| 27.
Adobe Lightroom - Tone Curves and Contrasts
Article
27 of 100
Just
to keep things simple and in the spirit of Adobe Lightroom's
Five Rules, which state that all a photographer really needs
to know is the location of the tools in Adobe Lightroom and
then to Enjoy, I have taken one of my recent pictures of the
Quoddy West Lighthouse and decided to 'have fun and enjoy
the program' just like I was goofing around (or I guess I
should say creatively experimenting) in a darkroom in the
old days. I like the image for it's simplicity and texture
but it lacks something in it's default state, so for the next
couple of days I will experiment with it and see what we can
come up with.
The
close-up of the Quoddy West Lighthouse with default settings.
The default image is very drab but I don't really mind that
in an image that I am going to experiment with, flat images
tends to work better for me than contrasty images, so let's
get started. I am basically just going to move the sliders
around in the Tone Curve tool until I get a more pleasing
image.
This
will not be my final choice but there is already quite a lot
of positive change so let's take a look at the numbers.
Tone
Brightness - value changes from 50 to 50 (no
change)
Tone
Contrast - value changes from 50 to 19 (I
obviously lowered the contrast)
Tone
Curve
Highlights
Compression - value changes from 0 to -13
Highlights
Luminance - value changes from 0 to 30
Midtones
Brightness - value changes from 50 to 50 (no
change)
Midtones
Contrast - value changes from 50 to 19
Shadows
Compression - value changes from -50 to -50
(no change)
Shadows
Luminance - value changes from -25 to -25
(no change)
As you can see I basically lowered the contrast and played
with the highlights in the highlight and midtone areas until
I got a bright and three dimensional look to the bricks both
in the highlight and shadow areas.
The Shadows settings did not
need any change because shadows are by nature pretty flat.
The trick is getting the highlights
on the edges of the bricks to pop out and the sliders in Adobe
Lightroom make that pretty easy to do (and redo) until you
get it just right.
P.S.:
Please do not get upset if your personal experience and views
are different from my own. These opinions are mine exclusively
and do not reflect the views or policies of any of the manufacturers
mentioned in this article...... George
Mann |
