Digital Camera World - UK (2019-08)

RAW WAR

Colour and

contrast

86 DIGITAL CAMERA^ AUGUST 2019 http://www.digitalcameraworld.com

1

Base tone

and colour

Probably the first thing

I do with a landscape shot as a raw

file is to decrease the Highlights

to -100 and increase the Shadows

to +100 in the Basic Panel. If the

darker parts get too muddy, I’ll put

Shadows back to 70 instead. Here

100 is fine. Next to boost contrast

and colour in one slider, I push

Dehaze to +53. Often I’ll boost

Exposure after this, but it

looks fine without it here.

The shadows are darker now, so

I take Blacks to +28. Next I’ll boost

the overall Contrast to +34 to give

a pop to the photo. Just by way

of checking, I see how the Adobe

Landscape profile looks. It’s

definitely better than Adobe Color,

so I keep it. My final step in the

Basic Panel is to add Texture,

a new tool in Lightroom 8.3,

which really brings out detail. It’s

somewhere between Sharpening

and Clarity. I set it to +35.

T

he fresh breeze is clearly blowing in this

shot. You can practically smell the salt

from the sea, with the clouds moving

quickly, creating little pockets of light

on the land. The shot is really well-

exposed, but it’s definitely lacking in both contrast and

saturation. You can fix this without actually going near

either the Saturation or Vibrance slider, though: most

tools that increase contrast also increase saturation.

I’ll start this photo by first getting the overall tone

and colour where I want it. This will be about 90%

of the look of the photo. Next, I’ll add additional

pockets of light to bring out the hills. I’ll apply

a Graduated Filter to warm the clouds and bring

them out more. I’ll also darken the foreground,

which is drawing a little too much attention.

Some of the tools I’ll use will accentuate previously

hidden dust spots (Dehaze especially!), so these

will need fixing. Finally with a view towards social

media posting, I’ll crop to a 4x5 ratio – a ratio

I’ve come to love for vertical landscapes.

Warrior 1

Sean

xƬ!ȒȸȅƏƬǸ

Crop

Darken

and Warm

Fi x

sp ot s

Crop

Ligh ten

SEAN’S PLAN FOR THE RAW IMAGE