Adobe Lightroom Workshop #1
What is Adobe Lightroom? Post-processing is an unavoidable, inseparable part of professional photography today, be it photojournalism or fashion photography. Because of that, choosing the right software tool for postprocessing your work efficiently is as important as having the right camera and lens combination for the job. It is no surprise that demand for such flexible and powerful software is met with some serious contenders. One of such contenders comes courtesy of Adobe, a software development company best known for its powerful graphics tool Photoshop.
Nowadays Photoshop is widely used by photographers (hence the term to photoshop applied to almost any sort of image editing), but it is not intended strictly for photographers it has a much broader user appeal. For photographers, Adobe has developed a somewhat different piece of software called Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. As the name suggests, Photoshop blood runs in the family, but Lightroom is vastly different from its bigger brother. In this workshop, I will explain what Adobe Photoshop Lightroom is and why it s such a great choice for aspiring photographers.
The RAW File Format The first thing I ought to say about Lightroom is that it s basically a RAW converter. But for someone new to Lightroom, software and digital cameras in general, the statement is hardly informative. That is why before we dive into Lightroom, it s best to talk about RAW file format and what a RAW converter is. Don t worry, it may sound a little complicated, but it is all actually rather simple to grasp.
What is a RAW File? RAW image file is also known as digital negative and this title can give you a pretty good hint. Simply put, RAW file is information gathered directly from a camera s image sensor without any sort of digital adjustment. In order to photograph in RAW format, you need to set it in your camera settings (even some point-and-shoot compact cameras have such a feature). Usually you can find it among image quality settings in camera menu.
RAW isn t an actual file extension, so there are no *.raw files. Different manufacturers use different file extensions. Nikon has.nef, Canon uses.cr2, Fujifilm has.raf and Adobe has the widely popular.dng format. DNG is universal and can store any other file format inside it.
The key word here is information, because RAW files are not images, they are descriptions. RAW files need to be decoded by specific software or codecs to be viewed as actual photographs. Why so complex? Why not a simple JPEG image file? In short, RAW files carry a lot more information inside them and are more flexible than JPEG images. More on this later
More information means a little bit more resolution and lots more dynamic range (color information and detail hidden in dark and light portions of an image). Flexibility means taking control into your hands. How? Well, instead of allowing your camera to choose how much sharpening, noise reduction, contrast, saturation, etc., to apply to a photograph you just captured, you make those decisions yourself. It s simple just tweak those flat-looking RAW files exactly how you want and convert them to JPEG images. Which brings us to
What is a RAW File Converter? As you may have already understood, a RAW converter is a program that, first of all, decodes the information stored within the file so that you can see it as an image. Secondly, it allows you to tweak the RAW file, manipulate all the information stored within it and save it as a simple graphical image file, such as JPEG.
A side note: You may also have noticed that even after you ve set your camera to RAW file format, you can still see the image on your camera s LCD screen. Moreover, it s not flat at all, but has quite vivid colors and decent contrast. That s because often a RAW file has a JPEG preview stored inside so that you can view it quickly on the back of your camera.
What is Adobe Photoshop Lightroom? Adobe Photoshop Lightroom is such a converter, simple as that. However, in addition to providing basic functionality of a basic RAW converter, Adobe has built Lightroom to be the only post-processing application many photographers will need.
With each new version, Lightroom gains more and more new features. These features allow photographers to use it from start to finish. So if you plan to make a photo album, Lightroom has that functionality. With all its tools and no-nonsense user interface, Lightroom lets one organize, post-process, print and share photographs, all in one environment.
Lightroom s greatest asset is its focus on speed when working with multiple images (think hundreds or even thousands). This is made easier by the simple process of copying and pasting all of the available adjustments. Another neat feature is none-destructive editing. It helps make sure original files remain intact and allows you to tweak, set or cancel any adjustments at any time. Such sophistication makes it pretty special for aspiring photographers.
Who is Lightroom for? Well, if you re the kind of person who takes a lot of images, particularly, but not exclusively, in RAW format, Lightroom may just be right for you. It s very good for photographers with professional aspirations. It s also good if you just want better control over the look of your images.
Doesn t even matter if you only photograph your family and friends as long as you keep in mind that Lightroom is a professional tool for photographers. That means there s quite a steep learning curve. It is very much worth it in the end, mind you. Also, Lightroom is not good for any sort of graphical work as you will not find any brushes or pencils here.
It is worth noting that LR supports regular image formats as well as RAW files, such as TIFF and JPEG. Understandably, many of the available RAW settings will not work or will not work to their fullest potential. Still, it can be extremely useful to JPEG and RAW shooters alike, especially those who want to process a large number of images quickly.
Compared to Photoshop and Photoshop Elements Lightroom is basically there to help you make your images look good. Adobe makes at least two other programs with that same basic goal. What makes Lightroom different from its siblings, Photoshop and Photoshop Elements?
If I were to answer this question with just a few sentences, I d start off by saying these three programs are remarkably similar in their capability. Photoshop has a RAW converter plug-in that Lightroom is based on, (called Adobe Camera RAW). However, its capabilities extend far beyond those a photographer would need.
Photoshop is an extremely powerful piece of software with virtually unlimited capabilities when it comes to any sort of graphical editing. In fact, photographers probably make up only a fraction of the whole professional user base that choose to use Photoshop either for their business or personal projects. Photoshop has a downside to its flexibility, however.
The sheer number of features and tools means it s too complicated and cumbersome for regular postprocessing. It s not great for working with multiple images simultaneously, either. What s more, Photoshop lacks organizing features that Lightroom offers.
Photoshop Elements is, in some instances, much closer to Lightroom. Basically, you can see it as a blend of both its brothers, but a crippled one when viewed in such context. In its own right, Photoshop Elements is very powerful. PSE has an organizer and is more photographycentered than Photoshop, which means it s also less cumbersome to use.
It also has a lot of tools Photoshop lacks, such as an album designer. Thus, just like Lightroom, it s there from start to finish. On the other hand, it works quite a bit better with regular JPEG images rather than RAW files and is just as limited when it comes to processing several images at a time, let alone several hundred.
PSE, like Photoshop, has brushes and is suitable for mild graphical editing. It s safe to say Adobe Photoshop Elements doesn t lack capability it s easily enough for most beginners, amateurs and even some professionals will find it sufficient. But keep in mind that it can t quite match Photoshop or Lightroom at what those do best.
Main Alternatives Adobe Photoshop Lightroom is not the only sophisticated RAW converter available there are quite a few alternatives. Apple Mac OS users can enjoy Aperture, which is actually quite similar to Lightroom, but is platform-limited. Aperture and iphoto have both recently been discontinued by Apple. If you re a Windows user, you can use Phase One s Capture One software.
Then there s DxO Optics Pro. DxO is a very scientific developer. Consequently, their software is probably very precise and capable when it comes to correcting lens flaws, for example. Finally, there s Silkypix. It comes with Fujifilm X-Trans sensor cameras, such as X-Pro1. It s reasonable to expect Silkypix to offer very good X- Trans sensor RAW file support (these RAW files are slightly different to RAW files from other cameras due to different image sensor structure and decoding algorithms).
These programs, along with Adobe s Lightroom, are the most popular RAW converters. Each has its strengths and weaknesses. Lightroom is most powerful when it is used in conjunction with Adobe Photoshop. Lightroom gives you a powerful database, converter and editor; while Photoshop offers pixel by pixel editing.
Bit Depth: JPEG vs. RAW The RAW vs JPEG topic seems like a never ending debate in photography. Some photographers say shoot RAW, while others say shoot JPEG. What is RAW format in digital photography? What are the advantages and disadvantages of RAW versus JPEG and why? Should you shoot in RAW or JPEG? Will shooting in RAW complicate your post-production and workflow?
These are some of the most common questions that people ask after they buy their first DSLR camera and go through the camera options. Having a thorough understanding of advantages and disadvantages is essential for photographers to make the right decision on whether to use RAW format for their work. I remember my first time going through the camera options and reading the Nikon D80 manual, wondering about what RAW does and why I should consider using it.
JPEG is a no-brainer it s the default image format that is used in most point and shoot cameras and we all got used to it and know it very well, seeing and sharing JPEG images online and downloading/uploading them from and to our mobile devices. But there was something about RAW that I wanted to find out about immediately. Maybe it was the word raw that sounded intriguing, maybe it was the immediate desire to get the sharpest, highest quality and best pictures ever without knowing much about the camera whatever it was, I went ahead and changed my camera settings to RAW and tried to take a picture.
The first thing I noticed, was how small all of a sudden my memory card became. Wait a second! How come the number of pictures went down from over 700 to under 200? The image looked exactly the same on the LCD and yet it consumed more than three times more memory? Bummer. Then, I took the memory card and inserted it into my laptop. To my surprise, I couldn t even open the darn thing! Worthless, I thought and changed my camera settings back to JPEG.
Sounds familiar? If you are in a similar situation, do not make the mistake of abandoning RAW as I once did and listen on. You truly need to understand all advantages and disadvantages of both formats before making the decision, because you might be sorry that you didn t later.
What is RAW? RAW images, also known as digital negatives are virtually unprocessed files coming directly from the camera sensor. They are truly raw, just like your food ingredients that need to be prepared and cooked before they can be used. Unlike JPEG files that can be easily opened, viewed and printed by most image-viewing/editing programs, RAW is a proprietary format that is tied to the camera manufacturer and sensor, and therefore is not supported by all software products.
RAW files preserve the most amount of information about an image and generally contain more colors and dynamic range than JPEG images. To allow digital cameras to display the recorded image on the rear LCD, RAW files typically consist of two parts the actual RAW data from the camera sensor and a processed JPEG preview. Many image-viewing applications, including the camera LCD, then use this JPEG preview embedded into the RAW file to display the image to you.
Advantages of RAW format Compared to 8-bit JPEG format that can only contain up to 256 shades of Red, Green and Blue colors (total of 16 million), 12-bit RAW images contain far more information with 4,096 shades of Red, Green and Blue (equivalent of 68 billion colors!) and higher. On a Nikon D700, one can record 14-bit RAW files, which equates to roughly 4.3 trillion possible colors. That s a lot of colors compared to 16 million!
RAW files contain the most dynamic range (ratio between the maximum and minimum measurable light intensities of light and black) and can later be used to recover underexposed/ overexposed images or parts of an image. When a RAW image is generated, all camera settings (also known as metadata), including camera-specific and manufacturer-specific information, are just added into the file. This means that the image itself remains unmodified the settings are only provided as a reference and you can make any changes to them later in post-processing applications like Lightroom and Photoshop. This is a huge advantage of using RAW, because if you accidentally use a wrong setting (like White Balance) on your camera, you will still have an option to change it later.
Due to the number of colors stored in RAW images, the type of in-camera Color Space (srgb or Adobe RGB) is also not as important when you shoot in RAW you can change it to any color space in post-production. Unlike JPEG, RAW files utilize lossless compression, meaning they do not suffer from image-compression artifacts. No image-sharpening is performed on RAW files, which means that you can use better and more complex sharpening algorithms for your photos in your PC.
RAW files can be used as evidence of your ownership of the photograph and authentic, nonmodified images. If you saw an alien and took a photo in RAW, nobody would be able to say that you used Photoshop to add the alien to your picture! These reasons make RAW format the clear, obvious and most powerful choice for photographers interested in printing.
Disadvantages of RAW format RAW files require post-processing and conversion before they can be normally viewed, which adds a significant amount of time to workflow. RAW takes up much more camera memory and space than JPEG images. This means that memory card can store fewer images and camera buffer can quickly fill up, causing the camera frame rate to drop down significantly. You will also need more RAM and much more disk storage on your computer to keep RAW images.
RAW files are not standardized across different manufacturers. For example, Nikon software cannot read Canon RAW files and vice-versa. In addition, not all image-viewers and editors can open RAW files. If you have a brand new camera that just got released, you might need to wait for a while for software companies to catch up and update their software so that your RAW files could be opened and worked on.
You will have to convert RAW files to a compatible format like JPEG or TIFF before you can give them to your friends and clients, as they might not have the tools to view them. Because RAW files cannot be modified by third party software, your settings will have to be stored in a separate sidecar (XMP) file, which again means more storage and tougher file management (unless you convert your RAW files to DNG). Due to the size of RAW images, archiving/backup procedure takes much more time.
What is JPEG? JPEG is the most popular image format for photographs today, capable of displaying millions of colors in a highly compressed file. The compression method JPEG uses is lossy, which means that certain information is removed from the image. Different levels of compression (in percentage) can be applied on JPEG images, which impacts the quality and size of the image. The more details are preserved, the larger the file.
Advantages of JPEG format JPEG images are fully processed in camera and all settings such as White Balance, Color Saturation, Tone Curve, Sharpening and Color Space are already applied to the image. So you do not need to spend any time on postprocessing the image all you need to do is extract the image out of the memory card and it is ready to use. JPEG images are much smaller than RAW images and therefore consume a lot less storage and need much less processing power.
Due to the smaller size, cameras can write JPEG files much faster, which increases the number of pictures that can fit in temporary camera buffer. This means that compared to RAW, you can potentially shoot at higher frames per second and for longer periods of time. Most modern devices and software packages support JPEG images, making the format extremely compatible.
Digital cameras provide different compression and size options for saving JPEG images, giving you the flexibility and choice over image quality and size. Smaller size also means faster and more efficient backups. These advantages make the JPEG format the clear, obvious and wisest choice for the photographer who is interested in digital output only.
Disadvantages of JPEG format The lossy compression algorithm means that you will lose some detail from your photographs. This loss of detail, especially in highly compressed files, will show up in images as artifacts and will be quite visible to the eye. JPEG images are 8-bit, which puts a limitation of 16 million possible colors. This means that all those other colors that your camera is capable of recording are essentially discarded, when the image is converted to JPEG format.
JPEG images also contain less dynamic range than RAW images, which means that recovering overexposed/underexposed images and shadow areas will be extremely difficult and sometimes impossible. Since cameras fully process JPEG images, any camera setting errors will be practically irreversible. For example, if you apply too much sharpening to your images, you will not be able to unsharpen images later.
Should you use RAW or JPEG? Let s now move on to the most important question should you be using RAW or JPEG for your photography? For me, shooting in RAW far outweighs the advantages of using JPEG. Storage is cheap nowadays and the file size does not bother me, even for backups. Since I already spend a considerable amount of time taking pictures, I do not mind spending a little more time and effort working on them in the digital darkroom.
True, if I had to process one image at a time in Photoshop, I would have abandoned RAW altogether, because I wouldn t have the time to go through tens of thousands of pictures. Thanks to such wonderful post-processing tools such as Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, I can work on my images in batches and I can spend very minimal amount of time on individual postprocessing (when needed).
But time and size are small issues, compared to my ability to recover details from a RAW picture. Like many other photographers, I have been in situations where the light was not ideal and I either trusted my camera and had no time to correct the exposure or made a mistake, which led to a badly exposed image. If I shot in JPEG, those details would be gone forever and I would end up with a trashed image.
But since I used RAW, I could easily adjust the exposure and change other settings and still have a good shot. This makes a huge difference, especially for rare, special moments that cannot be reproduced ever again. Here is my conclusion on the RAW vs JPEG debate: If you are serious about your photography and want to be able to sell or showcase your work in the future, you should shoot in RAW format. If you are just taking pictures of your family for fun, then shoot in JPEG.
What is Color Space? A device color space simply describes the range of colors, or gamut, that a camera can see, a printer can print, or a monitor can display. Editing color spaces, on the other hand, such as Adobe RGB or srgb, are device-independent. They also determine a color range you can work in. Their design allows you to edit images in a controlled, consistent manner. A device color space is tied to the idiosyncrasies of the device it describes.
An editing space, on the other hand, is gray balanced colors with equal amounts of Red, Green, and Blue appear neutral. Editing spaces also are perceptually uniform; i.e. changes to lightness, hue, or saturation are applied equally to all the colors in the image. The color space of your camera (device) must match the color space of your software (editing).
What a color space contains: Imagine a box containing all the visible colors. The farther from the center of the box you go, the more saturated the colors become Red towards one corner, Blue towards another, Green towards the third. A Cyan, Magenta, Yellow color space works the same way, except that the primary colors are CMY rather than RGB. For simplicity, we will refer only to RGB spaces, but the comments apply equally to CMY(K) color spaces.
A color space can be represented as a balloon blown up inside the box. The space taken up by the balloon is the portion of the total number of visible colors that fall within the particular color space. Larger balloons contain more colors, or have a larger gamut, while smaller balloons hold fewer colors. The surface of the balloon has the most saturated colors that the color space can hold. Any colors falling outside the balloon can't be reproduced in that color space.
Colors inside the balloon are described using (R,G,B) coordinates. The most saturated (i.e. purest) red in any color space has an R-value of 255. Since larger color spaces have larger balloons, they contain both more air volume (i.e. more colors), and the surface of the balloon is farther from the center of the box (i.e. the colors are more saturated). Therefore, larger color spaces such as Adobe RGB contain both more colors and more highly saturated colors than smaller spaces like srgb.
Adobe RGB (1998) vs srgb
In general, you want to use color spaces that are as large as is practical. For example, if your printer is capable of producing output in a color space larger than srgb, there is no reason to hobble your work by limiting output to the small srgb gamut. If you do, you'll lose the saturated cyans and greens that can make your prints stand out. Another way to think about it is: srgb is to JPEG as Adobe RGB (1998) is to RAW.
Save to TIFF and convert to JPEG If you choose to work with the RAW format you will need to choose a file format when you go to save. TIFF is a non-compressing and universal file format. This means that no information is compressed when the file is converted and saved. JPEG is a compressing format (lossy). This means the file will be compressed and information is disregarded when you convert and save.
PSD is also a non-compressing file format like TIFF. I recommend using TIFF over PSD because the format is universal and readable by most editing software. All master files should be saved as TIFF. If you wish to email, Facebook, Tweet, or upload your file to the internet, JPEG is the format to use. When a JPEG format is needed, simply duplicate the master file and convert to JPEG.
Naming Conventions There is no wrong or right way of naming the folders on your computer. It is really just a matter of preference and what works best in your workflow. Having been doing this for a number of years though I have experimented with quite a few different ways and this is by far the one I like best. Here's at look at how I name my folders and why I chose to do it that way.
In short, I like to keep things in chronological order by date (YYYY-MM-DD), then category, then name of the clients. By doing it this way I am able to not only keep my files organized on my computer but it also makes a work queue for me in Lightroom so I know what job is up next to edit. Once I have finished with the job, I remove it from Lightroom and go right into the next job. It's a simple tip, but definitely one that helps keep things organized and helps me stay on top of my editing workflow.
Today s cameras do a lot, but they give the image files terribly boring names like IMG_01234.NEF. This file name doesn t tell you much about the image. Starting at the image ingestion process, it is important to setup a complete digital asset management system for keeping track of your photos. One of the first things you can do to begin the image archival process is to give your photos a proper name.
You might be thinking that image catalog management software packages like Lightroom and Aperture do an awesome job of searching for images across folders using the file s metadata, so why bother renaming the files? I would somewhat agree if the only purpose of the files were to live in Lightroom or Aperture. But as a serious photographer, you export files to the web and share them with clients or friends. When exporting photos outside of the catalog, you want to have a proper name that makes the photo identifiable. You also make derivative files in programs like Photoshop. It is important that you are able to identify images outside of the comfort of Lightroom and Aperture.
You want some information to go into the file name, but we will leave the photo s metadata to do the heavy lifting. So what information do you include? What other considerations are there?
Each Image Should Have a Unique Name This prevents a lot of accidental overwriting of data. Most devices will recycle names after a certain amount of images. For instance on a Nikon, the first JPG image off the camera is named DSC_0001.jpg. The second image is named DSC_0002.jpg. After taking 9,999 images with that camera, it will go back to DSC_0001.jpg. Technically, Nikon also stores the images in folders, but that information doesn t typically get imported.
Include Your Name in the Image You always want people to know that you took this image. I don t include client names or shoot information, because it simply gets too confusing and difficult for me to keep track of. It is more important that the client knows that you shot it for them than to see their name in the file name.
Use the Same Image Naming Convention on All Files Choose a naming convention and stick to it! This will prevent errors and make the digital asset management process easier.
Include the Capture Date When all else fails, you can always find the photo by searching by the capture date. It is recommended that you use the database way of writing the date. This is YYYYMMDD.
Avoid Using Funky Characters or Spaces One of the reasons to name your files is so they are ready for long term archival no matter the operating or DAM system. Some systems do not accept characters like /? < > : *,.. It is also best to not use spaces. I typically use the underscore (_) as a break between words or characters.
Don t Put too Much Information in the File Name For one, the naming convention is not meant to take the place of keywords or other metadata that are stored within the image or the catalog. Don t name your image something like this: Gerard_Murphy_halloween_new_hampshire_trick_o r_treat_family_2011_10_31.dng
In Apple s OS 9 and earlier you were limited to 31 characters or fewer. In newer operating systems (including Windows machines) you now have at least 255 characters. But just because you have more space, doesn t mean you should use it. I would still recommend keeping your files names well below a tweet or SMS. Another naming convention could be: Jeff_Rollinger_(2015)_ (02)_(21).tiff
Bit-Depth and Color Space Matter! Choosing the right bit-depth and color space for your needs is very important. If you are a photographer who is interested in printing and producing high quality images, then you need to be working with RAW files and within the Adobe RGB (1998) color space. On the other hand, if you are a photographer who will only email, Facebook, tweet and create small low quality prints, then you want to choose JPEG and stay within the srgb color space.
Why File Size Really Does Matter! If you are a photographer interested in high quality images and museum quality photographic prints, your file size matters. Even if you are not making mural sized prints even if your print size is 8 1/2 x 11 or smaller, you need a large file. Every correction you make to a file (ie. exposure or color) you extrapolate information within the file. The larger the file, the more information you have to extrapolate and you therefor get less visible damage.
What is a Nondestructive Environment? In Adobe Photoshop CC it is easy to make permanent changes to your original file. If a professional taught you Photoshop, then I bet that you were trained to use either the Photoshop command Image > Duplicate Image or File > Save As whenever you started work on a new file. With Photoshop CC this is a critical first step.
Working on a duplicate of your original is critical in Photoshop CC because it is possible to do irreparable harm to your precious original image. With Photoshop, if you make some terrible mistake and overwrite your original file, then you have really messed things up. Photoshop CC is a brilliant program but it will not stop you from overwriting your precious original pixels.
With Photoshop Lightroom there is no need for this worry, or the Save As routine, because file protection is inherently built into the roots of this program. By design, Lightroom will never change your file s original pixels. When you change a photo in Lightroom, what you are really doing is changing the file s metadata. Generally, we think of metadata as things like your copyright info, or the shutter speed that you used when you shot the image, but when you move the sliders in Lightroom s Develop Module you are merely changing a different set of metadata fields.
Your original image is never permanently altered, nor are any of it s pixels overwritten, because Lightroom is only capable of changing the file s metadata fields. This is the reason why I love using Lightroom as my first-stage image enhancement program because I know that I cannot harm my original image in any way. I can try anything, literally push any button in the Develop Module, and I never have to worry about the health of my original capture.