Lightroom has been around for a long time and have used it since day one. I don’t know anyone who digs deeper into Lightroom workflow and development than I’ve done over the past 15 years. But I see many struggle with it, and I’m on a mission to change that.
So in today’s Lightroom class, I’ll focus on things like better catalog manegment, finding and sorting files, and better understanding of how to manage color and tone.
Plus I’ll be taking questions LIVE in the chat for pretty much anything you want to know about Lightroom.
This goes to contrast in your black and white photography. A dark image can still pop because of how dark meets light we talk about in the video. Even bright high key photos can be pushed this way and you’ll discover more about the tones.
#2 Push more than you think.
This is why a preset is great because you can easily adjust it up and down, especially in LR with the amount slider. But you can just go do crazy things in curves or levels or how you set things in camera of lighting darker and you discover amazing ways to transform your BW conversions. .
#2 Experiment more.
Black and white photography is the essence of tone and contrast. What happens if you pull shadow recovery left instead of pushing it right. What do you find when you try more recipes and styles, playing curves harder.
The reason my master preset packs are like nothing else is because I do these experiments and then share results of what works. And you can keep that going and keep pushing it more. Soon you’ll see ways to remix it that fit your style and you can save them and keep building your dark library..
Hope you found this video useful and if you use my tools 100% go try Silver 6.3. It’s awesome.
I could be fancy. But I’ll keep it simple. Photography has lost space. It’s part of composition, but it’s not composition! Today we take back the space.
This is a big deal because space is usually seen as solid dark, white color, etc. It can mean that, but space is so much more, as we’ll see in the video.
Small screens and prints stole our space.
But the idea that space does not work because of size is actually wrong. You’re probably watching this on a small screen, and you can see it. Or look at my Instagram and see what I mean.
It starts by seeing.
Yes, all photos have space. But awareness of that space, as I talk about today in the video, will transform how you see it and your composition as a whole.
Today I’ll show you why. I’ll be using Lumist to show the lies of contrast and tone. But this will teach you more about tone and contrast in 30 minutes than most schools do in years of training.
Honestly, these are all the same. Which is why I put it all under shadow hacking. Because that way we start seeing by the masking, masking for the light, and pulling the shadow for the contrast.
The depth of a photo…
Making a photo come alive is the first amount of emotion and soul. But the method of that is to create depth using tone. One of the problems in photography is that we have a lot of ways to overcomplicate and edit tone, but few people who can really explain tone and how to use it.
So do this…
See the shadow first. How it relates to light is how you will truly see the tone. How the separation affects the way you see the image is the contrast.
But what is the subject, where does the viewer’s eye go, and how do you control it all? That’s where they all merge, and you need to practice leading the eye with tone until it’s second nature.
I won’t type too much today. It’s all more visual in the video.
Photographers are not taught anymore. They buy a camera and start a channel. Tone and shadow are barely understood. I teach these Shadow Hackers. But today, we have a great example because this is barely being talked about.
I used Filmist and Natural HDR a lot in these tests. You can download FREE packs of them on their pages to play with, or try these kinds of tests manually and see what I mean.
#1 Visualize in camera
I love film for this, but it’s not essential. When you start seeing shadow and tone value like Zones in camera, your whole exposure process changes. Then your final edits start coming alive because you saw before you pressed the shutter.
#2 Start light on the edit and then…
This is one of the reasons I use film edits as I start baseline, even if I switch later to an HDR process, black and white etc. The film base keeps me grounded, and I can always truly see my edits.
#3 Reflect on the tone for real.
Ask yourself if you want lifted shadows on some darkness.. Ask what make syou feel, creates mystery and makes people want to hear more of the story.
We’ll go in depth on all of this in the video above, so definitely check out the entire thing.
