The Guided Upright Tool in Lightroom CC 2015.6

Guided Upright Tool in Lightroom CC 2015.6

cc2015.6

Important – if you are reading this post about the new Guided Upright Tool via subscription email PLEASE view it directly on the blog instead.

lightroom, guided upright tool, lightroom cc 2015.6

Yesterday Adobe released updates for Lightroom CC 2015, Lightroom 6 (non CC) and Photoshop CC2015.

These updates reconciled a few bug fixes and added new camera support BUT, Lr CC subscribers got themselves a new tool – yeah!

And what a useful tool it is – the Guided Upright Tool.

Below you’ll see a video of me showing how to deploy the tool, but basically it makes a damn fine job of getting rid of awkward and complex distortions from wide angle lenses that I’ve always had to resort to fixing with the Photoshop Warp Tool.

Firstly, lets take a look at the develop module panel where it lives:

guided upright tool

Compared to the old Lens Correction Panel in previous versions of Lightroom:

Guided Upright Tool

As you can see from the comparison image at the top of the page, this tool does a fine job of quickly and effectively removing the skewed field curvature from the lighthouse – watch the video below on how I did this – really simple!

You might want to click the YouTube link at the bottom of the video to view at full size.

Caveats:

Something I forgot to stress in the video – you MUST check the ENABLE PROFILE CORRECTIONS in the lens corrections panel in order for the Guided Upright Tool to function.

You can only use a maximum of 4 lines, so choose them wisely!

When you add a third or fourth line you MAY get a warning “ ! Invalid Guide Configuration” – if you do, simply hit the backspace/delete key to remove the line causing the conflict.

Because the resulting correction can result in a major ‘crop’ to the image, you may loose vital pixels and end up with a less than desirable composition.

Plus Points:

Fast, effective and a time-saver; giving you the ability to correct for distorted horizontals and vertical at the same time.

I rate this as one of the best tools Adobe have added to Lightroom in ages, though I can’t give it 10/10 because we end up with a cropped image, and as I hinted at earlier, there are ways to do this in Photoshop that maintain ALL the pixels in the image.

 

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Lightroom – Neutralise Hidden Exposure Compensation

Lightroom – Neutralise Hidden Exposure Compensation.

We all know how good Lightroom is – but it’s also a total pain in the arse!

Ages ago, I did a post about Lightroom 5 and accurate colour HERE and, according to this blogs page-view stats, that post still gets a large global viewing figure every month – so it’s something of an on-going problem for a lot of users.

But things have moved on a bit since then, and we are now working with the v5 release of Lightroom 6/CC 2015 – and things haven’t got any better, sadly, from the perspective of actually “seeing what you captured”.

The problem lies in the fact that Lightroom, for a long time, ceased to be a “neutral” RAW handler.  It uses a variety of ‘behind the scenes’ algorithms to add what it thinks are good adjustments in terms of exposure brightness and contrast.  In other words Lightroom adds hidden adjustments which we cannot see because they are not registered on the adjustment sliders under process version 2012.

Why does it do this – God only knows!

But when I take into account the support Lightroom currently offers for mobile phone cameras, cloud synch etc, I can’t help thinking that Adobe are trying to give Lightroom some sort of mass-market appeal by adding what the designers and coders think is some sort of WOW-factor to image previews – though I might be wrong!

But whatever Adobes reasoning, the fact remains that SOME OF US want to see our raw files for what they are – straight gamma 2.2 encoded versions of what the sensor recorded.  Only by learning how to Neutralise Hidden Exposure Compensation  can we actually arrive at a suitable starting point for the development process.

The Case To Answer

Firstly, a lot of you might be wondering WTF I’m ranting on about – your RAW image previews look great before you start doing anything to them – mmmmm….

If that’s the case then NEWS FLASH – RAW files should look as flat as dish-water pre-process, and you have do some work to make them look good.  So believe me, if your raws look “nice ‘n punchy” from the get-go then something is wrong somewhere!

Out there in photography land there are two RAW file handlers that are notorious for being “neutral” in their initial raw render – Raw Digger, and Iridient Developer.

Let me demonstrate the “case to answer” by using the same image I used the other day when giving Canon an indirect slagging off over lossless compression:

Neutralise Hidden Exposure Compensation in Lightroom

Raw file opened in Lightroom with no user adjustments BUT WITH Lightroom ‘hidden exposure compensation’.

Now let’s open the same file in Raw Digger:

Neutralise Hidden Exposure Compensation in Lightroom

Raw file opened in Raw Digger with no user adjustments.

And now in Iridient Developer:

Neutralise Hidden Exposure Compensation in Lightroom

Raw file opened in Iridient Developer with no user adjustments.

And now, just for good measure, my Lightroom-processed version of the image:

Neutralise Hidden Exposure Compensation in Lightroom

Raw file processed in Lightroom WITH user adjustments.

Both RAW Digger and Iridient Developer give the user a much better processing start point simply because they are neutral and don’t go about making contrast-loaded ‘background adjustments’.  And I’m sure you can see that the final Lightroom processed version of the image bares more resemblance to the RAW Digger and Iridient screen grabs than the Lightroom ‘as is’ preview.

Now if you are a total maniac then you can go and download either of the two aforementioned raw developers and get yourself super-confused or you can learn how to ‘neutralise’ the Lightroom background adjustment ‘crap’ – which is far easier!

How to Neutralise Hidden Exposure Compensation in Lightroom.

Step 1.  Scroll down to the Camera Calibration Panel in the Develop module and switch the Process Version from PV2012 to PV 2010:

Neutralise Hidden Exposure Compensation in Lightroom

Step 1 in Neutralising Lightroom Hidden Exposure Compensation.

Step 2.  Scroll up to the Basics panel (a very different looking one if you never used Lightroom 3!) and make the following changes:

  1. Blacks from 5 to 0
  2. Brightness from +50 to 0
  3. Contrast from +25 to 0
Neutralise Hidden Exposure Compensation in Lightroom

Step 2 in Neutralising Lightroom Hidden Exposure Compensation.

Step 3.  Move to the Tone Curve and change the Medium Contrast tone curve to Linear:

Neutralise Hidden Exposure Compensation in Lightroom

Step 3 in Neutralising Lightroom Hidden Exposure Compensation.

DO NOT concern yourself with the fact that your image has gone dark and flat, it’s to be expected!

Step 4.  Scroll back down to Camera Calibration and switch the process version BACK to PV2012, then scroll back up to the Basics Panel:

Neutralise Hidden Exposure Compensation in Lightroom

Step 4 in Neutralising Lightroom Hidden Exposure Compensation.

Step 5.  Yes I know it still looks awful, but if you now change that -1EV to 0 on the exposure slider you’ll get a great process start image:

Neutralise Hidden Exposure Compensation in Lightroom

Step 5 in Neutralising Lightroom Hidden Exposure Compensation.

Looking at the before and after images you can see that we have got contrast under control – in other words we have removed the excess contrast added to the image with the  Lightroom hidden background shenanigans.

Indeed, we can see exactly how much contrast has been removed with this ‘by the numbers’ process by looking at the -33 Contrast value – DO NOT RESET THIS BACK TO 0!!!!

The process has decreased contrast still further by lifting the Blacks value to +25.  You need to check the shadow areas on the image in this respect.  If they are looking a bit noisy (Hello Canon!) you might want to drop the blacks value to maybe +5 to +10 and open the shadows a bit more with a small positive adjustment to the Shadows slider in the basics panel.

And so processing is just a matter of a few subjective tweaks until I’m happy with the image:

Neutralise Hidden Exposure Compensation in Lightroom

Click to view larger image.

In the Tone Curve panel you can see the multi-point Custom Curve the process has added.  If you click the up/down arrows to the right of the word Custom you will see a menu giving you the option to save the curve:

Neutralise Hidden Exposure Compensation in Lightroom

Saving the custom curve.

I save the curve with the name 2010to2012 – by default it saves as an .xmp file, and to the user/Library/Application Support/Adobe/CameraRaw/Curves file path (Mac).

Saving the curve is useful as it makes for a very quick adjustment of further images.

However, there is a caveat (isn’t there always!) and it’s this:

The majority of  adjustments in Lightroom are specific to camera sensor and ISO.  In simple terms the same numeric value of adjustment to any control slider can have differing effects depending on the sensor it was made by and the ISO at which it was shot.  It’s very important that you wrap your head around this fact.

The curve I’ve produced here is correct for a Canon 1DX at the shot ISO which was 1000 or 800 if my memory serves correctly.  I could apply this curve to a 100 ISO image shot with a Nikon D800E, and it would do a good job, but I might get a slightly better result if I go through the whole process again to produce a custom curve for the D800E using a 100 ISO shot to begin with.  But even if that new curve visually gives a different result it will still have the same numeric values in the basics panel!

If I save the curve and then apply it to another image via the Tone Curve panel the contrast and blacks Basic Panel values do NOT change – but you will get a better distribution of contrast.

You may want to generate and save at least a low and high ISO variant of the curve for each of your camera bodies; or you could be a smart-arse like me by just using one curve and eye-balling the finer tweaks.

You can also create the curve and then save the settings as a User Develop Preset and then apply it to future imports via the import module.

So there you have it, how to Neutralise Hidden Exposure Compensation in Lightroom and see you images properly – have fun folks!

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Lightroom 6.3 Update

Lightroom 6.3 – latest update from Adobe.

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Well, it’s here – at last.  Adobe have released a new 6.3 version of Lightroom 6/CC 2015 that seemingly addresses all the problems associated with the abomination that was v6.2.

Should you install it ?  Go on, live dangerously….!

Seriously though, I’ve installed it and it seems to be working fine.

Patch files are here MAC and Windows if you want to do the direct update instead of going through the Creative Cloud Updater – which has been running a little slow.

So what are the benefits of the update?

The bloody Import Dialogue is back as it should be for starters – Thank God!

Dehaze Filter – now available as a Localized Adjustment in the Radial & Graduated filters and in the Adjustment Brush.  This is actually very neat, and makes the Dehaze properties very useful in my opinion.

There is support for new cameras – see here for the list and new camera tether support – see here

Sadly though, Nikon and Leica still exhibit known tether support failure under El Capitan – so Mac users are stil best off sticking with OSX 10.10 Yosemite.

So here’s the list of known v6.2 issues fixed, according to Adobe:

  • Fixed several instability, functionality and performance issues introduced in Lightroom CC 2015.2.x/6.2.x.
  • Fixed a bug that caused edits made and saved in Photoshop or 3rd party plug-ins to not appear in the Develop module.
  • Fixed a bug related to user default for Chromatic Aberration Correction no longer honored after new Import option was removed.
  • Fixed several bugs related to Panorama Merge.
  • Fixed a bug so that Rotated photos will correctly show as rotated when in Full Screen view.
  • Fixed a bug that caused a performance slowdown when creating Standard sized previews on high resolution monitors.
  • Fixed a bug that caused image previews to be incorrectly displayed as completely black after import if “Auto Tone” is on in preferences.
  • Fixed a bug that caused crash when using the Radial or Graduated Filter.
  • Fixed a bug that caused Palette, a 3rd party hardware device, to stop working with Lightroom.
  • Fixed a bug that caused the Map module to appear pixelated and photos to be  dropped in the wrong place when using hi-dpi monitors on Windows.
  • Fixed a bug related to Full Screen that prevented you from exiting Full Screen view while using the Spot Healing Tool.
  • Fixed a bug that caused the Flickr Publish Service to improperly publish multi-word keywords.

So folks, there you have it. It’s a new update, so perhaps you might want to wait a few days, just to see if there are bugs arising in the new version.

I’m just glad the Import Dialogue no longer looks like it belongs on the CBeebies Channel !

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Latest Lightroom news from Adobe

Latest Lightroom news from Adobe

LRCC2015splash

I’ve been teaching the latest version of Lightroom for the majority of this past week; mostly without a hitch. All-in-all, I’ve seen Lightroom 6/CC 2015 v2.1 working without any problems on 7 different machines; though these were all Macs running OSX 10.10 Yosemite so I can’t comment on PC or the dreaded El Capitan 10.11 OSX version.

I know lot’s of folk are still having problems with the existing release, and that a roll-back to v1.1.1 is still proving their option; but seeing as I manage to get v2.1 working without a hitch I suspect folk are not tidying up their systems before installation as much as they could – remove all traces of Lightroom and do a fresh install.

BUT…………yep, there is always one isn’t there!

Thousands have been moaning about the new, very different, and I have to say rather annoying Import Dialogue..

So the Latest Lightroom news from Adobe is that we can expect another update sometime very soon that will give us the old style import options back – WooHoo!

Tom Hogarty of Adobe made the announcement about 9 hours ago – you can read it here

Tom has been doing a lot of ‘back-pedalling’ and apologising to users on mass this week for the lack of beta-testing of the v2 release, and the new import dialogue options, or rather the lack of them.

He’s obviously never heard the old adage “if it ain’t broke DON’T fix it” !

Personally, I think Eric Chan should be put in the overall “Lightroom Head-Honcho” position over at Adobe – I doubt very much if this shit would have been allowed to happen if it had been so.

Adobe roughly means “house of mud” – mmmm………let’s hope it stops raining soon ehh boys!

For Mac users – I’ve still not upgraded to El Capitan 10.11 OSX.  If anyone has, and has managed to keep Lightroom CC 2015 v2.1 running, please can they let me know in the comments below.

Lightroom Crash Cured?

LRCC2015splash

Lightroom Crash Cure – hot-fix from Adobe

Adobe have now released a hot-fix for the Lightroom CC 2015/6.2 crash problem.

I applied the new patch to two machines and they both appear to be fully functional, but some people are still reporting problems.

The update should appear in your CC Apps panel notifications, or under Help>Updates.  If it doesn’t, you can try restarting Lightroom. I’ll tell you now that neither worked for me, so I manually downloaded the fix, so here are the links:

Mac 2.1 fix HERE

WinPC 2.1 fix HERE

If you are still having problems, please let me know.

And just to be clear, I have still NOT upgraded to El Capitan OSX 10.11.

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Monitor Brightness.

Monitor Brightness & Room Lighting Levels.

I had promised myself I was going to do a video review of my latest purchase – the Lee SW150Mk2 system and Big and Little Stopper filters I’ve just spent a Kings ransom on for my Nikon 14-24mm and D800E:

Lee SW150 mk2,Lee Big Stopper,Lee Little Stopper,Lee Filters, Nikon 14-24, Nikon, Nikon D800E, landscape photography,Andy Astbury,Wildlife in Pixels

PURE SEX – and I’ve bloody well paid for this! My new Lee SW150 MkII filter system for the Nikon 14-24. Just look at those flashy red anodised parts – bound to make me a better photographer!

But I think that’ll have to wait while I address a question that keeps cropping up lately.  What’s the question?

Well, that’s the tricky bit because it comes in many guises. But they all boil down to “what monitor brightness or luminance level should I calibrate to?”

Monitor brightness is as critical as monitor colour when it comes to calibration.  If you look at previous articles on this blog you’ll see that I always quote the same calibration values, those being:

White Point: D65 – that figure takes care of colour.

Gamma: 2.2 – that value covers monitor contrast.

Luminance: 120 cdm2 (candelas per square meter) – that takes care of brightness.

Simple in’it….?!

However, when you’ve been around all this photography nonsense as long as I have you can overlook the possibility that people might not see things as being quite so blindingly obvious as you do.

And one of those ‘omissions on my part’ has been to do with monitor brightness settings COMBINED with working lighting levels in ‘the digital darkroom’.  So I suppose I’d better correct that failing on my part now.

What does a Monitor Profile Do for your image processing?

A correctly calibrated monitor and its .icc profile do a really simple but very mission-critical job.

If we open a new document in Photoshop and fill it with flat 255 white we need to see that it’s white.  If we hold an ND filter in front of our eye then the image won’t look white, it’ll look grey.

If we hold a blue filter in front of our eye the image will not look white – it’ll look blue.

That white image doesn’t exist ‘inside the monitor’ – it’s on our computer!  It only gets displayed on the monitor because of the graphics output device in our machine.

So, if you like, we’re on the outside looking in; and we are looking through a window on to our white image.  The colour and brightness level in our white image are correct on the inside of the system – our computer – but the viewing window or monitor might be too bright or too dark, and/or might be exhibiting a colour tint or cast.

Unless our monitor is a totally ‘clean window’ in terms of colour neutrality, then our image colour will not be displayed correctly.

And if the monitor is not running at the correct brightness then the colours and tones in our images will appear to be either too dark or too bright.  Please note the word ‘appear’…

Let’s get a bit fancy and make a greyscale in Photoshop:

monitor brightness,monitor calibration,monitor luminance,ColorMunki,i1 Display,spectrophotometer,colourimeter,ambient light,work space,photography,digital darkroom,Andy Astbury,Wildlife in Pixels,gamma,colour correction,image processing

The dots represent Lab 50 to Lab 95 – the most valuable tonal range between midtone and highlight detail.

Look at the distance between Lab 50 & Lab 95 on the three greyscales above – the biggest ‘span’ is the correctly calibrated monitor.  In both the ‘too bright & contrasty’ and the ‘too dark low contrast’ calibration, that valuable tonal range is compressed.

In reality the colours and tones in, say an unprocessed RAW file on one of our hard drives, are what they are.  But if our monitor isn’t calibrated correctly, what we ‘see’ on our monitor IS NOT REALITY.

Reality is what we need – the colours and tones in our images need to be faithfully reproduced on our monitor.

And so basically a monitor profile ensures that we see our images correctly in terms of colour and brightness; it ensures that we look at our images through a clean window that displays 100% of the luminance being sent to it – not 95% and not 120% – and that all our primary colours are being displayed with 100% fidelity.

In a nutshell, on an uncalibrated monitor, an image might look like crap, when in reality it isn’t.  The shit really starts to fly when you start making adjustments in an uncalibrated workspace – what you see becomes even further removed from reality.

“My prints come out too dark Andy – why?”

Because your monitor is too bright – CALIBRATE it!

“My pics look great on my screen, but everyone on Nature Photographers Network keeps telling me they’ve got too much contrast and they need a levels adjustment.  One guy even reprocessed one – everyone thought his version was better, but frankly it looked like crap to me – why is this happening Andy?

“Because your monitor brightness is too low but your gamma is too high – CALIBRATE it!  If you want your images to look like mine then you’ve got to do ALL the things I do, not just some of ’em – do you think I do all this shit for fun??????????……………grrrrrrr….

But there’s a potential problem;  just because your monitor is calibrated to perfection, that does NOT mean that everything will be golden from this point on

Monitor Viewing Conditions

So we’re outside taking a picture on a bright sunny day, but we can’t see the image on the back of the camera because there’s too much daylight, and we have to dive under a coat with our camera to see what’s going on.

But if we review that same image on the camera in the dark then it looks epic.

Now you have all experienced that…….

The monitor on the back of your camera has a set brightness level – if we view the screen in a high level of ambient light the image looks pale, washed out and in a general state of ultra low contrast.  Turn the ambient light down and the image on the camera screen becomes more vivid and the contrast increases.

But the image hasn’t changed, and neither has the camera monitor.

What HAS changed is your PERCEPTION of the colour and luminance values contained within the image itself.

Now come on kids – join the dots will you!

It does not matter how well your monitor is calibrated, if your monitor viewing conditions are not within specification.

Just like with your camera monitor, if there is too much ambient light in your working environment then your precisely calibrated monitor brightness and gamma will fail to give you a correct visualization or ‘perception’ of your image.

And the problems don’t end there either; coloured walls and ceilings reflect that colour onto the surface of your monitor, as does that stupid luminous green shirt you’re wearing – yes, I can see you!  And if you are processing on an iMac then THAT problem just got 10 times worse because of the glossy screen!

Nope – bead-blasting your 27 inches of Apple goodness is not the answer!

Right, now comes the serious stuff, so READ, INGEST and ACT.

ISO Standard 3664:2009 is the puppy we need to work to (sort of) – you can actually go and purchase this publication HERE should you feel inclined to dump 138 CHF on 34 pages of light bedtime reading.

There are actually two ISO standards that are relevant to us as image makers; ISO 12646:2015(draft) being the other.

12646 pertains to digital image processing where screens are to be compared to prints side by side (that does not necessarily refer to ‘desktop printer prints from your Epson 3000’).

3664:2009 applies to digital image processing where screen output is INDEPENDENT of print output.

We work to this standard (for the most part) because we want to process for the web as well as for print.

If we employ a print work flow involving modern soft-proofing and otherwise keep within the bounds of 3664 then we’re pretty much on the dance-floor.

ISO 3664 sets out one or two interesting and highly critical working parameters:

Ambient Light White Point: D50 – that means that the colour temperature of the light in your editing/working environment should be 5000Kelvin (not your monitor) – and in particular this means the light FALLING ON TO YOUR MONITOR from within your room. So room décor has to be colour neutral as well as the light source.

Ambient Light Value in your Editing Area: 32 to 64 Lux or lower.  Now this is what shocks so many of you guys – lower than 32 lux is basically processing in the dark!

Ambient Light Glare Permissible: 0 – this means NO REFLECTIONS on your monitor and NO light from windows or other light sources falling directly on the monitor.

Monitor White Point – D65 (under 3664) and D50 (under 12646) – we go with D65.

Monitor Luminance – 75 to 100 cdm2 (under 3664) and 80 to 120 cdm2 (under 12646 – here we begin to deviate from 3664.

We appear to be dealing with mixed reference units, but 1 Lux = 1 cdm2 or 1 candela per square metre.

The way Monitor Brightness or Luminance relates to ambient light levels is perhaps a little counter-intuitive for some folk.  Basically the LOWER your editing area Lux value the LOWER your Monitor Brightness or luminance needs to be.

Now comes the point in the story where common sense gets mixed with experience, and the outcome can be proved by looking at displayed images and prints; aesthetics as opposed numbers.

Like all serious photographers I process my own images on a wide-gamut monitor, and I print on a wide-gamut printer.

Wide gamut monitors display pretty much 90% to100% of the AdobeRGB1998 colour space.

What we might refer to as Standard Gamut monitors display something a little larger than the sRGB colour space, which as we know is considerably smaller than AdobeRGB1998.

monitor brightness,monitor calibration,monitor luminance,ColorMunki,i1 Display,spectrophotometer,colourimeter,ambient light,work space,photography,digital darkroom,Andy Astbury,Wildlife in Pixels,gamma,colour correction,image processing

Left is a standard gamut/sRGB monitor and right is a typical wide gamut/AdobeRGB1998 monitor – if you can call any NEC ‘typical’!

Find all the gory details about monitors on this great resource site – TFT Central.

At workshops I process on a 27 inch non-Retina iMac – this is to all intents and purposes a ‘standard gamut’ monitor.

I calibrate my monitors with a ColorMunki Photo – which is a spectrophotometer.  Spectro’s have a tendency to be slow, and slightly problematic in the very darkest tones and exhibit something of a low contrast reaction to ‘blacks’ below around Lab 6.3 (RGB 20,20,20).

If you own a ColorMunki Display or i1Dispaly you do NOT own a spectro, you own a colorimeter!  A very different beast in the way it works, but from a colour point of view they give the same results as a spectro of the same standard – plus, for the most part, they work faster.

However, from a monitor brightness standpoint, they differ from spectros in their slightly better response to those ultra-dark tones.

So from a spectrophotometer standpoint I prefer to calibrate to ISO 12646 standard of 120cdm2 and control my room lighting to around 35-40 Lux.

Just so that you understand just how ‘nit-picking’ these standards are, the difference between 80cdm2 and 120 cdm2 is just 1/2 or 1/3rd of a stop Ev in camera exposure terms, depending on which way you look at it!

However, to put this monitor brightness standard into context, my 27 inch iMac came from Apple running at 290 cdm2 – and cranked up fully it’ll thump out 340 cdm2.

Most stand-alone monitors you buy, especially those that fall under the ‘standard gamut’ banner, will all be running at massively high monitor brightness levels and will require some severe turning down in the calibration process.

You will find that most monitor tests and reviews are done with calibration to the same figures that I have quoted – D65, 120cdm2 and Gamma 2.2 – in fact this non-standard set up has become so damn common it is now ‘standard’ – despite what the ISO chaps may think.

Using these values, printing out of Lightroom for example, becomes a breeze when using printer profiles created to the ICC v2 standard as long as you ‘soft proof’ the image in a fit and proper manner – that means CAREFULLY, take your time.  The one slight shortcoming of the set up is that side by side print/monitor comparisons may look ever so slightly out of kilter because of the D65 monitor white point – 6,500K transmitted white point as opposed to a 5,000K reflective white point.  But a shielded print-viewer should bring all that back into balance if such a thing floats your boat.

But the BIG THING you need to take away from the rather long article is the LOW LUX VALUE of you editing/working area ambient illumination.

Both the ColorMunki Photo and i1Pro2 spectrophotometers will measure your ambient light, as will the ColorMunki Display and i1 Display colorimeters, to name but a few.

But if you measure your ambient light and find the device gives you a reading of more than 50-60 lux then DO NOT ask the device to profile for your ambient light; in fact I would not recommend doing this AT ALL, here’s why.

I have a main office light that is colour corrected to 5000K and it chucks out 127 Lux at the monitor.  If I select the ‘measure and calibrate to ambient’ option on the ColorMunki Photo it eventually tells me I need a monitor brightness or luminance of 80 cdm2 – the only problem is that it gives me the same figure if I drop the ambient lux value to 100.

Now that smells a tad fishy to me……..

So my advice to anyone is to remove the variables, calibrate to 120 cdm2 and work in a very subdued ambient condition of 35 to 40 Lux. I find it easier to control my low lux working ambient light levels than bugger about with over-complex calibration.

To put a final perspective on this figure there is an interesting page on the Apollo Energytech website which quotes lux levels that comply with the law for different work environments – don’t go to B&Q or Walmart to do a spot of processing, and we’re all going to end up doing hard time at Her Madges Pleasure –  law breakers that we are!

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Photoshop Save for Web

Save for Web in Photoshop CC – where the Chuff has it gone?

“Who’s moved my freakin’ cheese?”

Adobe have moved it……..

For years Photoshop has always offered the same ‘Save for Web’ or ‘Save for Web & Devices’ option and dialogue box:

save for web,Photoshop CC 2015,colour management,save for web and devices,export,quick export as JPG,export as,export prferences,Andy Astbury,Wildlife in Pixels,Adobe,

The traditional route to the ‘Save for Web’ dialogue in all versions of Photoshop prior to CC 2015.

But Adobe have embarked on a cheese-moving exercise with CC 2015 and moved ‘save for web’ out of the traditional navigation pathway:

save for web,Photoshop CC 2015,colour management,save for web and devices,export,quick export as JPG,export as,export prferences,Andy Astbury,Wildlife in Pixels,Adobe

Adobe have ‘moved your cheese’ to here, though the dialogue and options are the same.

If we take a closer look at that new pathway:

save for web,Photoshop CC 2015,colour management,save for web and devices,export,quick export as JPG,export as,export prferences,Andy Astbury,Wildlife in Pixels,Adobe

…we see that wonderful Adobe term ‘Legacy’ – which secretly means crap, shite, old fashioned, out dated, sub standard and scheduled for abandonment and/or termination.

‘THEY’ don’t want you to use it!

I have no idea why they have done this, though there are plenty of excuses being posted by Adobe on the net.  But what is interesting is this page HERE and more to the point this small ‘after thought’:

save for web,Photoshop CC 2015,colour management,save for web and devices,export,quick export as JPG,export as,export prferences,Andy Astbury,Wildlife in Pixels,Adobe

That sounds really clever – especially the bit about ‘may be’……. let’s chuck colour management out the freakin’ window and be done!

So if we don’t use the ‘legacy’ option of save for web, let’s see what happens.  Here’s our image, in the ProPhotoRGB colour space open in Photoshop CC 2015:

save for web,Photoshop CC 2015,colour management,save for web and devices,export,quick export as JPG,export as,export prferences,Andy Astbury,Wildlife in Pixels,Adobe

So let’s try the Export>Quick Export as JPG option and bring the result back into Photoshop:

save for web,Photoshop CC 2015,colour management,save for web and devices,export,quick export as JPG,export as,export prferences,Andy Astbury,Wildlife in Pixels,Adobe

Straight away we can see that the jpg is NOT tagged with a colour space, but it looks fine inside the Photoshop CC 2105 work space:

save for web,Photoshop CC 2015,colour management,save for web and devices,export,quick export as JPG,export as,export prferences,Andy Astbury,Wildlife in Pixels,Adobe

“Perfect” – yay!…………NOT!

Let’s open in with an internet browser……

save for web,Photoshop CC 2015,colour management,save for web and devices,export,quick export as JPG,export as,export prferences,Andy Astbury,Wildlife in Pixels,Adobe

Whoopsy – doopsy…!  Looks like a severe colour management problem is happening somewhere……..but Adobe did tell us:

SFW4

Might the Export Preferences help us:

save for web,Photoshop CC 2015,colour management,save for web and devices,export,quick export as JPG,export as,export prferences,Andy Astbury,Wildlife in Pixels,Adobe

In a word……..NO

Let’s try Export>Export As:

save for web,Photoshop CC 2015,colour management,save for web and devices,export,quick export as JPG,export as,export prferences,Andy Astbury,Wildlife in Pixels,Adobe

Oh Hell No!

If we open the original image in Photoshop CC 2015 in the ProPhotoRGB colour space and then go Edit>Convert to Profile and select sRGB; then select Export>Quick Export as JPG, the resulting image will look fine in a browser.  But it will still be ‘untagged’ with any colour space – which is never a good idea.

And if you’ve captioned and key worded the image then all that hard work is lost too.

So if you must make your web jpeg images via Photoshop you will only achieve a quick and accurate work flow by using the Save for Web (Legacy) option.  That way you’ll have a correctly ‘tagged’ and converted image complete with all your IPTC key words, caption and title.

Of course you could adopt the same work flow as me, and always export as jpeg out of Lightroom; thus avoiding this mess entirely.

I seriously don’t know what the devil Adobe are thinking of here, and doubtless there is or will be a work around for the problem, but whatever it is it’ll be more work for the photographer.

Adobe – if it ain’t broke then don’t fix it !!

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Lightroom Dehaze – part 2

More Thoughts on The Lightroom Dehaze Control

With the dehaze adjustment in Lightroom (right) the sky and distant hills look good, but the foreground looks poor.

With the dehaze adjustment in Lightroom (right) the sky and distant hills look good, but the foreground looks poor.

In my previous post I did say I’d be uploading another video reflecting my thoughts on the Lightroom/ACR dehaze adjustment.

And I’ve just done that – AND I’ve made a concious effort to keep the ramblings down too..!

In the video I look at the effects of the dehaze adjustment on 4 very different images, and alternative ways of obtaining similar or better results without it.

You may see some ‘banding’ on the third image I work on – this is down to YouTube video compression.

In conclusion I have to say that I find the dehaze ‘tool’ something of an anti-climax if I’m honest. In fairly small positive amounts it can work exceptionally well in terms of a quick work flow on relatively short dynamic range images.  But I’m not a really big fan in general, and It’s possible to create pretty much the same adjustments using the existing Lightroom tools.

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Lightroom Dehaze

 The Lightroom Dehaze Control

I’m getting a bit fed up with seeing countless folk raving about this new dehaze slider control in Lightroom, ACR etc.

dehaze,lightroom,Andy Astbury,WildlifeinPixels

The control itself can be found at the bottom of the Effects panel in the Develop module in Lightroom CC 2015, and at the top of the ACR FX tab.

Yes it’s certainly useful, but I have yet to see anyone illustrating its bad points – so Uncle Andy has made a video: if you are reading this in email, click this link to watch the video https://www.wildlifeinpixels.net/blog/lightroom-dehaze/

I do tend to waffle a bit in videos so apologies for that…!

You might want to click the YouTube icon bottom right corner and watch this video at a larger size.

I’m not saying that the dehaze control in Lightroom and ACR is crap – far from it.  But I am strongly advising that you deploy it with some caution, especially when images contain small fine edge detail.

Under these circumstances, positive value dehaze control adjustments can have disastrous effects on fine detail.  You might not be aware of these ‘on screen’ but send the image to A2 print and you could be in for some tears.

I’ll be doing another video on the dehaze control shortly, showing some of the positives that I see in it.

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Image Retouching

 Image Retouching in Photoshop CC 2014

It’s very rare that we ever get a frame from our camera that doesn’t need retouching – that’s a FACT.

Imperfections in the frame can be both ‘behind the shutter’ and ‘in front of the lens’ – sensor dust and crud on the subject.  But you’ll take photographs where these imperfections are hard, if not impossible, to see under normal viewing.

But print that image BIG and those invisible faults will begin to be visually apparent; by which time it’s too bloomin’ late and they’ve cost you money; or worse still, a client.

The ‘visualise spots’ tool in Lightroom will show you a certain amount of ‘dust bunny’ type faults and errors, but the way Lightroom executes retouching repairs is not always ‘quite up to snuff’; and when it comes to dust, crap and other undesirables on the subject itself Lightroom will fail to recognise them in the first place.

Image retouching isn’t really all that difficult; but it can be an intensely tedious and time-consuming process.

To that end I’ve stuck these HD video lessons on my You Tube channel.

In these videos I illustrate how I deploy the Spot Healing brush, Healing Brush, Clone Tool, Patch Tool and Content Aware Fill command to carry out some basic image retouching on a shot of cutlery bright ware.

I demonstrate the addition of a ‘dust visibility’ curves adjustment layer – something that everyone should ‘get the hang’ of using – as a first step to effective image retouching.

When photographing glossy, high reflectivity subjects we need to remove the imperfections and smooth the surfaces of the subject without reducing the ‘glossiness’ and turning it matt!

Please note: a couple of these videos are in excess of 20 minutes duration and they will look better at full resolution HDV if you click the You Tube icon. Also, it takes a lot longer to do a job when you have to talk about at the same time!

I hope you get some idea as to how simple and straightforward my approach to image retouching is!

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