Lightroom: Controlling the Before and After

By Helen Bradley

One of the nice things about Lightroom is that it lets you view before and after versions of your image. Lightroom can do this so easily because it does not make permanent changes to your image as you work on it. Instead, Lightroom keeps a log of the edits that you have made and only applies them to the image when you export the image.

Use the Before/After options in Lightroom to check that the changes you have made to your image to make sure that you're headed in the right direction.

Here are some ways to harness the comparative Before/After power of Lightroom:

Step 1
If you are in the Develop module you’ll need to make sure that View Modes are enabled so that you can see the necessary icons. To do this, click the small triangle under the image to the right in the Develop module and choose View Modes.
Step 2
You will now see a button which has Y|Y on it. Click this to see the before and after views of your image.
Step3
From the dropdown list you can choose from multiple ways to see the before and after views. Before/After Left/Right shows the before and after views side by side - this works well for portrait orientation images.
Step 4
The Before/After Left/Right Split shows a single version of the image split so that the left side of the image is the before view and the right side is the after view.
Step 5
The Before/After Top/Bottom option shows the before image at the top and the after image at the bottom - this works well for landscape orientation images.
Step 6
The Before/After Top/Bottom Split view shows a single version of the image split so that the top half is the before version and the bottom half is the after version.
Step7
You don't have to use the buttons, however, and any time as you’re working on an image you can switch between before and after view by pressing the backslash (\) key. The image displays an indicator in the bottom right corner if you are seeing the Before version – no indicator appears for the After version.
Step8
Sometimes you'll want a "somewhere between before and after"/after comparison - such as when you are sharpening an image. In this case you may want to compare the image before sharpening and after sharpening but the before/after options won't allow for this.

There are two workarounds. One is to create a Virtual Copy before you apply the sharpening to the image. Right click the image and choose Create Virtual Copy. This is your new "before" image and you can now apply the sharpening to it. When you perform a Before/After comparison you will now see just the result of the sharpening and not the entire image correction.
Step9
The second works well when you've already applied the changes and want to compare the after with a previous history state. Locate the history state in the History list that you want to compare the final version with. Right click it and choose Copy History Step Settings to Before. This changes the 'Before' view of the image so it looks like the current image on the screen. Click in the History to return to the adjustment you want to compare and now, when you compare before and after you're really comparing after with something more meaningful.

When you copy the settings like this you're not removing any history so you can still revert the image to an earlier version using the history list.


Step 10
The Before/After view options are also selectable via shortcut keys and from the View menu.

Lightroom Presets

In an earlier post, I explained how to create a custom Lightroom preset that you could use to edit your photos in Lightroom. In addition to creating your own Lightroom presets you can download and install presets from the web into Lightroom so you can use them anytime you like.

To begin, you’ll need to locate some presets to use. A good place to start is at Adobe Exchange: http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/exchange/ and search for Lightroom presets. Download a set of presets to your computer. In most cases this requires you to download and save the file to your computer and then you need to unzip its contents. Place the unzipped files in a folder that you can find easily.

Once you have done this, launch Lightroom and click to open the Develop module. Choose User Presets and, if desired, create a new folder for the presets by selecting New Folder and type the folder name. I like to do this so I can keep my presets separate to other people's.

Once you have created the new folder, right-click it and click Import. Navigate to where you saved the preset files you downloaded, select them and click Import. The presets will be added to your Lightroom Preset collection. Chances are that one will be applied to your image too! Press Control + Z (Command + Z on the Mac) to undo it.

You can rename a folder by right clicking it and choose Rename and you can also delete a folder if you decide you don't like the presets or simply remove individual presets by right clicking the preset and click Delete.

You can also share your presets with others. To do this, right-click a preset that you have created and choose Export. It is exported by default with its current name with the extension LRtemplate which is the extension that identifies it as a preset. To share your presets with others you can either send them the LRtemplate file so that they can import it into Lightroom themselves or zip a number of presets into a single file of presets and distribute that.

Even if you do not want to create your own presets, you’ll find that there are plenty of cool presets available on the web that you can download and use.

Split toning in Photoshop

By Helen Bradley

Split Toning is an effect which has its origins in the days of film and it involves tinting the highlights in a black and white image one color and the shadows another color. The best results are where you use opposite colors for each, such as yellow and blue, green and magenta and so on.

If you are a Lightroom user you've probably experimented with the very cool Split Toning tool in the Develop module. However, you can achieve a similar effect in Photoshop with just a little more work.

Here's how to create the effect in Photoshop:

Start by creating a black and white image using your favorite tool in Photoshop. I'm using Photoshop CS4 so I'm using the Black & White filter but you could use the Channel Mixer or Hue/Saturation and drag the Saturation slider into -100.

To create the split tone effect you can use a Color Balance adjustment layer as it lets you isolate the highlights and shadows in the image and to apply different colors to each. To start, choose Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Color Balance and click to select the Highlight tones. Now adjust the color sliders until you get a pleasing color in the image highlights.

Click the Shadows tone selector to isolate the shadows in the image and adjust the color sliders to get a pleasing color in the Shadows.

If necessary you may want to select the highlights again and fine tune the color used so it complements the color you've chosen for the shadows.

You can consider your image done for now or you can apply a filter effect. Here I've created a flattened image layer by pressing Control + Alt + Shift + E (Command + Option + Shift + E on a Mac) and applied a Diffuse Glow filter (Filter > Distort > Diffuse Glow) to it before blending the layer back into the underlying image.

Photoshop: Painting a Photo

While Photoshop includes some filters you can use to apply a painted effect on your photos, you can also paint them yourself very easily. This way you can achieve a custom look as you paint.

The process involves using the little known Art History brush in Photoshop to do the work, here's how:

Open your image in Photoshop. You don't need an image that is in sharp focus (which makes this process a good one for dealing with a slightly soft image), but it should be well exposed and have a good range of tones. If necessary, apply a Curves, Levels or Exposure adjustment to the image. Flatten the image.

If you resize or crop the image, you must save it and reopen it - the Art History Brush won't work if you don't. Ditto, if you’re working in 16-bit mode you'll get a program error if you try to use the History Brush so use Image > Mode and select 8-bit then save and reopen the file.

Duplicate the background layer of the image 4 times. Name your layers (from the bottom up): underpainting, detail, fine detail and color highlights. Hide the three top layers and select the underpainting layer.

Select the underpainting layer's contents by Control + clicking on the layer thumbnail (Command + Click on the Mac) and press the Delete key to remove everything from this layer. Deselect the selection by choosing Select > Deselect.

Click the Art History Brush (it shares a palette position with the History Brush Tool), select a brush shape to use and make it a fairly large size. Choose a Style such as Tight Short and an area value of around 50px and paint all over this layer. All you want right now is some general color but no detail at this stage.

Click the detail layer and turn its visibility on. Select its contents and delete them. Make your brush smaller in size and now paint on this layer to bring back some of the image detail. Experiment with different settings in the Art History Brush toolbar such as Dab, Curl and Tight. If you get an error stating that the brush won't work because the history state doesn’t contain this layer, view the History palette using View > History and click in the left column opposite one of the Duplicate layer states to make it the one to paint from.

Once you have some detail in the painting, click the fine detail layer, delete its contents and paint on this layer using a very small brush. This time focus on the elements you want to see in some detail such as the horse.

Select the color highlights layer, make it visible, delete its contents and using a slightly smaller brush, this time just dab a few small scattered brush strokes on the image, you want a smattering of detail but not much at all. With the layer selected, choose Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation and drag the Hue slider a little to the left or tight and adjust the Saturation to a little higher value. This changes some of the color and detail in the image to give it a more painterly look.

When you have a result you like, select the top layer of the image and press Ctrl + Al + Shift + E (Command + Option + Shift + E on the Mac) to create a new layer with a flattened version of the image on it. Choose Filter > Texture > Texturizer and apply a Canvas texture to the image.

You can back off the effect by decreasing the Opacity of the top layer to reveal some of the detail from the layers below.

Next time you're looking to create a painting from an image, consider by passing the filter menu and use the Art History brush to make your own custom painting.

New free Steampunk brushes

 

I just made a set of fun Photoshop steampunk brushes. They are made from clock parts and they have a photographic quality to them. The collection includes a range of gears and some funky metal bits too. They are sized upwards of 600 pixels and some are as large as 2400 pixels.

They are free brushes for personal use and an inexpensive commercial license is available.

You can download them from projectwoman.com.

For more Photoshop tutorials and techniques visit www.projectwoman.com

Lightroom Presets

One of the cool things about Lightroom is its ability to store develop settings as Presets so you can use them again later to edit other images.

In addition to creating and saving your own presets, you can also download presets from the web and use them in Lightroom.

In this post, I’ll show you how to create a Lightroom preset and in a future post, I'll show you how to download and install Lightroom presets you find on the web and also explain how you can share your own presets with others.

To get started with presets in Lightroom, select an image in the Develop module which is ready for some creative attention. Just be aware of any settings you have already applied to the image as these will be included in the preset if you don't specifically exclude them. If you have done a lot of work to get the image to this stage, export a copy and re-import it back into the catalog – there's an option that does this in one step in the Export dialog. If you now select and work on the edited version, only the upcoming changes will be included in your preset.

Now you’re ready to work creatively on the image. For example, to split tone the image, start by increasing the Contrast in the image and reduce the Brightness a little to compensate. Adjust the Clarity to a high value so you get more sharply defined edges.

In the Split Toning options, for the Shadows click to select a dark blue/teal color and adjust its Saturation to suit. For the Highlights, select a mustard yellow and adjust its saturation to suit.

Adjust the Balance slider to favor the shadows or highlights as desired.

You may want to decrease Saturation and Vibrance or tweak other color settings to get the result you want. Here I added a Vignette too.

To save the settings as a preset, locate the Presets panel on the left of the Develop panel. Click the plus sign to the right of the word Presets to open the dialog.

Give the preset a name that describes what it does, in this case I called mine, 'teal-blue split tone with vignette'. Disable any options that you don't want stored with the preset – leaving selected only the options you have configured and want to use on every image.

For example, I set a Split Toning, added a Vignette and adjusted Brightness, Contrast, Clarity, Vibrance and Saturation.

When you’re done, click Create.

You’ll now find your preset in the User Presets collection and you can click it to apply it instantly to any image in future.

In some instances you may need to edit the image after applying the preset to it to fine-tune the effect for that image.

If you find that your Preset isn't working quite as well as you imagined it would and if, for example, you always seem to make a particular change to the image after using it such as brightening it a little you can save an edited version of the preset without having to create it from scratch.

To do this, apply the preset and make your change. Then right click the preset and choose Update with Current Settings.

Select the settings to save in the preset and click Update. In future when you apply this to your images it will be applied using these new settings.

You’ll also find that a number of Presets ship with Lightroom. These are in the Lightroom Presets list. Click on any of them to apply it to your image. To see how the image might look with a preset applied, make sure that the Navigator is visible so you can preview the effect without actually applying it to the image.

In later posts, I’ll look at downloading, installing, exporting and sharing Lightroom presets.

Photoshop: Selective fixes using masks

Sometimes a photo needs its tonal range fixed but some areas of the image may not need the same fix as others. Here's how to limit the fix to a selected portion of an image using a mask.
Look at this photo and noticed that on the left are the light and highlight areas and on the right are the dark areas. The camera has exposed primarily for the light areas in the image and the darks are very black. I need to fix each side of the image independently of the other. Step 1
To fix the image make two copies of the background layer so that you do your work on duplicate layers. To do this, right click the Background layer in the Layers palette and choose Duplicate Layer and then repeat this step once more. Disable the visibility icon on the topmost layer and select the middle layer.Step 2
To bring detail out of the shadows, choose Image > Adjustments > Shadows/Highlight and adjust the Shadows but leave the highlights untouched. Typically the default setting will be all you need. Ignore any effect this fix has to the lighter areas of the image. Step 3
Now enable the visibility icon on the top layer and select it so you are working with this layer. Choose Image > Adjustment > Levels and adjust the levels to improve the contrast in the lighter areas of the image – ignore the darker areas as they have already been fixed. You can also adjust the saturation using Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation if desired.
Step 4
The top layer contains the adjustment for the light values and the middle layer contains the adjustment for the dark values. To blend these layers, use a layer mask to selectively adjust the opacity of a layer.

Unlike the layer opacity slider which sets every pixel to the same opacity value, a mask lets you adjust the opacity selectively so one area can be 100% opaque and others can be partially or fully transparent.

To do this, click to select the topmost layer and click the Add Layer Mask button at the foot of the layer palette to add a white layer mask to this layer. When working with masks, "black conceals and white reveals" so the white mask reveals everything on the top layer and the image is unchanged. Step 5
Set the foreground colour to black, select a round brush and set its Opacity to approximately 20%. Click in the mask to select it and paint over the dark areas of the image to reduce the layer opacity and to allow detail from the layer below to show through. Using a low opacity brush lets you reduce the opacity gradually.

Continue and paint over the area to make more transparent. It may help to turn the visibility of the top layer on and off to see what detail is available on the layer below that you may want to recover. Make sure to select the layer mask again before painting to reduce the layer opacity.

Video! Painting with the Art History Brush in Photoshop

Here is a new video on painting with the Art History Brush in Photoshop:

A video on how to paint a photo using the Photoshop Art History Brush.