Favorite editing tools for street photography
I admit it, I
take too many photos. I know it, and I have too many images to deal
with, and unless I am getting paid to finish them and send them out to a
client, they may never get processed. Are you in the same boat? Do you
too have some images that have just been sitting there in your digital
desk drawer?
With digital photography, and especially because of
how cheap memory is (don’t forget to include web hosting sights and the
cloud), more and more photos are just there and never used. The best
solution is to be more decisive, and just take fewer photos. But we all
get out of hand, and sometimes just come home with more images than we
know what to do with.
Final product after the simple steps followed below—a workflow that you can adjust to your own tastes too!
So
the best thing to do is get to the grind and produce something. But it
doesn’t need to be so much of a grindstone as you might think. I love
taking photos more than processing and unless I am flying solo, I think
I’ve got lots of people onboard with me. As you know, photography is not
about broad strokes, and details are important. This set of
instructions is specifically designed for street photography. But, are
most of your photos from your travels? Well, streets (along with the
convenient airplane) is maybe how you got there. Much of what we do as
photographers crosses over into different genres of style and art. So
have a go at the following tutorial, and you may find that with your own
adjustments this is a recipe for more than just the street.
Final image of two young girls walking in the slums of San Jose Costa Rica, all editing was done following the steps below.
These
instructions begin in the Library module of Lightroom, and then
progress into the Develop module. There are countless modifications that
can be made
upon importing, categorizing them,
giving them tags,
etc. As the point of this tutorial is to streamline your workflow, the
tips for editing will also be streamlined. So let’s get at it!
Library Module
Step 1 – Select images
Select
a batch of images that are preferably in similar lighting conditions,
and which have a similar theme. For example, choose a set of photos that
were all shot outside over the course of a few hours, but not all
night. Or a group of photos that were all shot in the rain. Lighting and
theme conditions can vary, but greater variations will have potential
greater variations in results.
Step 2 – White Balance
In
the Quick Develop Panel (at the top of the right panel in the Library
Module) Select White Balance and choose Auto. Before you turn away, let
me assure you that there have been more Ph.D.s awarded, and
dissertations given, in creating the algorithms behind this button. If
you compound the interest in dollars that has been invested in this Auto
algorithm it would sustain many third and fourth quarter GDP figures
for entire nations.
Step 3 – Warm images
Next,
push the single arrow pointing right under the temperature heading
indicated by the Make Warmer hint that appears if you hover over it. The
single arrow will increase your warmth tone by +5. If you want plus +10
push it twice, using the double arrow will increase it in increments of
+15.
Step 4 – Auto Tone
I
know it is scary, and it does make me cringe sometimes too, but
anything can be shifted, tweaked, and tuned later (and should be) to
your liking. This will Auto Tone your exposure, highlights, shadows,
whites, and blacks to each photo individually, so it is not the same as
batch editing which will be covered later.
Step 5 – Decrease exposure
Select
the single arrow to the left, decreasing the exposure by a 1/3 of a
stop. It is minor, but keeps your darker tones (especially things like
black asphalt) a little darker.
Note: this is
assuming you have a correct exposure to begin with – if it’s a bit out
you can adjust later on a per image basis as needed.
Step 6 – Decrease Highlights
For
the Highlights, use the double arrow to the left, decreasing the
highlights, and select it once. Be patient, as depending on how many
pictures you select and your computer speed, it may take more than a few
seconds. This can be monitored by looking in the top left of the screen
above the Navigator window (progress bar).
Step 7 – Shadows
For the shadows, use the double arrow on the right, decreasing the shadows, and click it once.
Step 8 – Whites and Blacks
Increase
the white clipping by +5, by clicking the single right arrow once.
Decrease the black clipping by -5 by clicking the single left arrow
once.
Step 9 – Clarity
Increase
the clarity by +20, by pressing the double arrow to the right once (for
more information about clarity please look near the end of the article
which describes it in more detail).
Step 10 – Vibrance
The
final step in the Library module is to increase the vibrance by
pressing the double arrow to the right (for more detailed information
about vibrance please see below).
Develop Module
Now we
will be moving into the Develop module. To this point, all the changes
that you’ve made, have been applied to all the photos in the group,
which you originally selected. Looking at the image below, you can see
that despite the simple clicks made in the Library module, many delicate
changes have been made. Again, all of these changes can be fine-tuned
to your liking later. There are hundreds of modifications that can be
made, but let’s keep those for later.
Notice the sliders have moved based on the changes you made in the Library Module Quick Develop panel.
Step 11 – Lens Corrections
This
step requires you to scroll down to the Lens Corrections Panel, and
select two checkboxes. The first is Enable Profile Corrections, and the
second is Remove Chromatic Aberrations. Both of these will allow
Lightroom to make changes to the photo based on the lens used, and the
inherent flaws that exist in that lens. A variety of corrections may or
may not be included like, barrel distortion, vignetting, and as the
second suggests, green and purple colors that result from diffraction in
the lens.
Step 12 – Detail Panel
Next
is to scroll up and go to sharpening, increase it to +50, then
increase your masking to +25. Finally you may or may not need to reduce
noise. For this example, because the ISO was 640 the noise reduction was
increased to +25. To understand, sharpening and masking in more detail
and their relationship to
noise reduction please read below.
Are
you still with me? Here is where you will thank some of those computer
science majors for creating the AUTO button. This is why they get the
big bucks, and it saves us large amounts of time. We don’t need to apply
these changes individually.
Step 13 – Sync settings
At
the bottom of the Develop module there is a rectangular button that says
Sync. PUSH IT! Make sure all your images are still selected before you
sync (highlighted in the thumbnail strip at the bottom).
When
the Synchronize Setting window pops up, select Check None. This will
ensure that no unwanted changes will be made to your previous
adjustments.
Now
check the boxes labeled Sharpening, Noise reduction (which will
subsequently select both boxes below it), Lens Profile Corrections,
Chromatic Aberration, and finally Process Version. Notice these are the
same adjustments that you had made in steps 12 and 13.
Finally, press the “Synchronize” button.
Looking
at the screenshot above, you can see that the all of the selected
photos have had the changes made to them. If I were to go back and make
all the individual changes to the potentially tens, hundreds, or even
in bizarre cases thousands of photos, it would have taken me time that I
don’t have, and neither do you. Looking at the image below you can see
that the exposure, shadows, lights, whites and blacks have remained
unique to the individual photo.
Below are
simple side by side comparisons. In the last one I actually made a few
additional small adjustments, and added a -10 vignette. Other than that,
it is ready for export, along with almost all of the other photos that
were just individually and batch adjusted. It is a bit of mix and match
magic that keeps your photos natural, and true to the street.
Clarity
Clarity increases the contrast
where two different tonal values meet. It is like contrast but on a
micro scale, makes the image seem to be sharper. The lights will get
lighter and the darks darker, but only where the different tone values
meet, not broadly across the whole tonal range of the image.
Vibrance
Vibrance
increases the tone of colors that are not already saturated. It is like
a balancing scale for color. Saturation on the other hand, increases
the intensity of all spectrums of light. Thus, vibrancy helps to bring
out subtleties in the colors. For street photography, it brings out
richness, without creating an over-saturated look. Sometimes I pull the
vibrance up, and push the saturation down, to maintain an urban feel but
doing so without making it look over-worked.
Sharpness
Just
as I said, clarity is like contrast on the micro scale, sharpness is
like clarity on a micro scale. Thus, it is like micro-micro scale. So we
are still dealing with tonal values, but in even more detail. So be
careful how much you increase your sharpness. Never try to rescue camera
shake or blur in the photo using sharpness. “The devil is in the
detail,” and this is no truer than in the sharpness slider. Because what
you gain in sharpness you also increase the amount of noise (not
desirable). If you have a high ISO, sharpness is more of an enemy than a
friend.
Final image all adjustments applied
Masking
Textures
will become more enhanced, but smooth surfaces will not be affected,
resulting in less excess noise being introduced. This will help the
street photography mood, without giving it an overly grainy feeling, or
your shadows having too much noise. So how much of this movement left
and right on the Masking slider is helping or hurting all your hard
work? Thanks to those “AUTO guys” the Alt key on windows (Opt on Mac)
will give you a grayscale impression of exactly where, and how the
sharpening is impacting your photo. White indicates the area on the
photo where sharpening is being applied, and black shows where it is
not. You will notice that the contrasts and textures deserve most of the
sharpening, alleviating your smooth tones and surfaces from the ill
effects of sharpness.
Summary
So hopefully that will give
you some things to try out with your images to process your street
photography faster and consistently. Do you have any other tricks and
tips you use? Please share in the comments below.
