just add some noise. Some people try to keep it natural. You already hear it. There are many different solutions. Now when I look at my own workflow, I mostly use Photoshop and for example plug ins like Portrait Pro image normal portraiture, or for example, Luminar with the artificial intelligence skin. Of course you can ask if it's really artificial intelligence, but well, it's labeled as I. So why not? So how can we do it in a light room? Well, in light room we can do a basic retouching for the skin. I'm not going to tell you guys this is the professional way or this is the perfect way. But in all honesty, you can come far. Now, this was shot with very, very harsh light. I'm not going to take an image that was shot with the soft box because that's easy, right? So very harsh quality of light. And as you can see here, every single detail is shown. And I don't think my model will really like to be seen like this. On the other hand, nowadays we're shooting with digital cameras and razor sharp lenses. When we compare that to film photography, the film was never 100% flat in the camera. You always had that little bit of softness in there with digital. Everything is unforgiving, everything is brutal, and everything is very, very sharp. So let's just tone that down a little bit. Now, one of the things that I love about lightroom is that you can now also edit in little parts and we call that masking or local adjustments. Let's go for a local adjustment, you can find it over here. Let's now just take the brush. I'm not going to do the whole phase, I'm just going to do this part so you can see the difference. So I'm going to select it, of course you can do it much better if you take some time behind your computer. I'm doing this with a touchpit now instead of the drawing tablet from XP pen, but to film it. I think it's a little bit easier to do it with a touchpit. Maybe you guys don't have a pen tablet. Okay, This is about half the phase. What I do to get it in the ballpark is just go into my local adjustment. This part I will just skip for now. I will immediately go to my detailed part, texture and clarity. Let's start by just putting everything on zero. As you can already see, The skin totally clears up, but it doesn't look natural, right? So let's bring back a little bit of that texture. There we go. Now change the clarity just a little bit to get some contrast in. There we go. Now maybe use a little bit of the haze if needed to get those shadows a little bit nicer. There we go. Now you can go into your normal settings and for example, change your highlights to take away a little bit of the shine. It doesn't take away the real shine of course, but it clears it up a little bit and maybe open up the shadows. There you go. Now as you can see, this is a really simple and very fast way to do it. Now when I paint in the rest, you can literally see the effect. It's subtle, but it's a huge difference. This is a way to really enhance the skin without doing it too much and without using any expensive plugging. You just do it in light room. As soon as you look at this and you go like now, it doesn't look right. That's the nice thing about non destructive. You can always just go in there to your heart's content and change everything you want. Maybe you want a little bit less texture, maybe you want some more clarity in there. Maybe less clarity and more texture. You can go anywhere you want. Now if there's a little problem, for example, with some detail over here, you can of course just use your healing brush. In most cases you can use healing or remove or the clone stamp. Now, I'm not a big fan of the clone stamp in skin retouching, I'm mostly a big fan of the remove and heal. Let's do the remove now. There we go. And we just go over these, Just click on it and it'll take things out of the frame or out of the picture. Of course it's also screen recording so it's a little bit sluggish but you get the idea right much better. So skin retouching in light room? Of course, it can be done. Did you know that? Let's go to the next chapter. 19. CH15 Focus AI: Now, creating convincing depth of field is of course, something that has been done for many, many years and never actually been achieved, right? Because, well, to create depth of field, you have to know where everything is with most plugins and of course also in Photoshop, you can't change your lens blur or you can use a tilt and shift lens, but it's a two dimensional image. Should we improve, How can we do this? Well, with certain cameras, you can now shoot something called a de ma, where you can actually create the depth in a scene in a separate file. And that will be read by, for example, the software, and it will create a depth of field. But what if you don't have a camera that supports this? Does it still work? Well, Lightroom edit in early axis, some lens blur. And I just wanted to show you it's not done yet of course, but it will appear in future lightroom releases of course. Let's just press Apply. The first thing you will see, it starts analyzing the scena. This is a very, very simple scene. It's just a model against the backdrop, but it's very close to the backdrop. And I want to have a little bit more of that separation. So let's see what it can do. It actually detected something in the front and something in the back. You can still change this by just dragging this slider, and as you can see, it changes the backdrop. That's very nice. And of course, you can also change the blur amount. Let's start with zero and then build up to O. We don't want too much. Just a little bit. There you go. It performed, okay here when we zoom in, you can still see that it messed up a little bit there, but this is 100% acceptable. But how does it do with the street scene, which is a lot more difficult? Let's open one of those images now. Okay, so this image was shot at Kings Day, So we have all these kids and selling secondhand gear. Also grown ups by the way. So let's see what it does with this, because I want him actually to be sharp and everything else to be out of focus. Now again, this is early as it is an AI edition, so it means that it does a lot of calculations. In all honesty, I expected to totally mess up. But let's see if it really messes up. So let's go for develop. Let's go for a lens blur and let's press Apply. Now it's analyzing the whole scene and I hope it will find him. This, of course, there we go. Find several things in the scene and wow, look at this really surprises me. You can add more blur amount all honestly, I didn't test this before recording. I tested it of course against the normal backdrop, but I thought why not threw in something from the street. As you can see here. This really is, it really separates between somebody in the front and the one, even these cops, I don't know where they belong. But it looks convincing, right? You can change the bouquet of let's make it something a little bit more funky. You can boost it. You can of course, visualize or point here you have your subject, but you can also probably point towards somewhere. Let's say I want that part to be sharp. There you go. Or I want my subject back. Just click and it changes over. This is a little bit similar to what you see on most modern phones, right? I want this part in focus. You just click and it will just focus there. Or I want this part in focus. Now, when you word create the de map, it looks a lot better. But in all honesty, in light room, really nice. Let's extend this a little bit and see what happens. As you can see here, you draw in more or less. So you can fine tune your selection a little bit. Very nice. You can visualize the depth, so you can literally see what's going on. There you go. You can also, of course, fine tune everything from the blur to the focus and the size of the focus. Of course, let's say we want something more in focus, you just draw that in. Now, in this case, it doesn't make any sense, but you see you can manipulate everything now. And this is totally different from just getting two lines there and just move it around and blur it. This is way more advanced if you need to change focus just a little bit. I highly recommend using this if you want to change it a lot, maybe just next time just open up the aperture a little bit more. But overall, very impressive. The focus in a light room, very usable. Let's go for the next chapter. 20. CH16 Awesome vignetting: Now, I probably don't have to tell you guys that drawing the attention of you viewer is very important. We want to make sure that the viewer sees the part of the image that we want the viewer to see. Now when we look at an image like this, there's nothing really wrong with it. But the attention doesn't really go to the model yet. So let's change some stuff now. This is straight out of the camera. So let's do a very quick touch up. So let's add some contrast. Let's take out some of those highlights. Let's add a little bit of shadow detail. Take away a little bit of the contrast from the face because the face was a little bit too dark. There we go. Okay, now let's see if we can go into curves and make it a little bit darker. There we go, at a little bit of highlights. Okay, nice. The only thing is I want to draw the viewers attention to my model. Now, of course, we all know that underneath here you find your post crop fignetting. Let's just try a little bit. There we go. Okay, it looks pretty nice. Let's change the midpoint, cool. But what if I want something else? What if I want a fignette that is, for example, only on the face and everything else is dark? Or what if I want a fignette that's more like an egg shape instead of round? Well, don't worry, you can do the same thing. Let's go for our local adjustments. And instead of doing a local adjustment with a brush or select subject, we're actually going to do a radial gradient. I'm place it on the face of my model. I'm just going to pull it down. As you can see, you can make it round or more like an egg shaped or an oval. So let's change the middle part a little bit. And now comes the trick. You have to invert this. But first, father the heck out of it. There you go. Then invert it, and now I can very simply just lower my exposure. There you go. You can even add some contrast in those parts, or maybe just just work a little bit with your color balance. Look at this, isn't that awesome. So now you have the power of the fignette, but you can still do a lot more with that fignette. You can manipulate the fignette to your heart's content without changing the face, and that's the trick. The normal fignette will just darken the corners. A fignette in Photoshop, you can of course, use a touch and burn layer and create something a little bit more darker, But in light room, by using that local adjustment, you have so much more power over your vignette than in other software. So the power of the fignette, it draws the attention to your viewer. And you can do a lot of retouching and tinting in it. So next time you want to draw your attention of the viewer towards your subject, use the fignette in Photoshop Light Room. It's pretty awesome. Let's go for the next chapter.