Explore Landscapes #67

The first in a 3-part series covering my Lightroom workflow when importing, editing, and rating my landscape photos.

Introduction

Ansel Adams wrote a series of books, The Camera, The Negative, and The Print (which are still well worth reading, even though most of us are shooting on a digital camera rather than on film).

“The negative is the equivalent of the composer's score, and the print is the performance.” - Ansel Adams.

Digital photography today still has the same three steps that Ansel Adams followed back in his day:

1. take your camera, compose, and ‘capture’ a scene

2. post-process your digital image file (today’s negative)

3. export an edited digital image or make a physical print of that image

So, you've taken some landscape photos with your camera. Now what? That would be step 2. Post-processing your digital image file (or files, most likely).

RAW is the format typically used by landscape photographers. It captures the most light information and lets you tweak and edit the photo most broadly during post-processing. If you’re not shooting in RAW, pause, and please look at this article. It gives a quick rundown on RAW and JPEG to help you decide which format to use. Spoiler alert: I suggest that landscape photographers always shoot in RAW.

OK, now that I’ve (hopefully) convinced you to shoot in RAW, you’ll have to edit (post-process) every digital image file you share (whether online or as a hard print) to make it look how you want it to. When viewed on the back of your camera, RAW files typically look subdued and lack ‘sufficient’ saturation or contrast.

There are many different post-processing software options on the market today, and while I use Adobe Lightroom, you may find that other software works for you.

You may want to try other postprocessing software, such as Affinity Photo, CaptureOne, ON1, Luminar, and DxO PhotoLab.

If you’re interested in learning more about other post-processing software, I suggest you go and take a look at Cornelius Muller’s substack, Alpine Dispatches. Cornelius has published a Weekly Edit series of posts using different post-processing software each week.

I’ve been using Lightroom since its first release in 2007. Lightroom now comes in two flavors: Lightroom Classic and Lightroom (for the cloud - it used to be called Lightroom CC).

I use Lightroom Classic because I prefer its layout and functionality. Also, I like to keep my image files in a ‘traditional’ folder structure, and I don’t want to use the whole ‘cloud’ functionality that the other version offers. The adage about ‘teaching an old dog new tricks’ springs to mind.

So, with that in mind, today’s article will cover how I use Lightroom Classic. Welcome to the Lightroom Party!

Step 1: Importing Your Photos

• Insert your camera's memory card into your laptop or desktop (either directly or via a card reader). Lightroom should automatically detect your photo card and open the Import page (default setting); if it doesn’t, use the keyboard shortcut Cmd Shift I (Mac) or Ctrl Shift I (Windows).

The orange box shows the source from which you will import your image files. This is your camera’s memory card.

• The green box shows how you choose how to add the images to your Lightroom library. I prefer to keep my image files in their native RAW file type (in my case, for the Canon EOS R, that’s CR3), so I choose ‘Copy.’ If you select ‘Copy as DNG, ‘ your RAW files will be converted into Adobe’s DNG format.

• Then click on the up-down arrow symbol next to the destination location (see the blue box) to confirm where you want the imported image files to be saved.

• Click on ‘Other Destination’ to select your preferred destination folder.

• Select your destination folder for the image files and click ‘Choose’.

There are several things that you can do during import that save a bunch of time down the line:

• Select the type of Previews you’d like Lightroom to create. I always select 1:1 to access full-size images in Lightroom quickly. The import takes a little longer, but you don’t have to wait for them to be created when you want to edit your images.

• Rename files. On import, I use a template to rename all my image files into a fixed format. My filename format is YYYYMMDD_location_JNP_original file number. I suggest you develop a file naming format that makes sense for you.

• Develop Settings. I apply Lightroom's Lens Correction and Aberration settings (which are lens-specific) during import.

• Metadata. I apply another template that adds my IPTC Copyright and Creator information to every image on import.

• Keywords. I add location keywords on import to quickly sort and find images from specific locations. I only add keywords to the whole batch of photos I’m importing (as I’m looking for import to be a quick process). Some photographers may want to add more exhaustive keywords as they import or choose to keyword individual photos later in their workflow.

Now, click on ‘Import’.

• Your image files will be imported into the Lightroom library, and you can then review and/or edit them.

Step 2: Making Basic Adjustments in the Develop Module

Basic adjustments for exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows, and white balance.

Click on an image you’d like to edit in either the Library Module Grid View using the keyboard shortcut G (Mac and Windows) or from the Filmstrip at the bottom of the Library Module.

• Open the Develop module using the keyboard shortcut D (Mac and Windows).

• There are three areas we’re going to use:

  • The blue box shows the step-by-step history of our edit. Since we haven’t edited anything, the history shows only one step: the import with Lens Correction and Aberration.

  • Each time we edit an image, another line item is added to the history. Lightroom’s edits are non-destructive (i.e., they don’t permanently change the original image file), so we can scroll through that history to view how the image looked at each step and amend the edit if we want to.

  • The orange box shows the image's histogram (the tonal range from black on the left to white on the right). Please review this article if you need a refresher on how the histogram works.

  • The green box outlines the Basic editing panel and shows all the sliders in their default settings for the unedited image.

  • If you look at the histogram of the unedited image (see the orange box in the screenshot above), you’ll notice a solid white triangle at the top of the graph on both the LH and RH sides. This shows the image has clipped blacks (LH) and highlights (RH), i.e., there are areas of pure black and pure white in the image that will not show any detail.

• Before we take care of the clipping, we will click on Auto (shown in the blue box above) or use the keyboard shortcut Cmd U (Mac) or Ctrl U (Windows). Lightroom then edits the image as it sees fit using only the sliders shown in the Basic panel.

• Using Auto quickly gets your image to a good starting point for further editing. It doesn’t always do a great job, but 9/10 times it does OK.

• In the green box (the Basic editing panel), you can see that some of the sliders have moved due to auto-editing: Exposure, Contrast, Highlights, Shadows, Whites, Blacks, and Vibrance.

• To remove the clipping, I need to reduce the Whites and Blacks. I do that by clicking (and holding on to) the relevant slider and slowly moving it to the right or left.

• I reduce the Whites by clicking (and holding on to) the Whites slider and slowly moving it to the left. As I slowly move the slider, the white triangle on the right side of the histogram turns gray. I stop sliding when it turns gray. This is referred to as setting the white point.

• I reduce the Blacks by clicking (and holding on to) the Blacks slider and slowly moving it to the right. As I slowly move the slider, the white triangle on the left side of the histogram turns gray. I stop sliding when it turns gray. This is referred to as setting the black point.

• In the screenshot above, the blue box (showing the History panel) now has some additional lines.

There are a few more changes that I make to the majority of my landscape images:

• I increase the Contrast to between +20 and +25 (typically). This increase in contrast will darken the darker areas and lighten the lighter areas.

• Next, I increase the Texture to between +10 and +15 (typically). This increases the prominence of texture in a photo without affecting the fine details.

• I also increase the Clarity to between +10 and +15 (typically). Increasing clarity adds structure to the mid-tones and creates a sharper image.

• Then, I will increase the Dehaze to between +10 and +15 (typically). Dehaze boosts low-frequency contrast and saturates the colors in your image.

• With these sliders, the secret is to adjust them slowly and not overdo the edit. If you push them too far, your images may suffer from some weird editing artifacts or look ‘crunchy’ and unrealistic.

• When you adjust Contrast, Texture, Clarity, and Dehaze, you may find your histogram clipped again. Go back and change your white and black points until the clipping disappears.

And there you have it, a quick edit (less than a couple of minutes per image) once you’re familiar with using Lightroom.

The image above is a composite of the edited image (LH bottom) and the unedited, straight-from-camera image (RH top).

Step 3: Exporting Your Edited Image

Choosing the correct file format, resolution, and export settings for web or print.

I use this quick Basic edit to determine which images I may want to work on further. I will share Intermediate and Advanced editing techniques for landscape photographs in future articles.