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Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2
approx $260

Granted, there was a time right after I got it when I used it TOO much (oy), but now that I’ve found my way, I use it for everything from minor adjustments to some fun vintage looks.

It does everything I need it to do in just a couple of clicks, and since I’m usually editing pictures in about 3.7 seconds of free time every day, it works great for me.

I received many “YES!” responses to the idea of a before/after post with a sort of “how to” in regards to processing, so I decided to make it a weekly thing. Or a whenever I think about it and/or don’t have anything else to blog about thing.

Like I said, I use mostly Lightroom, but I think I can explain things in a way to where it won’t be too hard to replicate in Photoshop.

Here is the first installment … a fairly easy one.

before:

camera: Olympus E-520
lens: Zuiko 50mm
exposure: 1/30 second
aperture: f/3.2
ISO: 200
flash: no way, Jose

First, I cooled the temperature down a tiny bit and added a teensy bit of green tint.

Then, I adjusted the highlight recovery a little bit to make the background a little darker – make the apples pop out a little more (this is a bit like the highlight slider in Photoshop’s shadow/highlight tool).

Added some blacks to also help fill in some of the background color that was still popping out. And finally, a little brightening.

This is stuff that I do on almost all of my photos. Minor adjustments that will make a difference in the end.

Now comes my favorite step – clarity. On landscape’y photos like this one, I bump it up a lot. I’m also going to kick up the vibrance a bit.

And then the BIG step. The S-curve. Or the tone curve as experts like to call it. This is what adjusts your photo’s highlights, lights, darks and shadows. It is super fun to play around with, too. It’s just called “curves” in Photoshop, I believe.

For the sake of this image, I just pulled it into a pretty clear S-shape. I don’t use the same numbers for each image or anything – I just pull it around until it starts looking the way I want it to look.

I’ve labeled what each part of the “S” is, so you can kind of see how each part affects the image. Now, I wish I could wax on about what each little slider does, but I have only the tiniest bit of understanding in my pea brain and not quite enough to put it into words.

So just play with it and see what you get.

Oh yeah … NOW we’re talkin’!

By the way, I hope you aren’t reading the titles of these images because I am just naming them whatever I want, and it is not making sense.

Okay, so that’s all I’m doing in Lightroom.

Looks pretty good, eh?

That bright spot on the apple in the foreground is driving me nuts.

So I bring it into Photoshop Elements (yes, I only use PSE – I know, I know … but I chose to purchase Lightroom instead of Photoshop CS, and this combo has been enough for me).

First thing I do is add a layer (Layer – New – Layer) and then I fill it with 50% Gray. Say what?

While I have the new layer selected, I go to Edit – Fill Layer and then fill it with 50% Gray, in Overlay mode, keeping the transparency …

Or this.

Now, I still have to go to my little layer box on the right side and select “overlay” – not sure why that is, but it is what it is.

Then, I go to my brushes, choose black as my color and then choose the following options at the top:

55px soft mechanical brush
mode: color burn
opacity: 50%

And then I lightly paint over the light spot – more like dabbing. I also decreased the opacity of my brush to 20% and hit the light spot on the back apple, as well.

Voila!

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