Smart_Photography_-_January_2016_

LEARNING

Understanding Photography

Lightroom – Part 6

(Develop module – Basic tool,

TAT and Soft proofing)

T

he next step in development

will be for correcting tones and

colour. This by far is the most

important step of all development. So,

you need to go deeper into this. The

first item you need to learn about is

the Histogram.

Histogram: At the top of the right

panel of Lightroom is the Histogram

(Picture 6-1-1). It is similar to the

histogram you see on your D-SLRs

LCD monitor. This is a very important

visual guide when you do tonal

adjustments. Any image you capture

will have a range of tonal values –that

is, some areas will be very light, some

will be very dark and some will be

Smart Photography has been continually receiving requests to start a basic course for beginners. With this in

mind, we have asked a very knowledgeable photographer from Hyderabad to take over writing these articles. We

have also requested him to be as jargon-free as it is possible, so that newcomers to photography feel comfortable

to pursue the hobby.

The author, Ashok Kandimalla has been in the photographic field for over three decades and has extensive

experience in both film and digital photography. Being an electronics engineer by profession and a photographer,

he possesses a unique and deep insight into the technical aspects of digital photography and equipment. He has

published several articles on photography and some of his writings have also been published in the well-known

international magazine Popular Photography.

An avid collector of photographic books and vintage cameras, Ashok has a keen interest in the history of

photography and a passion for sharing his knowledge on photography through teaching and writing. He is

presently working as a Management and Engineering consultant. You can see his work at http://www.flickr.com/

Ashok Kandimalla photos/ashok_kandimalla. He can be reached at [email protected]

The Part 5 of this series published last

month, explained to you the first steps in

developing images. These are applying

lens corrections, straightening images and

correcting perspective error. You have also

seen how to correct colour casts that might

occur due to improper WB settings.

Picture 6-1: The screen shot of the Basic tool. The sym-

bol ↓ indicates arrow numbers.

6-1↓1 Histogram

6-1↓2 Basic tool

6-1↓3 Exposure slider

6-1↓4 Contrast Slider

6-1↓5 Highlights

6-1↓6 Shadows

6-1↓7 Whites

6-1↓8 Blacks

6-1↓9 Black (Shadow) clipping indicator

6-1↓10 White (Highlight) clipping indicator

6-1↓11 Clarity

6-1↓12 Vibrance

6-1↓13 Saturation

6-1↓14 Auto

in between. Histogram is simply a

graphical representation of these tonal

values. Each tonal value corresponds to

a brightness value. The vertical axis of

the histogram indicates the number of

pixels at each brightness level (tone).

The greater the number of pixels at a

particular brightness, higher will be the

peak of the graph at that tone.

The horizontal axis gives the tonal

values (that is pixel brightness) with

dark tones to the left and light tones to

the right side. The middle of horizontal

axis represents the mid-tones. The

left most point on the horizontal axis

represents a pure detail-less black

point. If you find that the histogram

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Smart Photography January 2016