Editing Landscapes in Lightroom - Highlights and Shadows

Steven001

Steven001

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Hi Folks,

Editing is something which I think I struggle with, especially when it comes to consistent editing and developing a "style". I edit my images in Lightroom 5 and I start by dropping the highlights right down and lifting the shadows almost all the way. I then hold alt and drag the white slider until I can see some pixels and do the same for the blacks. I saw this on an online tutorial but sometimes I think my images look a little flat. Is it common practice to reduce the highlights and lift the shadows in landscape pictures? How do you edit your landscape shots?

A sample of my images can be found on my flickr page: https://www.flickr.com/photos/20726822@N05/
 
Steven
I think the approach you use depends on the image itself. If you have a clear separation between sky and land then I'd opt for the grad option. Using either on the sky or the land, or both. If I cant do this I tend to use both the highlight and whites slider, but do it visually. This way you can see the effect. Shadows and blacks ( although not so much blacks ) the same. However don't forget the tone curve. This sometimes works better than just adjusting the Highlights/shadow sliders. You can use the pick tool to select certain regions for adjustment. Don't forget that sometimes using HSL tool can be very useful as can the vibrancy slider. Dropping the BLUE luminance can give a bluer sky without the use of a grad ( watch other blues though ). Lowering YELLOW luminance in some scenes can give grass a greener colour.

I tend not to use just a few tools it's generally the correct one (s) for the job It's a question of the image and the result I'm after.

Hope this helps a bit

John C
 
I took a look at your flikr page and my first reaction was you aren't doing much wrong!
There are some lovely images there and I'd be happy to put my name to them.

I too saw that YouTube "tutorial" and my first reaction, when I saw the guy slam the highlights and shadows sliders to their minimum and maximum, was to quit watching.
If it's the same guy that I saw, his name is Anthony Morganti, who some people (mostly American) seem to hold in high regard, but my immediate reaction was that it was very bad advice.

Like Chappers, I prefer to approach image editing on an individual basis, and apply different adjustments depending on the original capture and the end result I'm looking for, although in general I do tend to employ a degree of highlight reduction on most of my images and on landscapes I tend to use the graduated filter on the skies as well, since I'm not a fan of ND Grads at the taking stage.
I find, if an image looks a little "flat", applying some "Clarity" usually helps to give it some more punch, often along with some "Vibrance."
If anything, I feel I tend to overdo the Clarity and Vibrance on a lot of my images, but I do like them to be a bit punchy.

I'm sure it's nothing you haven't seen before, but there is a handy basic LR tutorial here.
I'm also a fan of the Julieanne Kost tutorials on Adobe TV.
 
depends on exposure but you shouldn't need to often pull to much shadows back or reduce highlights. I follow an exposure to the right system, not clip the white end but expose a bit further to get more brightness and less shadows. It means less noise, less if any need to recover shadow.

Basic sharpening, colour chanel, wb, grad etc, is usuaully all you need
 
First I hold down the alt key and move the black slider to just reveal black outlines. Next I hold down the alt key and move the white slider to just show a glimmering of whites. From there it's up to to whatever I consider needs balance, shadows, highlights, exposure contrast but not in any particular order. But I don't go overboard as I like to use Nik plugins for more in depth editing and output sharpening. Everyone has their own way! :)
 
As a general rule for most images I do the following -

Move black slider to the left to increase apparent contrast/saturation;

Move shadows slider to the right to open them up as required ;

Move whites slider to right to brighten the image overall;

If whites causes the highlights to clip then I move the highlight slider to the left to correct this.

But depending on the image there can be a lot more fine-tuning.....I still call it processing though!
 
I move the white and black points before touching the highlights and shadows, that's for all my photographs though not just landscape.

However, you've taken some stunning photographs so I'd say stick with what's clearly working!

If you find you're making similar adjustments to many photographs then save a preset so that you can apply it to many at once and save some time.
 
For landscapes- Like the others I move whites and blacks first to expand the range and avoid clipping and generally only recover shadows if really needed as it tends to add noise and degrade the image very quickly. I reduce highlights to balance detail usually in the sky. Highlights and shadow adjustment are specific to each image.

I hav also seen the YouTube video and it is excessive use of pp.

Ps checked ur flickr and love your photos.
 
Brian G said:
I took a look at your flikr page and my first reaction was you aren't doing much wrong!
There are some lovely images there and I'd be happy to put my name to them.
Click to expand...


I agree look very nice to me
 
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Steven001 said:
Hi Folks,

Editing is something which I think I struggle with, especially when it comes to consistent editing and developing a "style". I edit my images in Lightroom 5 and I start by dropping the highlights right down and lifting the shadows almost all the way. I then hold alt and drag the white slider until I can see some pixels and do the same for the blacks. I saw this on an online tutorial but sometimes I think my images look a little flat. Is it common practice to reduce the highlights and lift the shadows in landscape pictures? How do you edit your landscape shots?

A sample of my images can be found on my flickr page: https://www.flickr.com/photos/20726822@N05/
Click to expand...

I started watching a photographer called Serge Ramelli, http://youtu.be/ILtZTagcN-0?t=2m57s and I started using the method and it has helped my landscapes so much.

Nice photos on your Flickr :)
 
Dael_Pix said:
I started watching a photographer called Serge Ramelli, http://youtu.be/ILtZTagcN-0?t=2m57s and I started using the method and it has helped my landscapes so much.
Click to expand...
As I said previously, image editing should be approached on an individual basis, and although I frequently apply some highlight and shadow recovery, to blindly push the adjustment sliders to, or near, their maximum is very poor technique, despite what some of these self-appointed "experts" might say.
You should always refer to your histogram as well as the displayed image when making highlights and shadow adjustments and I suspect that many of the people who apply these extreme adjustments simply do not understand what the histogram is telling them.
When you say this technique has "helped your landscapes" it may be more by accident than intention.
If your out of camera images need so much correction it may be time to look at your photographic technique.

As I understand it, in Lightroom you should always do your Highlights/Shadows adjustments before setting your white and black points.
That's the reason they appear in that order on the develop tools menu, the program is quite logical when it comes to adjustment steps.
It's quite pointless to set your black level and then apply an adjustment (Shadows) that is going to change it.
 
I've always done it Whites and Blacks first, Shadows and Highlights second, simply because of a comment by Tim Grey in this video, he actually does Whites then Shadows, and then does Blacks and Highlights.

My thought process being white and black are setting the absolute black and white points. Shadows and highlights are only adjusting those bits just below peak white and just above peak black.
 
DBT85 said:
I've always done it Whites and Blacks first, Shadows and Highlights second, simply because of a comment by Tim Grey in this video, he actually does Whites then Shadows, and then does Blacks and Highlights.

My thought process being white and black are setting the absolute black and white points. Shadows and highlights are only adjusting those bits just below peak white and just above peak black.
Click to expand...
I would highly recommend you take a look at this tutorial, which I think is better than any of the YouTube so-called "experts" and at least originates from Adobe themselves.
I know it was originally published for LR4, but the principles are still the same for later editions.
 
I do whatever is required to make each image look the way I want it to. That rarely involves spending time interpreting a histogram (who cares?) or holding alt to look at clipping points.

If the image looks like you want it to look, in whatever your final medium is, job's a good'un.

As for developing a 'style'. Well, that comes from how I shoot, and how I want the images to look. Applying the same settings to each image according to some formula, wouldn't equate to a style.
 
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Brian G said:
I would highly recommend you take a look at this tutorial, which I think is better than any of the YouTube so-called "experts" and at least originates from Adobe themselves.
I know it was originally published for LR4, but the principles are still the same for later editions.
Click to expand...

The youtube "expert" video that I was referring to was by Tim Grey, who also happens to be part of the Adobe TV family and has a whole bunch of videos on there about Lightroom and many other products. The video I watched was by him, but for B&H.

I've watched Kosts videos and don't feel that there is any definite "you must do this first" approach. I set my absolute black and white points and then adjust my highlights and shadows to taste. Other people whack the highlights and shadows sliders to 100 as a matter of course. In my mind black is black and white is white and so I set those as a first course because I know where they should be. Highlight and shadow recovery is altogether a more subjective choice in my opinion.
 
DBT85 said:
The youtube "expert" video that I was referring to was by Tim Grey, who also happens to be part of the Adobe TV family and has a whole bunch of videos on there about Lightroom and many other products. The video I watched was by him, but for B&H.

I've watched Kosts videos and don't feel that there is any definite "you must do this first" approach. I set my absolute black and white points and then adjust my highlights and shadows to taste. Other people whack the highlights and shadows sliders to 100 as a matter of course. In my mind black is black and white is white and so I set those as a first course because I know where they should be. Highlight and shadow recovery is altogether a more subjective choice in my opinion.
Click to expand...
I agree there is no "Do this first" approach, but she deals with what seems to me a logical and sensible workflow.
You can see from the video that the Highlights, Shadows, Blacks & Whites sliders each deal with a different area of the histogram, which is something that some people don't seem to understand.
You can ignore the histogram if you choose, but for me, most of the time, setting the white clipping point is a very important adjustment.
I come from a past of black & white film work, and in that discipline your prints were usually expected to have a full range of tones, from dense black to pure white.
Obviously there were (and still are) exceptions for high key or low key subjects, but that was the normal expectation, and it is a principle I have maintained.
Unfortunately, in those days we didn't have a histogram, so most of the time it was a matter of trial and error, or at least test strips.
There are so many helpful tools available these days if people choose to use them.
 
Indeed the 4 different sliders combines with the exposure slider do affect different areas of the histogram, you can even move the sliders by clicking IN the histogram.

I use the histogram every time I make the adjustments and set my absolute black and white points just before clipping and in so doing and affecting just the outer edges of my histogram giving me a full wide range. I then adjust my shadows and highlights within those two outer edges, which I feel gives me that wide range of tones I'm looking for, especially in B&W images.

To my mind, if the white setting is as white as white can be, I want that set first to give me the correct window with which to work my highlights.

I ll try this evening the same image done whites/blacks first and then shadows/highlights first to see if I get a different result. I'll try and do it by dragging on the histogram rather than the sliders so I can't see the numbers.
 
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a few tips from me:

1. Get the very best starting image(s) you possibly can.
2. As above.
3. I expect it will still need to adjust shadows in highlights, but by no means all the way up or down. Ideally no more than 30-40% pushing it. Any more and it starts to show
4. Where possible try to use localised adjustments, such as on sky, foreground. LR makes it very easy.
5. If it is blown it is blown. There is no point making white "hole" into a grey or pure yellow "hole" (depending how blown it is). Follow 1).

Did I say not to use any effect to 100%, unless to for some temporary reason?
 
TBH Steven you can easily get over critical of your own work, something I suspect we all do at some time or other, but having looked at your images I really don't think you have much to worry about; you have some lovely images there.

I would say just go on doing what you are doing because it certainly seems to be working.
.
 
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