There’s no better way to elevate your skills than by watching an acclaimed pro demonstrate the shooting and image-editing techniques that contribute to his success. In this episode French photographer Serge Ramelli walks you through what he says are, “eight Lightroom tips that will change your life.”
Ramelli specializes in landscape and cityscape imagery, and he’s not given to hyperbole, so when he makes such a bold claim it pays to hear him out. The quick methods he describes are presented in reverse order, with the most powerful tips saved until the end of this 18-minute episode.
The lesson kicks off with this: “Bad colors? Go black and white.” He pulls up an image shot in Los Angeles’ beautiful Griffith Park. It’s a compelling scene, but as you’ll see, the colors are dull and unimpressive. He quickly walks you through the b&w conversion and subsequent adjustments to quickly turn the bland shot into a very dynamic image. And you can easily do so with or without the presets he recommends.
Next on the list is using Lightroom’s AI Generative Fill capabilities in a unique way. Here he captures three images of LA’s iconic Roosevelt Hotel, stitches them together for a nice panoramic image, and then employs AI to control perspective and fix skewed lines, while filling in the gaps caused by his geometric corrections. Lightroom’s new Fill Edge option helps get the job done to perfection.
There’s also a related trick for fixing other perspective problems in panorama photos, and this one involves Lightroom’s frequently ignored Boundary Wrap tools. This particular image of the famous hill-top Hollywood sign needs a lot of help, in part because his vantage point was too close—resulting in a really weird merging of his photos. He demonstrates how the Cylindrical and Spherical Commands can be used for an effective fix.
There are still five additional editing tricks to learn, that Ramelli says are more and more important as the video progresses. The good news is that the remaining five adjustments are not particularly complex, despite the degree to which they’ll improve the photos you shoot in the great outdoors.
So take a look, do a bit of quick practice, and then try out these helpful methods over the weekend. We promise that you’ll be very grateful after examining the results. Then head over to Ramelli’s globally popular YouTube channel for more shooting and post-processing advice.
We also suggest watching the tutorial we posted recently from another accomplished pro, explaining the way he improves his outdoor photographs by using four oft-ignored Lightroom tools.
OK, landscape shooters, do you really understand the “huge” difference between the Contrast, Clarity, and Texture sliders when processing images in Lightroom? If not, today’s video will settle the confusion and enable you to achieve the highest quality photos when editing your work.
According to landscape pro Christopher O’Donnell, some photographers confuse these important sliders because they often deliver similar results. But here’s the catch: “The quality and accuracy of these three adjustments can vary greatly and can give you damaged pixels or otherwise unwanted side effects.
One reason O’Donnell’s lessons are so effective is that he always explains both the why and how of the techniques in question, as he does in this eye-opening episode in which you’ll learn exactly what happens with each slider and the best way to adjust them to pull maximum detail out of your Raw files.
One major problem, according to O’Donnell is that many inexperienced Lightroom users “randomly adjust these sliders—moving them back and forth until the image looks pretty good.” But wouldn’t you rather remove all the guesswork with a purposeful, and predictable method every time?
In fact, Contrast, Clarity, and Texture are designed to be used together, but these adjustments should be tackled in a specific order. O’Donnell says that’s because each of these sliders take a different approach to controlling lightness values of certain pixels in a photo.
O’Donnell begins with the Contrast slider, explaining how this adjustment controls the tonal gap between one pixel and another. As you’ll see, increasing Contrast widens the gap between light and dark pixels, while reducing Contrast does the opposite within the “tonalsphere.”
The tutorial continues with a similar discussion of how the Clarity and Texture sliders work, while demonstrating practical applications and the correct sequence. We’ll leave it to O’Donnell to walk you through how all this works, but here are a couple quick points: “One difference between these three tools is how they isolate or choose what pixels to adjust.”
A second key difference is the amount of adjustment added when enhancing photos with these three sliders. At this point, all the modifications you’ve seen are global in nature, meaning that they affect the entire image as a whole, and sometimes this simple approach is all it takes to get the job done.
Other times, though, a photo requires a selective technique that only targets specific areas within the frame, and that’s what O’Donnell explains how to do with simple masking in the final portion of the video.
O’Donnell’s instructional YouTube channel is a great source of straightforward editing advice, so be sure to pay a visit when you have time. And if you want to achieve great edits in a hurry, check out our recent post with the 10 top Lightroom keyboard shortcuts for streamlining your workflow.
