Where there is light, there will be shadows!
In this short video, we will look at a different technique for cleaning up shadows in macro images using Lightroom range masks.
This technique can be adapted for other images as well. The final image can be seen on Flickr.
Let us look at an example to see how this is done…
If like me, you got the Luminar AI package on release and installed it, you would have noticed that the Lightroom plugins for Luminar AI do not work as expected.
Luminar has released an online update which fixes the issues, but, leaves the older, non-functional plugins in place. This can be very irritating at best.
Let us take a look at how to update the plugins and remove the non-functional ones…
This is a little known technique that I wanted to share, but, kept forgetting 🙂
Basically, it’s not just Lightroom, this technique works for all disk/file intensive applications on the Mac and since Windows also indexes file, this would work on Windows as well.
Let’s take a brief look at how to speed up such applications on the Mac…
I generally use Lightroom for all my raw processing and avoid Photoshop unless I am replacing a sky or a similar composite.
One of the tools I use a lot in Lightroom is the Adjustment Brush and the AutoMask feature in that for edges.
Although I have updated to version 10 and therefore cannot show a side-by-side comparison, but, the change from the earlier version is quite visible even in normal masking.
Let’s take a brief look at this issue…
Let’s take a look at the all-new sky replacement feature introduced in Photoshop 2021 first since that is the most talked-about addition.
There are some other new features in Photoshop as well as Lightroom, but, we will get to those in later videos.
Sky is the replacement 😀
This is perhaps more relevant for macro photography and flash, but, can also be used in other cases.
To demonstrate this technique, I will use a close-up image of a snail for the highlights and shine removal and a bird image for shadow removal.
Let’s see how we can go about doing this in Photoshop…
#Photoshop #Wildlife #Highlights #Shadows #Post
This feature was introduced in version 9.3 and I have found it very useful for wildlife macros. Of course, we do have similar conditions with birds at times, but, this is more useful for macros.
We often see a major green tint when we photograph insects in the wild on leaves and branches. Adjusting the overall image tint in the white balance does not work in these conditions.
Earlier, one would have to go to Photoshop to fix these issues, but, now it can be done in Lightroom itself.
Let us look at an example to see how this is done…
I ran into this major bug while re-organising my mobile shots and I consider it serious enough to share. In short, if you are using date/time functions in the Lightroom import, you have to be careful and double-check to make sure this bug does not impact your catalog.
Let us see what this bug is and how it can create chaos in our catalog.
One of the ways of overcoming the current technology limitations in photography is called Focus Stacking.
This technique allows us to overcome the area of focus (DoF) in images. We can take multiple shots with different focus points and later combine these to get the entire image in sharp focus.
Let us see how this can be done using Lightroom and Photoshop.
This is a little known feature on Mac OS which allows you to clear the trash extremely fast compared to the normal “Empty Trash/Bin”.
For example, if you have thousands of files left by some application, or, just want to rebuild files for any application and delete the existing ones, just emptying the trash can take quite some time.
A typical example of this, in my case, would be to delete the preview files in Lightroom or ON1 Photo RAW cache which can have thousands of files.
This is far more apparent if the data is on a HDD, external or internal, rather than a SSD.
One way around this is to use the command line and delete the files and folders using the rm command. Fortunately, the trash/bin in Mac OS has an equivalent which just deletes instead of displaying the file count and its status while emptying the trash/bin.
Let’s see how this works…
