Lr5 Clarity

It has been several months since I posted anything on this blog and I must apologise for that. Life has taken a few unexpected turns, as it does from time to time.

I have recently upgraded my Adobe Lightroom from version 4 to version 5 and I have to say that whilst there are not many improvements, the few that there are are outstanding but I've not played enough to go into any great detail.

I always shoot in RAW and there are 4 settings in Lightroom that I always use. It is these settings that I will discuss today. My beautiful wife Veronica "Ronnie" has graciously volunteered to be my model with no make-up, hair-dye or other modification, before or after other than the settings I'll outline here;

1 ) White Balance - 99% of the time I don't need to make any adjustments. (However, I'm an artist first and a photographer second so I'll sometimes change this for effect). 

2 ) Clarity - for landscapes I always increase clarity but for portraits as a rule I'll decrease the clarity to compliment the skin tones. In this case I decreased the clarity to -88.

3 ) Vibrance - I use this vary sparingly on the plus side for landscapes as it does increase noise in the image but again with portraiture I tend to decrease the setting, again sparingly and in this case I am using -15.

4) Saturation - If I want colours to pop I'll increase the saturation and conversely I'll decrease the Saturation to prepare the colours for blending. With studio portraits I will often create blended backgrounds and less saturation really helps in these cases. Today I have used an increased saturation of +19 as I have a dark background with sufficient lighting to create separation.

Before and After Lr5 adjustments

These settings have been used to that you can see the difference clearly. Remember that beauty is in the eye of the beholder so use the settings that please your eye.

Till next time - Take Care.