You must have ended up exhausted after such a lengthy editing session. But, it was very worthy, the end result is nothing short of spectacular.
Would you care to share the steps you took in the creation of this wonderful image with us?
Hi,
First of all, thanks for your kind comment
Well... The editing is not based on steps, like I do at work. It's more a feeling than a process, I know almost 100% how Lightroom works, so I just adjust the image as I have it in mind and hearth. I already knew what I wanted to achieve with this portrait after the shoot.
I personally like a lot the warm tones and that kind of softh light. I have bought an umbrella that I use with a TTL Flash, but I cannot achieve the same lighting effect
Coming back to the editing. I enhanced a bit the shadows by using curves, also reduced a bit the clarity slider in order to smooth a bit the image, recovered some highlights and muted a bit the highlights, making the histogram a bit shorter. The color editing was firstly in her skin tone, making it even by using the HSL panel. I use a lot the HSL panel in order to correct the image and enhance some colors by using luminosity. Something that Lightroom lacks is in a L*a*b* mode. There is no way to work with luminance or chrominance like in Capture NX. In Lightroom, some tasks can be balanced by using other parameters as counterweights, but others just not.
After the HSL, I play with White Balance and tint, using extreme values because they can be compensated by using recovery, brightness, vibrance and saturation. So, if you are editing a picture and you go too far and the image looks posterized, just find another way to compensate that deffect (without reversing to where you've started) and you will achieve wonderful effects. Also using the Camera Calibration Panel, you can bring more color, change colors and also change the luminosity of the picture, it's like another way to gives brightness and contrast to the image, same with Temperature and Tint.
Fisrtly, I don't use Lightroom in the way it was meant (expusure to correcty exposure, recovery to recover highlights), I know what does each slider and how they affect the picture, cause I use it to correct picture at work, but using Lightroom the other way around it was meant is the key.
Sometimes I subexpose a lot, then I recover brightness by using temperature and tint. Sometimes I over saturate the picture by using the Temperature slider, then I desaturate with Vibrance... Sometimes I do contrast with HSL... It's a shame that Lightroom hasn't more parameters like NX, but's it's faster and the UI is all there and you don't need to add panels, like in NX...
That's all what I can say.
Thanks,
Leo
