Did you hear that my sister and I are now designing and creating our own Albums and Boxes? If not, we are. And the results have been beautiful! We have a huge sample album in the works and I imagine it’ll be done and photographed by this weekend (at least that’s my goal).
For the second post in Evolution of an Image I decided to use one of the images from the most recent engagement album that we made for Kim & Odessa. Angie made a gorgeous linen covered album with a box and she used some of the ribbon from their wedding! Such a sweet, personal touch for this amazing couple.
Alright, now for the “Evolution” part of the post… First off, let’s take a look at the RAW image and the proof image that was finished using Adobe Lightroom 3. (A favorite tool of mine for my Post Production workflow.)
Now, I have 10 steps that I used to give me the finished result for my proofs that I wanted. (Remember that my proof images are the ones that clients will see… they are not my finished images because no work has been done to them in photoshop. So, to be honest, these are my “oooo, that looks good enough” images.)
1. This is my raw image with my Basic Settings on the side
2. First things first, I use my eyedrop tool (short key is ‘w’) to click on an area that I know is either white, black, or gray. This make my settings go from a blue 3500 to a warm 4300. (For those who are curious, I was shooting this on my chair in the living room next to a huge open window.)
3. I adjusted my exposure. Notice that my exposure went from 0.00 to 0.20. The only part of my image that is slightly blown out is the top ledge of the albums box.
4. So, because of this blown out area I went ahead and recovered some of the information. (Recovery is at 12 now.)
5. In my fifth step I went ahead and adjusted my Blacks. I added more black into my image which automatically added a slight bit of contrast as well as brought the left side of my Histogram down to the edge of the left side. I still have information in all of the dark areas of this image which I like.
6. This is where I bumped up some contrast… but only a little since I already added some in step 5. So I went from the automatic Contrast being +25 to +37.
7. Now, looking at my image I see that there are some dark areas that I don’t want to be so heavy. Moving back up to the Fill Light I bumped that up to +8 which brought some light into the darker areas of my image.
8. Get this… from there I went back and added a hair more contrast to my image (mind you, this is all by personal taste so it’ll be different on every image). Now my contrast is set at +41.
9. Clarity is a funny little thing. Too much of it can really ruin an image. But a hint of it can be pretty cool. I only went up to +8 which added a tiny bit of clarity (wondering what that means? I’m just making the image a little more clear, not necessarily sharpening it but in a way I’m sharpening it). 
I also brought down my Vibrance a hair setting my slider at -7. This took out a tiny bit, and I mean tiny, of the orangey-yellow in the image.
10. Last adjustment made was in my Effects menu. I added a slight vignette to the image. Lately I haven’t been vignetting as much as I have in the past but there are certain pictures that it works for… especially if there are brighter areas on the outside of the image. We all know that the brightest area of an image is where the eye travels to first.
So that’s that. A small little take on the inside of my love relationship with Lightroom. I hope this is informative and enjoyable to read! Let me know if there are any specific things you’d like me to explain about any of my processes. I will definitely consider my next “Evolution of an Image” to cover the information you’re wanting to know.
Blessings,
Jen
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I never knew about the eye dropper! Very cool quick tool for white balance, especially when it seems my eyes are playing tricks on me and what seemed so warm yesterday seems ok today. Love these tips and tricks and what a cute album! Thanks, Jen
I ALWAYS feel my eyes are playing tricks on me! So there are times when I use the eyedropper on a few different areas just to see what happens and then I go back to the one I feel is the most accurate… still I tend to make a few small adjustments to that.
But I hear ya, many times I look back at images I edited last week and I think they’re horrible! I don’t know if they’ll ever be good enough…. there is always something else I’d want to fix.
What a cute couple in the album!
I watch you do that stuff on the computer, but this explanation made my head hurt. That’s why you’re the professional and I am not.