ADVANCED LIGHTROOM AND PHOTOSHOP EDITING TECHNIQUES
In this post we’ll be discussing the advanced Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop editing techniques used to transform a nice, simple photograph into an award-winning image. This particular image garnered a lot of attention on social media. The image gathered 5,000+ “Likes”, “Loves” and “Wows” in the various Facebook photography groups I participate in.
Don’t let the length of this post put you off. I’ll be providing all the details of the actual steps I utilized in editing this finished image. They honestly only took up a couple of minutes of my time to carry out. With a little practice you, too, will be able to employ these Lightroom and Photoshop editing techniques in a matter of minutes.
The Day’s Photo Excursion
I left my home in Northport, NY at 3:30AM to make the drive out to the eastern-most spot on Long Island…Montauk Point. As I’ve stated in a previous post I love to start taking photographs before the sun rises above the horizon. Today would be no different.
I wheeled into the parking lot at Montauk Point State Park in the darkness just before dawn. Good travel tip here. Arrive at any of New York’s State Parks at this hour of the day and you’re not subject to the normal daily parking fee. They don’t start collecting that customary toll until later in the morning.
I pulled the Nikon Z6II mirrorless camera out of my gear bag and mounted it atop my Peak Design Travel Tripod. The Nikon was fitted with a Nikkor 24-200mm f/4-6.3 zoom lens. This inexpensive lens has proven to be one of my favorite pieces of glass ever. Nikon really nailed it when they designed this lens. It is the perfect size and weight for traveling. It covers a vast range of focal lengths. I have affectionately dubbed it “The Streetsweeper”. It covers nearly every scene I photograph. It may be the best travel lens ever produced.
Dawn Approaches
The darkness of the night started to take on the warm glow of first light. I directed my camera towards the lighthouse from my chosen vantage point right at the edge of the parking lot. A few quick exposures were made and my first image of the day was “in the can”. The panoramic image of the iconic lighthouse at dawn can be seen below.
Flying High
My next order of business was to capture an image I’ve been thinking about for quite some time. I wanted to take an aerial photograph of the lighthouse at the exact moment that the sun breaks over the horizon. My vision was of the sun directly over the structure casting it’s own beam of sunlight towards the manmade beacon sitting on Montauk’s rocky shoreline. The finished image, captured with my DJI Mavic Air drone is presented here.
Off To Camp Hero
I packed up my gear quickly and headed back from the point to Camp Hero State Park…just a two minute drive away. I parked in the unpaved lot, grabbed just the Z6II and 24-200mm combo and made the short hike to the spot where our subject image would be captured. An overhead map of the path is seen below.
For those considering a similar outing, take note that this is a very easy, level, 300 yard walk from the parking area to my chosen vantage point. Be aware, however, that the path runs very close to the eroding cliffs overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. If you choose to head out to this spot in the darkness be sure to use an adequate head lamp to light your way. You will walk within a foot or two of some incredibly dangerous drop-offs to the rocks 100 feet below.
The Ideal Exposure
In a previous post I discussed the importance of getting a proper exposure in the camera. This is paramount to being able to effectively utilize Lightroom and Photoshop editing techniques. The Nikon Z6II is an incredible imaging device. It has the greatest dynamic range of any camera I’ve had the pleasure of using in more than four decades of pursuing photography. When considering just the camera’s dynamic range (and no other factors) I often prefer the Z6II to Nikon’s higher resolution, and more expensive, Z7II.
I knew from experience that I would be photographing a scene with a very wide dynamic range. The sun had been up above the horizon for more than 30 minutes at this point. It was still low enough in the sky to be casting really powerful directional light from the east towards the lighthouse. The structure, its base of rock and the ocean in the foreground, would range from areas of bright highlights to deep, dark shadows.
The sky, also, would be challenging to record. Dramatic cloud formations were over the area with wide swaths of adjacent clear sky. Bright highlights and dark shadows would share the same space. My exposure, for both highlights and shadows would need to be optimum.
Perfect, But Not Pretty
So this is what the scene looked like to the naked eye:
Not the most dramatic image but a near perfect exposure. In the image below I have enlarged the adjustment palette located on the right hand side of the Lightroom window for easier viewing. You can see that no adjustments have been made to the RAW image. You’ll also note a proper histogram representing the image’s tonal values from shadow to highlight.
What is important to note is that the scene contains bright highlights that are not overexposed. There is good detail in the shadow areas. All the makings of a great finished image are there. We just need to apply some Lightroom and Photoshop editing magic to make it something really special.
Global Adjustments
The first thing I do in my Lightroom and Photoshop editing process is make a couple of quick global adjustments. Global adjustments are those changes that are made to the entire image. You’ll note in the image below that I increased the color temperature to “warm up” the entire image. I also made a tint adjustment of +18 to give the entire image a bit of a magenta cast. Exposure was increased ever so slightly (+15). The highlights were crushed substantially (-64). Finally; a good amount of Dehaze (+32) was applied.
With these global adjustments applied the image now looks like this:
Some Quick Lightroom Masking
The next step is to apply a gradient mask from the top of the frame down to the horizon line. My aim here is to simply make the sky a little bit darker. You’ll note the area where the mask was drawn in the image below:
The adjustment made was quite simple. Just a slight decrease in exposure (-.53…about 1/2 of an f/stop) on the area covered by the graduated mask. The simple, singular adjustment is shown in the close up view of the adjustment palette below.
I decided that the brightest area of the sky (on the right hand side) would benefit by being just a tad darker. I drew a radial mask as shown in the image overlay below:
The close up view of the adjustment palette below shows that I just lowered the exposure on that specific area of the sky by another 1/2 f/stop (-.54)
That’s it. That’s all of the changes made to the RAW file in Lightroom. It took you a few minutes to read this far in the tutorial. The steps taken thus far actually took less than 90 seconds to complete. Once you’ve done this a time or two, you’ll find yourself blowing through these Lightroom and Photoshop editing steps in no time at all. We now export the image as a 16 bit TIFF file for final ending in Photoshop. At this stage our image looks like this:
A Little Cleanup
When I first walked out onto the bluff at Camp Hero State Park my heart sank a little. I looked over at my intended subject (the lighthouse) and all I could see was construction equipment littering the scene. Huge cranes were on site repairing the rock retaining wall surrounding the structure.
No worries. Photoshop to the rescue! Using the “Content-Aware Fill” tool and the “Clone Stamp Tool” I made the cranes (and a few fishing boats out on the water) disappear. I used the “Crop Tool” to trim the image to my desired dimensions. The distractions that were eliminated are indicated in the image below:
This “cleanup” probably took all of 30 or 40 seconds to accomplish. You gotta’ love Photoshop’s capabilities!
A Little Color
I desired a somewhat unique color tone for the finished image. Something slightly less yellow leaning a bit towards a “Peach” color. A quick touch of the “Hue” slider on a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer mask gave me exactly what I was hoping for:
This adjustment was applied globally to the entire image and took about 15 seconds to effect.
A Little Contrast
The final step I chose to make in my Lightroom and Photoshop editing workflow was to add a bit of contrast into select areas of the image. My favorite (that means effective, fast & easy) way of adding selective contrast is by using the “Pro Contrast” filter, which is part of the NIK Software Color Efex Pro Photoshop plug in.
I chose values of 10% for “Correct Contrast” and 23% for “Dynamic Contrast”. This is a total visual process. You see the effect in preview as you adjust the sliders.
The effect is applied globally to the image and output as a new layer in Photoshop. I convert that layer to a mask, invert it and paint back in the contrast where I want it. In this case I wanted the increased contrast only in the detailed areas of the clouds and the rocks in front of the lighthouse; so that’s where my paintbrush strokes were made.
If you’re not familiar with the process of painting in selective areas of adjustments with layer masks, don’t worry. We covered that topic in great detail in a previous post. Click here to check that tutorial out.
That’s A Wrap
That’s it for this quick Lightroom and Photoshop editing tutorial. Unlike the previous masking tutorial (where 15-20 minutes was spent enhancing the image) this one took less than 3 minutes from start to finish. I know…it took longer to read than it takes to complete. We wanted to make sure we outlined the process as carefully as we could.
So…what do you think of the finished image?
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