Transcripts
1. Introduction: I'm Jamal from Toronto, on Instagram I go by J-scale. A name is a reflection of how you see things and your personality and conveying that through your photos. You can do anything with what you have, you just have to make it your own.
2. World Trade Center: Symmetry, Radial Filter, Sharpening: All right. So, today was a successful day, in the sense that we intended to grab three types of shots and we did that. We got the logo, we got the symmetrical shot, and we got the stride-by. All in the financial district of course. Primarily, while I was out there, I was in between the 35 and the 14, based on what I was doing. But the 24 did come in handy in a couple scenarios. Everything went according to plan in the sense that, we had a couple of shots we intended to grab and we did that. So now, getting back here to look over what was done today. It's just like batch selects in the area which ones I knew were good. From there, I pretty much narrowed down even further, once I actually make my selection, it shows up in the selection module. From there I sort it even more and I go from there pretty much. So, I made my selects. I'm going to import them and then from there, what we do is we pretty much pick which one out of each like a couple of options we have for the photo that I know I liked, you pick the best one. When I pick the best one, that's where the editing starts. So, editing in a sense or to an extent is a reflection of how you see things and your personality and conveying that through your photos. Like someone who's super outgoing, more often than not you'll see them with very vibrant colors in their photos, very fun, just like colors warmth, all that stuff. Someone who is more laid back such as myself, it's like the colors are subdued and they're not really out there and I like to take a step back before I approach anything. So, let's start with the World Trade Center. The World Trade Center, I love the blue and the buildings around it are yellow, orange, red. So, the first thing I'm doing is, I always say Enable Profile Corrections to get rid of the lens when editing. Second thing I do is I test to see what auto does. Auto is pretty much the program's intelligent response to manmade imperfections of the photo. It could be leveling. It could be distortion. It could be a lot of things but it fixes the photo for you. It feels like it's on too much of an angle and it wants to straighten it out. That will help you in that sense. So, that's done. The World Trade Center is straight now. Now, what I'm going to do before I even edit is I'm going to make sure that it's centered. Looking at it now, it's slightly to the left. So, I'm deciding if I should crop from the top or the bottom. I think I'm going to crop from the top because the bottom is already somewhat cut off. At the top, it's really like dead space beside the antenna in the middle. The bottom has a long way going on. So, I'm going to try to fill the framing. That's it. I tend to shoot underexposed. Reason being is it just looks cooler on the screen once I get the photo and it gets me more excited about it and how it looks. It also gives me a fastest shutter speed in general. But that's just my preference to be honest. I know that some people are shooting in a different manner but that is something that I do. So, first thing I do is I try to find a level of exposure that I'm happy with. So, maybe I wanted to be super dark or maybe I wanted to be super realistic and strong in terms of the edit and then from there, clear my way. The cool thing about this white balance tools is that if you use it and you don't like the result, you can always just do it yourself manually. But I try to find the widest space possible and use the right bounds to find out how the colors should be. So, I've done that. Now, before I even go crazy on anything, like before I touch the highlights, before I touch the shadows, the whites or the blacks, I think okay, what do I want to be brighter and what do I want to be darker? Obviously, I want the center to be brighter because that is the main focus right now. So, I'm going to brighten up the middle using a radial filter. The radial filter normally comes with outer Invert Mask, but I click on that so that the inside of the circle with this highlight it shows you where it's actually highlighting. It shows you where it's affecting. So, I'm pretty much putting it in a position where it is brightening up or whatever it is I decide to do, it's affecting that area. In this scenario, it's affecting the World Trade Center and the building slightly around it. I put it at 100 filters. I put it out a feather of 100 because I can show you. If you brighten up a lot, it becomes very noticeable there's no feather. You can see the entire lines in the photo. So, when you feather it out, it becomes smoother. You don't necessarily see that effect that you did as drastic as you make it. It's almost impossible to tell that you did that yourself. So, I will just play around. So, I put it at like plus 120 but that's way too much. So, I'm brightening up the middle slightly to about plus 40. I always keep my highlight and my shadow indicators on me because my highlight shows me if something is blown out and the details are lost, and my shadows show if me something is too dark where you lose the detail as well. So, on the bottom right corner right now, you can see that those stairs have lost a bit of detail. Is that important to me? Right now no it isn't because the tone curve might just balance it out. So, I'm not too worried about it. But yeah, right now I've brightened up the World Trade Center. It's become more of a focal point in the photo. What I also do is because it's such a bright building and I want to make it pop and there's not much else going on around it, I can take down the shadows because it just makes that brighter building go back to its normal exposure. As you're brightening the photo, the depth and the contrast of it isn't being lost. So, I play with that and I play with the blacks a bit. Sometimes it's a bit more harsh. But maybe like a minus tow, minus three and then, I sharpen the main point so maybe I'll have 10, keep it at 10 because I'm also going to touch the sharpening to outside of this radial filter. From there, clarity maybe like a plus five, maybe a plus eight. Set that. So, that's the first thing I'm going to do. You can see like just with the radial filter, the difference it makes in the middle of the photo. So, it's a lot more sharper now. It's brighter. You see it more. Now, I'm going to use a graduated filter to darken the sides. I'm going to darken the sides because I want you to pay attention to the building in the middle. You're going to pull out the graduated filter and it has three lines. The furthest line out where you start is zero. The middle line is 50 and the furthest line is 100%. So, if I was to brighten or darken that first line, this area right here is 100. As you progress down, it goes to 50 and it goes to zero. So, this side right here is 100, right here is 50 and right here is zero. That's the effect that it's going to have. So, if I put the exposure up like that, 100% would be affected here, 50 percent would be affected here and zero percent would be affected here, and absolutely nothing will be affected after that line. So, that's just an example. But in this case, I want to darken the photo, so I'm going to darken it by maybe 70 because I want this effect to be stronger along these buildings, I'm going to actually pull this out more. By pulling back up the highlights, it just helps the photo pop brighter again or like the dark parts pop brighter again, even the whites a bit like I see over there, right here showing you where I've lost details. I'm going to pull my whites back down because I don't want to do that. So, I might put the whites up by five on this. Then what I do, now that I have this and I see where this line is and this line, I'm going to do the exact same thing on both sides. All I have to do is pull it out and it will duplicate that exact same effect. Now, you see what's happening here is that because I've increased the whites, it's overexposing this area here at the top. So, what I need to do is forget those whites because there's more white space on this side than there is in that outside. That's why that's happening. So, what I've done is I've changed and taken it off. So, now that we have both sides covered plus the radial filter, now we can actually edit the photo. This is just something I do in general. Before I even edit the photo, just the way it looks normally before and after, it looks like I already edited the photo to an extent. That's always like an important starting point for me. What I do after that is I sharpen the photo. If you hold Option while you're pressing Masking, it shows you actually what you're sharpening. So, right now by holding Option and clicking on the Masking button, everything is white. That means that everything that's white would be sharpened if I was to increase the levels of it. But I don't want to sharpen the whole image. I want to sharpen the architecture. I want to highlight the architecture. So, what I'm going to do in this situation is I'm going to maybe bring it to, let's see, 73. With 73 sharpening, if you hold Option still on the Amount button, it'll bring black and white so you can see actually the effect that you're having. So, I'm going to bring this to about 65-70, let's say, 70 and the radius is the outlines. Shows you that as well. So, it could be like super strong outlines or it could be almost no outline. I'm going to put that at 1.23 to give the photo the hard edge and then from there the detail is all the little stuff in between. I'm going to put that at about 40. I did shoot this at 640. So, there is a bit of ISO or bumps. So, the concept of noise being in this photo is there but it's very minimal. So, I'm going to pull like a four on noise reduction just because that's honestly just what I do and I feel like it smooths up the photo slightly even though what you'd see isn't as obvious but it's there. It does something to it and I feel like paying attention to the details is important. So now, I'm going to play with the highlights and see what I want to do and what not and go from there. So, I'm at zero now and see if I go anything past. Anything past 50 might be a bit too bright. But I like it. So, I'm going to go to about 45, and then the shadows, bring those down to about 50.
3. Word Trade Center: Contrast, Colors, Juxtaposition: I've increased the highlights, I'm actually going to drop it slight bit because I feel like I was taking a bit of detail off of the top of the World Trade Center. But I did like how bright it was at the top, so I'm going to address that again later. Now, onto whites and blacks, I'm very careful with this because I don't want to go overboard, like you see if you even bump it up slightly, I could just overexpose and you lose a bunch details so, go plus three blacks. I'm not really going to touch the blacks, I'm going to actually raise it because I feel like it's a bit too dark. So, I'm going to put out a plus 12. I always check back on my photo just to see if I'm on the right track. Now I'm here at clarity and I'm probably going to pump it up a bit to show- 100 looks crazy that's super edited for me. It almost looks like a cartoon in my opinion. So I can, I try to stick away from that, I try to keep the photo as real as possible. So I'll probably have 22, 26, keep it at that point keeping in mind the fact that I already did sharpen it in another area. I think I'm going to also bump up the exposure by one or two just because the way the photo's looking right now, I really like this area right here and I want to make sure that that's kept intact. Vibrance, when I get here, it's 50/50 man like. It could either go up or I could go down just based on the photo and based on the colors involved. So I'm checking to see what it looks like with vibrance, and I'm checking to see what it looks like without. I'm probably going to subtract it a bit. I'm also going to go back to my graduated filter just because I feel like I did make it a bit too dark and bump that up by two on that side, by 20 I mean and bump this up by 20 again as well just because keeping in mind that I'm probably going to use a vignette, I'm actually going to put it at minus 40. Originally, it was at minus 80. Saturation is the last thing I touched before contrast. Sometimes that's where people touch first. Everyone's different to be honest and it's all about finding your workflow and what works for you. Now I'm going to touch at contrast, see how I want to utilize this feature. When you use contrast, it darkens the photo a bit. So I might raise it up by 10 or 20. See the highlights popping up over there so I draw my highlights a bit. It's weird how it does that sometimes. So I'm just going to keep at 29 and put the whites back at zero. So now we're here from that to that. Now you see this is the tone curve but I usually start with the highlights, lights, darks and shadows again in this region. And I see what works and what doesn't work. Now, see anything I do here would just make me lose details so I stay away from it. Lights as well. That little bit of loss of detail is okay so I'm not that worried about it because I'm about to touch a tone curve. Shadows, I'm probably going to bring up but basically you can see everything in the photo. So we're there now. I'm at the tone curve now. The channel I'm on is red, green, blue. You can specifically go to red, you can specifically go to green and you can go to blue if you'd like but I usually stick to already green blue. The middle is the exposure essentially. So I try to find the exposure, I want to have on this photo and I work my way from there. So this is super dark, this is super bright. That's average and this is bright. Up here is you have whites and you have- up here is your whites, here's your highlights, here's the center. Here's your shadows, here's your darks. And you want to keep that in mind. So if you want to get rid of this, I can automatically just drop the top and the whites will just take care of that. And there's no more issues associated with my highlights. Now you can use a direct point and you could figure out what you want darker and what you want lighter and you could make those adjustments by moving your cursor up and down. So let's try and make this building a bit darker. Going to drop it a bit. It's a little bit too dark so I'm going to bring it back up. So that's cool, we got that, I'm cool with that. Also, the building is beginning to look a bit wider than it was when I started. So I'm going to try and drop down that a bit as well just because you don't want to go too overboard and you don't want it to look too unreal. So we're back there now. Right. And then this, just to try to clip some of the blacks, bring up the fade to about right there. So now we're here. Sometimes I look at the photo on a full screen to see how it looks actually and then I bring it back down. Now I don't necessarily know if I dislike grid part right here so I'm might cut it out, I might not I'm going to check it out what it looks like with and without it. Now you see, you press Command Z to go back to the movie made before that. I think I like it without it. So I'm going to do that. I'm also going to go back to the radio filter I did and adjust that because I feel like the middle is slightly too bright. So I'm actually going to drop down the highlights in the middle of it slightly to about minus 20. And I'm probably going to take the exposure back down by 10. So now we're there. We've done that. For me personally, I don't necessarily use VSCO filters, I just play with the colors on my own. I do sometimes but right now what I'm used to using I usually just play with that on my own so I could get rid of all the orange if I wanted to in the saturation module or I could illuminate the yellow, turn it a bit white if I wanted to. I'm going to do a plus 15 there, probably going to get rid of the reds like I said I was earlier. Get rid of the reds. If there's any purple, get rid of that. Any magenta, I almost want to get rid of the orange too. It looks surreal but I'm not going to do it that much, I'm probably going to do to minus, minus nine, minus 10. Now that we have this on and back, we're at the shadow and highlight portion of everything. If you hold "Option", it shows you the extreme, it shows you if you were to have it at 100 percent. So right now I'm holding "Option" and I'm pressing on this button and it's showing me what it would look like if I put the saturation in the shadows all the way up to 100. I don't want that. I want to find a color that suits this photo and I want it to complement- I want the shadows to complement the highlight in this photo. Before I even do this, I just want to double-check my temperature to make sure I'm happy with it. Now I'm going to see what it looks like if it was a bit colder. It's a bit too drastic. So I put it back at 6,400. However, I do feel like this is a bit too warm. So I'm going to put it at 6,000 and see what that looks like. It looks more normal in my opinion. So now that we're there, I'm pretty much going to pick the colors that go into the shadows and the colors that go into the highlights and then we're almost on the photo. Shadows. C with a slight green tint on the shadows. It's a bit too much. Let' try this blue to go with the building. These little buttons on the thing could show you what it looks like with or without that contribution from that section. So without that, it goes back there with that. I like it, I may just adjust it in a second but I'm just going to see. Then the highlights to complement the buildings are probably yellow like that and put it at 11. See what this looks like before and after. I like this. Now in terms of balancing it, it could be more blue or it could be more like that to be honest. I liked it in the middle. Maybe a bit to the right. Now that we got that, we're just at the vignetting part. Again, if you hold "Option", it shows you the extreme. So if you were to go all the way, it'll show you what you're doing. It helps you with the midpoint, it helps you figure out what you vignette's going to look like if you want to do that. So I want it to be a bit closer so I'm going to bring it in. Keep in mind I'm holding Option right now, I'm holding option to check the roundness of the vignette too. So I want it to work with the World Trade Center and right now they run as parallel as they possibly could to the World Trade Center. So I do that and then the feather. The feather is important because it makes the vignette a lot smoother. So I'm going to put out like 65. I'm also going to bring my midpoint back. Bring my midpoint out a bit because I feel like it was darkening the photo too much. So it's at about 75 now. So there's that before and after. You can add green to your photo if you'd like but I usually try to stick away from it because sometimes green competes with the quality of the photo and it makes it look a little less of- it makes it look a little less of a quality. But in certain purposes, like for creative reasons and what not, you can add that. Dehaze is a new feature on lightroom 6 I believe. I use this sometimes. It helps to fall apart. So that's what this whole section- with this whole section right here, that's what it looks like with, and this is what it looks like without it. So it's a little bit brighter there, it's a little bit darker here, more contrasty. So I'm just going to go back to the top and make my final localizations. I probably put this at 80, probably take down the highlights a bit to show the building. May bump it up again, bump it up a couple more. Check the full screen, and if I'm happy with it, then I'm good. Which I am. So that's what it looks like now. And there's the first photo. Taking this back to symmetry and showcasing how symmetry is involved in this photo, you see from this side, it leads into the middle, from this side, it leads into the middle. The buildings are lined up symmetrically on each side and the center of the photo is the point on this building and it winds up directly with the middle line. And you check that with your crop tool or your local adjustments and you can see that it runs down the middle. Which is dope and it just makes the photo work perfectly. And yet that's the photo I took for symmetry.
4. Lookup: Exposure, Temperature, Contrast, Highlight Clippings: So, for the lookup, we have a photo I took in the financial district, and there was five buildings in it. So, with the lookups site, it's cool if you can capture more buildings in one photo, the more you can capture, the clearer it looks in my opinion, but at the same time, if you finally get one super outstanding building that you want to highlight, but you'd want it to be distracted by others, that works as well. So, this photo, pretty much, we're near a famous building that a lot of people in New York I know love to photograph, including myself. But before I do anything, like I always said, I go back to the Lens Correction page, I enable corrections, get rid of that for net, I check auto, that takes away too much from the photo. I don't think that it's a good look. So, I'm just going to keep it on my own, and I'm going to deal with this on my own. Computer can only hold so much. So, now, I'm going to bright it up to find the exposure that I want, shooting upwards against the light, sometimes can cause a lot of shadow. A lot of shadow in the sense that, what you probably see, doesn't necessarily reflect on the camera. So, it requires a bit of work. Because of a lot of shadow, you have to combat that, but before I do that, if there's anything I want to do with a graduated or radial filter, I would do it now. I don't see fare right now, because, there's nothing in particular that I want to stand out more than the next. So, I'm going to leave it. Highlights, I'm going to drop it down a bit. Not by a crazy amount, but I dropped it. I'm actually going to pull it back up a bit. So, right there. Twenty-four. Bring out the shadows to show the buildings that were there. Like I said, you lose them when you're shooting upwards against the light. So, there's that, but then, you can see that, it looks so cool, and it's dark. So, you want to bring that back, but you still want to show the detail. So, I'm going to drop down blacks a bit. Maybe like -10, and the arrow pointing upwards to clarity. What do you want to do with the clarity? I'm going to put the clarity at, above 40. Because, it's all architecture, and we want to showcase, and highlight all of that. So, we're going to do that. Vibrance, you check to see if that's what you want. If you don't, you drop it down. Black, and even black, and one of those cool, but, I'm going to plus 20 on the vibrance on this one. Saturation, I'm going to just put it at minus three, minus four. I see a bit of blue in this photo to be honest, and I don't like it, so, I'm going back to the temperature. I'm going to warm it up a bit. So, there's that, the tint, I see some green, I'm not sure if I like it, so I'm going to test it on a tint bark. We are have our preference. Incorporating contrast into this photo, put that at plus 20. I know you can see that there's a bit of extra highlights here, and it's cause for lost detail, but that will be sorted very shortly. Back to this section, highlights, don't want to do that. Because you see all those details that are lost. It's crazy. 14, lights, four, darks, four, shadows, but stay positive on this one because, you don't want to lose it. So, we've got that four there. Now, we're going to go here. Like I said, if you ever want to get rid of these highlight clippings, all you have to do is you move that down. If there was shadow clippings, all you would do is, you move that up. But, before I do that, I want to make sure that the exposure is correct. So, it could be like that, or it could be like that. I think I want it to be like this, to be honest. So, I'm going to drop this down too, and then I'm going to pull up this, to get at least some of the blacks clipping. I'm going to drop this down till we keep the fluidity of my curve consistent. So, that's before, that's after, and I'm also going to raise the highlights. Drop this down a little bit more, so now we have this. I sharpen these buildings, that's a 100, these are entire buildings, and there's no particular point of the building that you are more focused in than another, or more sharp than the other, so, you just put at a 50, sharpen to about 70, and 75. One point one on the radius, details, 44, we've done that now. One thing I try to do, and I check to see if it's worth it, I get a radio filter, put in the middle of the photo, and just see what it looks like if I was to brighten it up a bit. Just like, you know what I mean. Just to an extent, see if that makes image pop anymore. We take down the highlights, then you could see what it looks like with or without it, by pressing this button. So, I think I like it. Because it shows that there's light that it's over this. Which there was, just wasn't conveying on the camera correctly. So, we got that, we've edited the photo for the most part. Couple of other things left to do in terms of coloring, sharpening is done. Where I also say 40, so, we're going to put at four, noise reduction, there's the vignette portion, and then there's coloring in. Coloring in the shadows, and the highlights. So, let's put this on orange. So, let me see, because it looks like I cut it again. Because I'm getting thrown off by the extreme color. So, I want to put it there, and I'm going to fill these buildings in, and I'm going to keep it at about seven, and for the highlights, I don't think I necessarily want to use it, because, I just don't see they're a fit, but I'll try. I'm going to try. I'm going to try with a blue for example. Orange and blue go well together. So, see what that looks like. No, I don't like it. So, I'm just going to double-click saturation, and get that out of there. I'll stick with what I have, I might drop down the shadows a bit more on this photo, because it's sticking me out now, but it works. So, there's that. I actually didn't really touch the shadows whites or blacks in this photo. But the reason for that, and I don't know. I just didn't necessarily work out. Put this one on minus four, I'm always usually bump to backup by a tag because I know I'm about to vignett, maybe I'm not going to vignett. Maybe minus six. Mid point, you want to bring this one in probably, feather, or a lot. I always check in the final product, and dehazing, a bit, seven. That's before, that's after. Just the full screen to make sure I'm happy with it, and I am. So, I'm just going to just stop right there.
5. Stride-by: Cropping, Graduated & Radial Filters, Highlights, Tone Curve: With the second photo, this is one of the photos that I had to capture quickly, and it is one of the photos that I like. For the most part, symmetry is incorporated. But, there's going to have to be a couple adjustments made. Like always said, start with Enable Profile Corrections. Then, I check to see if auto works, it kind of doesn't in this situation because what it does, is it kind of brings this corner and kind of pulls it in and it's not diagonal anymore, so, press the auto, it works. You can check to see if the lines line up by going to this grid, you can see the lines match up or if they're converging or diverging. They're falling back, coming forward. In this case, they look perfect for the most part, but I'm going to pull it up by one, that was actually the wrong way. I'm going pull it vertically, I'm going to put it at minus one. Press Constrain Crop, if you ever do any adjustments along these lines make sure you press Constrain Crop or it's going to show the white in the bottom. Now, ensuring that this is symmetrical, I want to make sure that this space and this space match up. So, I'm going to have to move things. He might not be in the middle, but that's not the important part. The important part of this image in terms recapturing symmetry is ensuring that, this space is equivalent to this space, on these grid, and also this space right here, is equivalent to this space right here, because that's the key part of symmetry. As we're making sure everything lines up properly. How tall these windows are, is really cool. So, now that we've done that, the images pretty much symmetrical in the sense that, there's two windows on this side there's, two windows on that side, and there's one bench here and there's one bench there. This bench, the whole image isn't going to be symmetrical, but the concept of symmetry has been incorporated into this drive by this photo as a stride right first, and then it incorporates symmetry second. So, like I said, find your level of exposure that you want first. Once you find that, you start working, if you want to touch the Graduated or the Radio Filters you can. So I like to brighten up the person a bit, so, I put a Radio Filter around him just a bit, and keep it at 100 so that the brush is always not too evident. Bump it by like 20, he's standing on it now. Now from here, it's like," What else can I do with this Graduated, or a Radio Filter to make things pop?" So, I'm going to click that actually. I'm going to go to Graduated Filters, and I'm going to brighten up one side of the image and I want dark in the other. So, it kind of shows the person like walking into the unknown for example. It seems a bit too dramatic, but I'm just trying to give an idea of extremes here, so, I'm going to brighten up this side of the photo, a bit so 0.90 maybe. I'm going to pull it up like right here. Right there and then I'm going to darken this side of the photo. Not exactly sure what yet, but I'm about to find out. Pull this out a bit more, pull this in a bit, and I'm going to darken it. Now you can just get like this, contrast on the photo. This is before, this is after. They're kind of playing around without going too drastic on it. One thing you can do to, one tip I have in terms of making the ground pop a bit more, is using Graduated Filter, with this you'd probably want to line it up with the way the street is going. So, I'm going to do that. I'm going to darken it first, this is how I make the grounds pop in my photos. Darken it by bit, then I pull up the Whites. Pull up the Whites. Now you can see what just happened there, if you pay attention to the ground. It just look a lot boring before that, so, there's that maybe even a bit of highlights. It's a bit too bright, so I'm going to darken it a bit again. So now we're there. So I use my Graduate Filters, I use my Radio Filter, I'm good to go. Now, it's all about Highlights, Shadows, Whites and Blacks, and I know I mentioned the Option Key for the Vignette, the Shadow Coloring, and the Highlight Coloring. But you can use it on your Whites. You can see where the Whites are going over, and it even shows you when you take it off in the Highlight Clipping, can you use with the Blacks, and I'll show you what you're making too dark. So, Option is very helpful, you can test option out on every single spider you have on this program. So I'm going to start at the highlights, I think I want to brighten it up a bit. Shadows, I'm going to bring them down just a bit, because I want there to be a contrast on the photo, maybe to - 25. Bring up the Lights a bit, before that happens. Well it can happen but I'm going to fix it in the concur. Blacks, I think I want to bring down a bit. Always check the photo like I said. Brighten it up a bit. Those Whites over there, not playing. They don't want to go anywhere. So I'm going to drop it down to 20. Keep that there. This photo, Clarity. You can see one of those I got 100 that's too much. I'll put it at about 35. Vibrance, because it's just this, you want to focus it on the person. I'm going to put minus nine. Saturation, do I want to have Saturation there? Not necessarily sure. Let's see what the Vibrance looks like if I pull it up a bit. It's kinda cool because it kind of brings out the blue on the ground, and blue and orange always complement each other very well. So, let's try this. I'm going to put out a 30, but I'm going to take down the Saturation to minus six. Now we're here, you can see the difference. Now I'm going to use the Contrast too, to make this image pop slightly more. Now we're there. Now, going to the Highlights Section, and lights and Darks, and Shadows. Never want to go too drastic. Let's put it at six for now. Let's bring these Lights up a bit too and you see all those highly clippings I'm going to take care of them on some curve area. Darks, not too much. Shadows, don't want to make it too Black. Now, onto the fun part. Before I even do its own curve, I see a little bit of green and I don't like it, so I'm just gonna get rid of the green. I see a bit of Aqua, I don't like that, I'm going to get rid of the Aqua. I want to focus primarily on the blue and orange in this photo. The Tone Curve, as the Adjustment Tool. There's Exposure, the area of the Tone Curve that. You can check out your exposure. What I'm do now, is I'm going to get rid of those highlight. I'm going to clip them, so that they're not on the float anymore, and it's not an issue. I'm going to bring up these highlights a bit. So now we're here. One thing I'm going to do, to almost end this off. So I'm going to put, this is pretty much, to me, the opposite of a Vignette. So I want to make sure that it's centered, side. Bring the Radio Filter as far as possible, and then I try to center it, so that the adjustments I make are even along the board, so moving that up now.
6. Stride-by: Shadows, Highlights, Vignette: Back over to the right a bit slightly, all right, now we're in the middle. Now, I got to set 100 because I want to keep it the same way. I'm only literally going to bring this up by like 20 or 30. One, two, three, done. Now, that we've done that, I want to make the ground a bit more blue. So, I want to go to the blue section in the shadows, and I'm going to bring out the blue a bit. On the highlights, I want to bring out the orange. I'm going to get the orange and I'm going to do that. You can see this photo comes to life in the sense that, I'm going to drop it down to six because it's a bit too much, and I'm going to drop that down to seven because it's a bit too much. See these colors just pop a bit. Knowing that I'm going to use that in a second, I want to bring up the photo there. So, put down that 60, all this red will be eliminated once I go to vignette. We've got that. In terms of sharpening, hold option, on masking to pick exactly what you want to sharpen. I want to sharpen the shape of the building and the person. So, I've got 73, bump it to about 75, radius 1.1, detail 40. This is just for city. The more maiming, the better in certain situations but it always doesn't. If you're taking a portrait of somebody, you probably don't want to sharpen it this much because they might end up looking fake, you know what I mean. So, this helps certain lines and buildings because you're accentuating the structure, but if it's a person and you want to be soft and welcoming, you might not go as far as I've gone in terms of sharpening. You might be more specific in the masking and having in the 95 to 100 area. I used 400 ISO, so, I'm going to put a luminance of two just to counteract that. Then the last step is vignette, which is like that. I'm going to have that about 12, bring out the midpoint a bit, pull in the feather. This guy is the center of attention and it works. The roundness of that can just take a little bit off of him. I think green might look cool on this photo so I'm going to put some slight adjustments with some of the green here, so I got it at about 10, 25, 10. The reason for that is that the green's there but it's not overwhelming and it just adds that extra layer of texture to the photo. Dehazing, just checking to see if I'm going to use it or not, there plus five. Now, I'm going to see if I can explore the blue option on this tanker because there is blue in this photo. I'm going to see if there's anything I can do to help make it pop a bit. See that's a little bit too much. I like how it adds that extra film color or it's like unattainable preset if unless you were to touch that. Bring it up a bit. I'm not going to bring it up, it's cool. I didn't like the green, so I'm also going to just bump up the purple just a bit, plus nine. Green is gone and just before I know how to finish my photo, I check it on full screen and I'm happy with it. I don't think I like this area right here. I don't like how this is a random area of white. So, I'm going to crop from the bottom and I'm also going to crop from the top. So, I did that, got rid of that, a little less distracting, and I think one last graduated filter that I'm going to do. So, I'm going to put it right there. I'm going to add almost like it's like where is the light coming from? It shows you the direction of the light is coming from. This shows you the direction where the light is coming from and I'm going to pull it out a bit more, and this is before, this is after and we're done. All right. So, I guess wrapping up the editing portion, I think the most important thing for the people that already are familiar with Lightroom is that, I hope that you learned how to I used the graduated in the radial filters. I feel like that could help a lot of people in a lot of areas and it could add this new creative dynamic to your process of editing. That's something that I've become very keen on once I figured out how to use it. So, I'm glad that I was able to share that with you. If you're also familiar with Lightroom, there's that Option button, the Option button is very key, like when you're holding that down, when you're moving your white slider or your black slider or when you're vignetting or when you're sharpening, holding down the Option button helps you tremendously. So, that's a huge thing that I hope you take away from this class. Another thing is just perspective, being creative and being open-minded to new perspectives in the sense that, maybe you're going to duck down for a shot or maybe you're going to like raise your camera up higher. That all ties back to something I've learned and I've maintained from when I first started taking pictures with my phone. Just like using my phone when I started, I was able to be more creative like I could angle it, it wasn't this big screen or like this eyepiece that I had to look through. So, I tried not to let the DSLR limit me once I started, so I started using that. So, I tried to incorporate that same thing. So, if I have my hands raised I'm shooting on live view, I'm on the floor, I'm shooting live view. Or I already know what I'm looking at and clicking and preparing for that mentally and having that in mind while I'm shooting. So, these are all super important things I hope you noticed and paid attention to in the class. For the beginners, it's just like, as long as you put that effort in and you're willing to try and you're willing to be patient and focused on the what more than what is. So, by that I mean, worrying about your perspective first and composition, and improving that before improving your gear. That's the most important thing because you can honestly create with anything. You can create it with a phone, you can create it with a film camera from the 50's, you can create with the DSLR that was made yesterday, it comes down to the way you see things and how you want the world to interpret what you're seeing. So, focus on that first and then secondary to that is the gear. You can do anything with what you have. You just have to make it your own. So, that's my key message to anyone just starting out in photography, still learning, still getting their feet wet. The last thing is like, being from Toronto and being proud of the fact that I'm from Toronto, getting to come to New York is just like a playground for me because it's unfamiliar for me and I learned a lot while I'm here in terms of photography across the board. So, another key thing is to travel. Travel and take what you learn in the principles, and the composition rules, and the ideas that you garnered and developed in the place that you leave and try and apply that in a different situation because once you do that, you're becoming more well versed in what you're doing. It helps you across the board and it just makes you overall better, more experience cheater. My opinion, nobody's better than anyone, it comes down to experience and with experience, you become more comfortable in certain situations. But in terms of who is better than the next photographer, I don't believe that's a thing. I think photography is based on experience and how much time you put into it. Stay curious and never lose your imagination. Those are the key thing I would recommend to everyone watching this class and just in general.
7. Share Your Photos: So, with this class, taking a class and trying to take that stride why that look up or that symmetrical shot. Maybe it's one of each, maybe it's three of one type. This is a project gallery. In the project gallery, you can share your best photos there, where I'll be looking at them and others who are watching this class will be looking at them, you can get feedback, you can get inspiration, and your photos live on this project gallery page for good. So, it's there and I'll always see it and it'll always be a part of this, for me, and it will be cool to see what you guys produce whether you live in Toronto, New York, Chicago. Wherever it may be, like any city, the more people that participate in this the better because at the end of the day, I can gain inspiration from you guys the same way you're getting inspiration from me.
8. Explore Photo Classes on Skillshare:
Jamal Burger, Photographer
