Wednesday, August 26, 2015

Pictures in the Windshield

Waterbury, Connecticut

When I tried the very first versions of Lightroom as it was first introduced, I seriously disliked the interface and the whole approach. However, the current version is so much improved that I wish I'd taken a look sooner. I'll continue to use Bridge>ACR>PS for some work but I think I'll transition to working in LR for most digital capture. Haven't yet experimented with printing directly from LR.

Meanwhile, one of the new tools in ACR/LR is "dehaze" which is meant for helping pictures shot in hazy conditions, but it also works like a charm for reducing window reflections. I didn't want to eliminate the reflections here, but wanted to see into the interior better than the unmodified file. It's a little like being able to apply a polarizing filter after the fact, in post.

As always, you can click the picture to get a larger more legible view.

6 comments:

Mike Mundy said...

Last time I tried Lightroom it seemed as if it was going to force me to use its organizational structure. I couldn't get past that issue to move into any actual photo editing.

I have my own little system that is partly based on my film contact sheet days, and I don't want to change!

Carl Weese said...

Mike, my filing system is based on my film system too, and the default organization of LR didn't suit me at all. It also took longer than it should to find all the switches to make it do what I wanted, but I found them. I've got it set now so that LR does the download of the card with dng conversion, putting the files into a designated folder without making additional subfolders (one of the switches that isn't easy to find). Rename during download is turned off because I often have cards from two cameras. When the downloaded files are "loose" in the target folder I import to the catalog, use Date Created as the sort order, open Rename (F2) and use yymmdd-CW-xxx1, the naming convention I've used since I began doing digital capture. You have to dig a bit in the rename dialog to turn up this 'custom' naming convention, but it is there.

For image editing, several things I like are that the preview in Library (browser) mode is higher quality than the preview in Bridge, and you can see the full rgb histogram for each file as you browse. The Develop mode is just ACR with a different window arrangement. Another thing is that the Export function lets you quickly set a range of parameters that let it substitute for several batch actions that I used from Bridge. I think I'm going to continue to use LR for adjustment/editing of digital captures, but will continue to use Bridge/ACR for scans and to make digital negatives for Pt/Pd printing.

Mike Mundy said...

Carl:

Thanks for the mini-Lightroom article! However, after reading (and re-reading), I think I'll just stick to my tried and true quarterly Bridge folders, with my minimalistic ACR and PS tweaks.

Mike

Carl Weese said...

If I hadn't been able to make it adopt my accustomed naming convention that would have been a deal breaker.

Mike Mundy said...

You might want to consider expanding the above info for a TOP article . . . ?

Carl Weese said...

A possibility, but I suspect there's a ton of LR info published on the web that I'm not aware of because I wasn't using it and so not following. It could take too much time to see what the state of knowledge is in order to avoid posting something that get's the reaction, "Doh, everybody knows that!"