"Make your Image Pop" in Lightroom?

Kotalu

Question for the sages:

I've been using Lightroom 3 for a few months now and love it. I'm still very new to it, and am especially trying to master curves in general and in Lightroom in particular. I stumbled across the smugmug tutorial called "Make your Image Pop", and love what it can do. But I'm hating all the exporting out of LR into PS and back again...

Is there any way to accomplish the same effect and stay in LR the whole time?

Thanks in advance, Y'all rock.

K

colourbox

In Lightroom hold down the Alt/Option key while you drag the Exposure or Blacks sliders. This will show you where the highlight and shadow clipping are, so you know when to stop dragging. This is a shorter way of going through all the steps with Threshold and the eyedroppers in Photoshop.

Further poppage in Lightroom is achieved by setting, in this order, and only as needed: Brightness, Contrast, the Tone Curve, Clarity, then finally Sharpening. To pop the colors, first set White Balance correctly then boost Vibrance.

Kotalu

Great! I will try this tonight. Gracias!
K

bgarland

I am learning Lightroom 3 as well. I just picked up a copy of Scott Kelby's book "Lightroom 3 book for digital photographers". I have been all the way through the book once now and go back often for specific references when I need a refresher.

It covers some great advice on importing, presets and file handling, then lots of detailed advice and examples of editing work flow for normal well captured images as well as tips on improving problem captures. It ends up with more in depth education on correctly setting up your output process for Web or print.

I'm no expert but from my perspective I highly recommend this book for anyone on the Lightroom 3 learning curve.

Kotalu

Oh, sweet. God knows I need file management help. My current system is to have no system and then freak out when I can't find things. Not good.

Thanks for the recommendation!

Cheers,
K

Qarik

of course you can achieve the same effect in LR. All images are different but in most cases you can achieve "pop" by more contrast (more "s" curve), a boost in clarity (local contrast), boost in vibrancy/saturation, and some sharpening..maybe a vigentte also. But geting good at post processing in a conistent manner is a matter of repitition..after editing hundreds of images then should feel confortable wih the sliders and what they can do. After thousands of edits your eyes become more atune to colors and shifts and what an image needs.

malch

You can also pump the Vibrance really hard while reducing the Saturation a little to compensate. This prevents some colors from going radioactive and the result can be an authentic looking image with a lot of pop.

racer

I really dont think that final image "pops" at most, to me, it looks like they took 20 complicated steps just to fix the exposure and color/wb.
Do people really spend that much time on one image?

The easy method would be to open it in camera raw or lightroom, first adjust the exposure and curves (making sure not to clip), adjusting the recovery and blacks as needed, then use the white balance tool and adjust white balance. I wouldnt up the vibrance or saturation on a person, because you would be changing the skin tones.

To make it pop, maybe then selective soften his face, beard, and hair, using a blur layer, and another layer to sharpen the rose, then desaturate the distracting red and blue in the background, or maybe make it a sharp black and white. To me, making a image "pop", is to make it more then just average. I dont think his image lacked "pop", but instead was bad technique (but I am very far from a expert)