Lightroom and wildlife photography?

squizza

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Anyone here put their wildlife images through Lightroom?

I've not given it much thought before.

Any advice / your results much appreciated.

Kind regards

Sarah
 
I put all my images - wildlife and otherwise - through Lightroom, and I'm sure I'm not the only one.

So what's the question?
 
Well a lot of competitions ask for no processing - only spot removal maybe, so I've only ever cropped my pics, and correcting exposure in photoshop.
So I guess I don't see Lightroom benefiting a wildlife tog as last time I used Lightroom the presets completely change the image. Was looking for other opinions.
 
There's no need to use any presets in LR. The LR processing engine is the same as ACR so you can just crop/spot removal/sharpen as required. Unless I have a specific need for Photoshop (HDR, blending, textures etc.) I do all my editing in LR now.
 
squizza said:
Well a lot of competitions ask for no processing - only spot removal maybe, so I've only ever cropped my pics, and correcting exposure in photoshop.
I think you should check the small print for their precise definitions of "no processing". All images are processed - even "straight out of the camera" images are processed by the camera - so the question is really about what's allowed and what isn't.

I would suggest that *global* changes to exposure, contrast, saturation, white balance, sharpening, etc. should normally be acceptable, but *localized* changes (which might include gradients, cloning, vignetting, etc. as well as the kinds of things you can do globally) wouldn't be acceptable.

And Lightroom is an excellent tool for making global changes of this nature.
 
I think you should check the small print for their precise definitions of "no processing". All images are processed - even "straight out of the camera" images are processed by the camera - so the question is really about what's allowed and what isn't.

I would suggest that *global* changes to exposure, contrast, saturation, white balance, sharpening, etc. should normally be acceptable, but *localized* changes (which might include gradients, cloning, vignetting, etc. as well as the kinds of things you can do globally) wouldn't be acceptable.

And Lightroom is an excellent tool for making global changes of this nature.

I'm sold! Now which version, 3 or 4 :D
 
All mine now go through Lightroom as well, it makes it easy to keep track of all my shots and add keywords and do the standard crop/exposure/spot removal etc.
There are the options to adjust exposure, contrast, saturation etc for the whole image as well as a paintbrush tool for localised adjusments or graduated filters. I've used brush tool many times to give +0.2 exposure to the subject to help it stand out against a dull background.
From earlier today, I had been in the garden some macro shots of ladybirds. Once in LR with the white balance set correctly the ladybirds were looking more orange than red. A gentle nudge of the 'Orange' hue slider and they were red again :)
For the global adjustments, LR is the best option. However, if you want to merge photos and clone out areas, (not just spots,) then a PS/Elements type program would be needed.
 
A newbie question pls.
Is LR difficult to use for a newbie to processing? I have read many threads on this and I hear many different views. I am not after converting pictures into 'art', just wanting to improve my camera shots. Thanks
 
It's very easy to get the hang of the basics. For the image editing it's pretty much all sliders to adjust the level of each setting. If you don't like it just move it back or click reset. There are also a bunch of preset settings you can try out.
Youtube has loads of videos showing how it works :)
 
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