Beautiful flowers offer abundant opportunities for eye-catching images, even if you specialize in other genres of photography, and these colorful subjects are readily available at local parks, nearby arboretums, nature centers, and even in the comfort of your backyard.
But here’s the deal: A bit of thoughtful post processing is often required to make the most of these captivating subjects. This quick tutorial from the brand new Lightroom Editing Club reveals nine straightforward techniques for embellishing flowers by perfecting color, tonal balance, contrast, depth-of field, background blur, and other key characteristics.
Today’s instructor isn’t identified by name, but we’re pretty sure it’s long-time landscape expert Christian More of PHLOG Photography fame because of his mistakeable voice and familiar style of demonstrating his sage advice. And we’re glad he’s broadening his subject matter beyond landscapes with this supplemental channel.
We encourage you to download his Raw files in the description beneath the video so that you can make the adjustments yourself as the simple steps are explained. The eight-minute lesson begins with an emphatic warning: “Don’t rely upon global Vibrance and Saturation sliders to boost colors.” A preferable approach is to employ the sliders available in Lightroom’s Calibration panel.
This technique provides greater creative control by enabling you to selectively target the saturation and vibrance of different colors while also changing the hue. The next trick for making flowers pop of the screen is to separate them from the background by applying simple Subject masks that separately target the flower and what lays beyond.
Mohrle’s other techniques involve perfecting light and shadow, optimizing color contrast, and balancing both cold and warm tones. You’ll also learn how to enhance boring backgrounds by using a Radial Gradient to introduce “bokeh balls” for an interesting effect.
Be sure to visit the new Lightroom Editing Club and check back often as more instructional Lightroom videos are added. And don’t miss Mohrle’s earlier PHLOG Photography primer in which he demonstrates the power of Lightroom’s recently introduced Landscape Selection mask that’s simple to use and will significantly improve the quality of photographs captured in the field.
Maybe you’ve experienced this too. You sleep in the car so you can reach your spot before the first golden rays of morning light wash over the landscape. In the pitch dark, you fire up your little stove, and soon the earthy scent of vegetation is cut through by the spicy aroma of fresh tea. You walk through a waking forest. Nature laughs, and you laugh with it. Life is good! Just as you slip into your hide, a flock of geese passes overhead. Waist-deep in cold water, you sit in the dark hide. An hour, two, three… somehow the sun forgot to rise today.
