Most people know that the output of your digital camera can use, at the very least, a slight tweak to sharpness and color saturation. I haven’t bothered to venture must past that and some cropping, but a friend of mine suggested that I venture further and explore what Adobe Light Room can do.
Adobe Light Room, is a very featured imaging cataloging and manipulation program, but also not for the feint of heart when it comes to tweaking your photos. Of course, you also need to have the mind-set that although your digital camera may be a great piece of kit, you’re still limited by many factors such as lighting conditions, your lens, movement and much more. Running your camera on pre-programmed and auto settings will also effect your final product – all of which sometimes needs a bit of a helping hand to make your photos really stand out.
Here is my venture into playing with Adobe Lightroom and my closing thoughts.
Above you can see a fellow Jeeper posing on a hill-side, the vast Alberta foothills forests in the distance. I’m zoomed in with Lightroom to adjust clarity, color saturation and tweaked the blue of the sky ever so slightly.
The full images for the above work is on Flickr – you can click these to jump (in a new window) to Flickr and compare the full size, full resolution images.
On a recent attempt at camping at Brazeau Spillway in Alberta, I took only a few photos. The time of day wasn’t the greatest and I had the sun into the camera, plus reflection off a lake. Although not perfect, I was able to fix up some of the over exposure and darkness of the Jeep. I like how the details of the waves on the lake were improved.
After some additional experimentation, here is another tweak that I particularly enjoy.
My before photo, although well focused, was just dull. Sharpening and adjusting saturation alone still didn’t give me the results I was looking for, but tweaking particular levels, clarity and shadows in Adobe Lightroom, impressed me with these results.
And here is a final cropped photo:
All said and done, it looks like it’ll be a helpful addition to my photography and give things a bit of a boost when needed.
If you’re an expert, or experience amateur with Adobe Lightroom, post your tips and suggestions for tweaking photos below.
