My workflow procedure as requested by Rob.

[jiro]

Hello, Rob. I decided to post your request as a new thread so others can benefit from it as well (if they find it useful, LOL!). OK, here goes:

NOTE: All images uploaded are just screen captures. The original file is saved as 16-bit .tiff files for my archive.

1. This is a new image that I am going to edit for this tutorial. I will call this shot - The colorful bird. This is the shot "Straight Out Of Camera" or as what they name as SOOC.


As you can see, it is acceptable but barely. It needs some adjustments to make it pop!

2. First thing that I normally do is to concentrate on how I would want to crop the image. Since I was greatly influenced by Donald recently, I decided to go with the 5X4 crop ratio. This is the cropped version from the SOOC image:



Now, it looks more "balanced" to me. This is where the fun begins... doing the adjustment in LR!

3. This is the adjustments that I did inside Lightroom:



As you can see,

3a. I bumped the exposure a little bit to increase the brightness of the image.
3b. I recovered some of the highlights by adjusting the Recovery Slider a little bit.
3c. I want the lower midtones to have some "body" in it so I bumped up the fill light a bit.
3d. The blacks are not that saturated so I adjusted the black slider up a bit to saturate them.
3e. The Clarity and Vibrance Sliders was bumped up to increase the contrast on the midtone areas.
3f. The HSL Sliders was adjusted to either saturate or desaturate some of the colors individually based on my personal taste.
3g. Then, I corrected any lens anomalies by activating the Lens Profile Correction feature for the lens that I used to take this shot.
3h. Last but not the least, I applied luminance and color noise reduction on the image.

It is interesting to note that I did not apply any sharpening at all during the whole editing on LR. I will apply the sharpening on the last part of the whole process but not in this state.

4. Now, the final LR edited image is exported to Photoshop for final tweaking.

4a. Upon export, I did a b&w conversion copy of the image. This is the b&w version with some further adjustments on the contrast and brightness levels.



5. Now, selecting the b&w layer, I changed the blending mode of this layer from Normal to LUMINOSITY. Here is the result of the blending mode change:



This is the thing that makes the whole image look sharper and with full tonal contrast. Unfortunately, for this shot, it's a bit too bright so I decided to do some selective dodging and burning for some "drama".

6. Here is the result after the selective dodging and burning.



Does it look better now? I think so. The image is already sharper because of the high contrast effect of the blended b&w layer so I will not introduce any more sharpening on this image. I forgot to mention, while doing all of this, I am working on the 16-bit version of the image the whole time.

7. Since I only share my images via the web, I convert it to 8-bit jpeg file and I usually set the largest side to about 1500 pixels. this somehow works for me when Flickr further downsizes it to 1024 pixels as their largest dimension for a free user account holder. This is the final image with the border and signature:



Hope this helps, Rob. Cheers.

[Frankie]

Willie,
Thank you for this! I found it very helpful. I now realize that there may be some method to my madness!

frankie

[jiro]

Willie,
Thank you for this! I found it very helpful. I now realize that there may be some method to my madness!

frankie

Thanks, Frankie. Happy to be of help when I can. Welcome to the madness club. Hehehe.

[ChrisH]

Hey Willie - a very interesting article. I have Light Room but have never really got into it. I tend to follow a similar exercise Adobe Camera Raw before sending to PS, although I have not tried the B & W blend, which worked well on your image. The difference between the original shot and your final version is quite stunning. Thanks for the info, which I will certainly try out.

Regards

Chris

[jiro]

Hey Willie - a very interesting article. I have Light Room but have never really got into it. I tend to follow a similar exercise Adobe Camera Raw before sending to PS, although I have not tried the B & W blend, which worked well on your image. The difference between the original shot and your final version is quite stunning. Thanks for the info, which I will certainly try out.

Regards

Chris

Thanks, Chris. Sometimes the effect of this procedure is very pleasant and sometimes it's not. If it looks too bright and too sharp you can always add a mask to apply the effect selectively in some areas only or you can also lower the opacity to bring back the original layer below it. Good luck should in case you want to apply this stuff to your shots.

[purplehaze]

This is great, Willie. I would like to see more of this type of thing. Perhaps we could have a "masterclass" series in the processing section that willing participants could contribute to. I will suggest it to McQ.

[purplehaze]

I will suggest it to McQ.

Oops; he's looking for input on design. This would be a suggestion for the moderators, then.

[jiro]

This is great, Willie. I would like to see more of this type of thing. Perhaps we could have a "masterclass" series in the processing section that willing participants could contribute to. I will suggest it to McQ.

Thanks, Janis. I'm glad you appreciate this. I can't join the "masterclass" series... usually I'm the servant.

[Rasbury]

Very helpful Willie.Thanks for the info.

[jiro]

Very helpful Willie.Thanks for the info.

You are very most welcome, Ron.

[FrankMi]

Willie, I search for these 'nuggets of gold'. Thank you very much! Too often we struggle trying to achieve a goal while sorting through thousands of combinations of possibilities when a simple solution eludes us. Much of what I learn comes from the Photography Tutorials on this site but knowing when to apply what technique and in what order is often not very obvious.

For example, I would have never thought of doing most of the post processing in Lightroom and did not know anything about blending a B&W image back into the original! I would LOVE to see threads where the photographers would be willing to post the techniques they used to take and/or process their contest winners. This might be boring for seasoned pros but I would eat it up like candy!

Thank you so much for the learning experience!

[jiro]

Willie, I search for these 'nuggets of gold'. Thank you very much! Too often we struggle trying to achieve a goal while sorting through thousands of combinations of possibilities when a simple solution eludes us. Much of what I learn comes from the Photography Tutorials on this site but knowing when to apply what technique and in what order is often not very obvious.

For example, I would have never thought of doing most of the post processing in Lightroom and did not know anything about blending a B&W image back into the original! I would LOVE to see threads where the photographers would be willing to post the techniques they used to take and/or process their contest winners. This might be boring for seasoned pros but I would eat it up like candy!

Thank you so much for the learning experience!

You are very welcome, Frank. CiC has been very helpful to me, too so I am simply giving back whatever I can offer. I only came to know this technique by accident then studied it further as to why it works and then refined the procedure. I wish I could make it as a photoshop action but the problem is every image reacts differently to this process so that means you have to tweak your shots individually. Thanks, Frank.

[FrankMi]

...the problem is every image reacts differently to this process so that means you have to tweak your shots individually.

I know what you mean. I've tried to reprocess a number of my older shots from my 'point & shoot' days and in some cases the techniques provide stunning results. In other cases I feel like I'm trying to make "a silk purse out of a sow's ear"! LOL!

[The Blue Boy]

Willie,

Quick question. Why process in Lightroom over ACR? I've no experience of LR and am a bit intrigued, although I really don't want to throw any more money at Adobe!

[Wirefox]

Jiro very interesting thread. It is always interesting and informative to see how others process their work. Good stuff and well written too

[jiro]

Willie,

Quick question. Why process in Lightroom over ACR? I've no experience of LR and am a bit intrigued, although I really don't want to throw any more money at Adobe!

Hello, Mark. I'm also a bit intrigued about this when I started using LR a couple of weeks ago. I think what helped me a lot in realizing how intuitive and how good was the way Adobe arranged all the adjustments in LR was when I got hold of David duChemin's book about processing your image using LR. In less than a week I'm up and doing all my adjustments with clarity on what I am adjusting and why I am adjusting them. Here's the funny part - when I tried to stop using LR and used ACR I can immediately notice that I am now struggling to understand my adjustments though they are basically the same. For me, the major difference is the interface. I know, those very smart guys at Adobe should have simply put the whole LR interface inside Photoshop CS5, right? But you have to understand them, too that this is a business decision. This practice is not different from the car manufacturers - they offer you minor changes and a new version comes out. Talk about rip-off, huh.

Here's the thing, You can do basically 95% of the adjustments in ACR as what you can do with LR. It's that 5% difference that makes LR stand out better in my honest opinion. My CS5 is just an upgrade from a previous version so I saved some money. As for the LR, it was a very personal decision to invest in it since I can really intuitively adjust any image that I have with ease now using it. Hope this helps, Mark.

[jiro]

Jiro very interesting thread. It is always interesting and informative to see how others process their work. Good stuff and well written too

Thank you very much, Steve.

[The Blue Boy]

Willie,

Right I'm gonna download the trial. The book you mentioned, was it Vision & Voice: Refining Your Vision in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom?

[jiro]

Willie,

Right I'm gonna download the trial. The book you mentioned, was it Vision & Voice: Refining Your Vision in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom?

Yes! You will learn a lot about intuitive post-processing with that book. Worth every penny that I paid for it. That's the same thing I did, Mark. I downloaded the LR trial version first before taking the plunge. Good luck.

[The Blue Boy]

Willie,

I'm gonna give it a look mate, but how is it any better than ACR? Or Bridge?