New Adaptive Profiles in ACR Adobe Camera Raw make photos better by using ai to analyze each photo, rather than apply a blanket profile to all photos. Because each photo is unique, this will get you way better results than if you don’t use it.

Ill add full written steps here soon!

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About a year ago, I showed a sneak from Adobe MAX of reflection removal from a photo. These sneaks are experimental features Adobe Engineers show off that may or may not make it into a product. Since then, many people have asked if this will make its way into Lightroom or Photoshop.

Reflection Removal is available today as a technology preview in Camera Raw. I’ll show you how to activate and use it in this tutorial. Currently it only works on RAW files. Adobe have said they are working on supporting other file formats as well as Lightroom support. That will all be coming soon. Ok, let’s look at reflection removal.

Enabling Reflection Removal in Camera RAW

First of all, update Photoshop to the newest version. This is in regular Photoshop, you don’t need the beta for this one.

Launch Camera RAW (by opening any image. Filter>Camera RAW).

Choose the gear in the top Right.

Click Technology Previews and turn on New ai Features and Settings Panel. (Technology Previews are beta for Camera Raw).

Restart Photoshop for this to take effect.

Using Reflection Removal

In Camera Raw, here is a photo of a train interior, shooting through the glass.

Click the Eraser icon

Turn on Reflections from the Distraction Removal panel.

Instantly, the reflections are gone and the contrast has been increased as if the glass wasn’t even there.

There are some things it works on better than others. It works best on Plate glass at the moment and struggles with smaller things like eyeglasses. Let’s continue to see how it works as well as other limitations.

Notice the reflection slider is at 100. This is completely the image without reflections.

If you slide the Reflection filter to the Left (-100), you will see just the reflections.

This uses ai to understand what is the reflection and what is the subject and separates the 2. This does not use Generative AI and it doesn’t generate anything that isn’t in the picture.

If you move the slider to 0, it will show the original image.

The reflection removal works well for glass and things like shooting through airplane and car windows, hotel windows, storefronts etc. It also works well for photos and framed pictures behind glass.

It doesn’t currently work well for images with specular highlights where the details are blown out, because the ai can’t currently understand an area where there is no pixel detail. It also doesn’t work will for brightly lit night scenes.

Here is a picture of a younger me on the nVidea Speak Visual campaign a few years ago. Lets run it on this image.

Notice it removes the reflections, but didn’t remove the specular highlights from the light source.

Take the same picture without specular highlights and run it again,

A much cleaner result.

I’ll keep you updated as this feature progresses. Subscribe to our newsletter to get updates.

Thanks

Colin

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Its that time of the year for the big upgrades. Big, as in they get full version numbers. Generally many beta features are now promoted to full features and new ones added.

There are a lot of performance improvements in LRC this time around and if you have modern computer, you should notice them. Modern, because more stuff is pushed to GPU.

The first thing you will need to do, is upgrade your catalog when you first launch.

This brings us to the first new feature, which is an unseen one. Lightroom automatically creates a backup of your old catalog now.

Another “small” but big to some people (I’m one of them) the long-awaited ability to easily rename your catalog. I know, I know, why did that take so long?

Now, when you rename your catalog, all the supporting files will be renamed including the ability to rename the parent folder. No more Lightroom_199_main-v13-3_v6_really_the_new_updated_2023_update filenames!

You can see everything is now renamed. You can also delete your old catalogs as you can see the names clearly now. (Tip: Before deleting old catalogs, I suggest moving them to a different folder and make sure everything works on the new catalogs before emptying out the old ones).

Choose Photoshop version

This isn’t new, but I want to include it because I am asked this ALL the time.

If you go to settings, you can choose the version of Photoshop  (regular or Beta) to edit in from the External Editing tab. If this doesn’t work, launch the version of Photoshop you want to work in first. Then when you choose edit in Photoshop, it should go to the correct one.

Remove Tool updates

Same as in ACR the ai remove tool is updated.

You can circle select

It will detect the shape, you can keep painting to add other objects, or hold alt/Option and paint to remove from the selection.

Click on remove

And it does a great job. Use variations arrow to choose the best one.

You can also scribble select to tell Lightroom which object you want to select for removal.

It works quite well.

And a bit more clean up

done.

This works best in smaller areas on images that you will print, because the resolution isn’t large enough for areas bigger than 1024 px x 1024 px at a time. You can safely using it on multiple small areas to eventually encompass a larger area. If you are sharing them smaller for social media, it mostly doesn’t matter as much.

Tethered Capture updates for Nikon.

Nikon shooter rejoice! The same snazzy new tethering that was added for Sony is now here for Nikon. Expect drastically faster and more reliable performance when your Nikon camera is tethered.

Content Credentials

Content credentials allow you to add your information and links to your socials into your photographs. You can have the info on the Cloud, attached to your images or both. Now people can find and contact you if they like your images.

This is optional, and you can choose what info to include.

Noise Reduction. Denoise

The ai denoise for RAW photos is out of beta (early access)

Look at this noisy image.

Choose Denoise

You will see a preview

Without denoise

With

As you can see it does a terrific job.

Unlike in ACR, this is still using the earlier version of denoise, which creates a new file. Hopefully the new beta version of denoise in ACR makes it way over, but nevertheless it works really well.

HDR update Gain Map

Lightroom Classic has been getting HDR updates for a while now and I’ve made tutorials about them and told you about each update.

If you have an HDR enabled monitor, you can see HDR images have more detail in the highlights and look more vibrant and realistic. (you will notice this on the XDR phones and HDR TVs as well).

If you turn on SDR (Standard Dynamic Range) previews you can adjust the output for non HDR (High Dynamic Range) screens.

You may have wondered what happened to the 2 versions? Is it just a simulation? Now with Gain Maps, when you create an HDR image, both versions are included and the viewer will be shown the correct version depending on their display. You have to choose a compatible file format, such as Jpeg XL. You will enable HDR output. I should mention, a regular (SDR) photo won’t be magically converted to an HDR image. And, no (as I’ve been saying for YEARS) you cant process the same image differently and merge them together to get HDR images, you will just get a heavily tone mapped SDR image. I have written and made videos extensively about HDR if you need to get up to speed. 

Extended displays on additional monitors now support HDR as well, this is a good new feature for people using multiple HDR displays.

There you have it, those are the big new features in Lightroom Classic. Check out the video above to see them all in action,. as well as mention of a couple more smaller ones.

Thanks for checking it out

Colin

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Adobe updated Camera Raw to Version 16.3 and added some nice new features. These features work exactly the same way in Lightroom Classic. The video goes quite in-depth, but I’ll keep these written steps brief because I have already covered them in my Lightroom write up which you can see here. As well as in-depth tutorials on individual tools.

Generative Remove

Generative remove uses firefly ai (same tool as Generative Fill in Photoshop) to remove and replace objects in a photo.

Bear in mind that maximum resolution generated in 1024×1024 pixels, so be careful when using on areas that will be OUTPUT larger than that. I emphasize this point because I’m seeing a bit of an overreaction to this. Unless you are printing your images, it isn’t as much of an issue for people, as some make out, because remember 1024px is close to the full resolution height when you output an image at full HD (1920 x1080) which is enough for online and social media sharing. But do check the final output to make sure there isn’t a softening or resolution mismatch. If you are concerned about this, or want print quality, then use the legacy tools or the remove tool in Photoshop which doesn’t’ have resolution limitations. Smaller patches are totally ok. Ok, having said that, let’s see how this works shall we?

Choose Filter>Camera RAW from Photoshop, or open as ACR from Bridge.

Click the eraser icon in the toolbar

You will see the remove panel.

If Generative ai is off, then the tool will work in legacy mode (How it used to work) If it is checked, it will use Generative ai, which requires and internet connection.

Object aware, will try to detect the edges and cover the object

Scribble select, or make a rough selection with Object aware on

It will do its best to select the object. It will make a selection slightly larger than the object, which you always want to do.

You will also notice it goes directly to the refine panel. (Hold Ctrl/Cmd to skip the panel)

Use the bush to refine the selection area (Some tips are in the video at the top).

Choose subtract to remove brush strokes

When you are ready, click apply

To bject will now be removed. Click through 3 variations to find the best one.

Lens Blur

I’ve covered  Lens Blur in depth on other tutorials.

Click apply in Lens Blur

The ai will detect you object and blur the background.

Under the hood (or bonnet) it will build a depth map to tell ACR where to blur. More on depth maps in a sec.

You can adjust the blu amount.

If you choose the target tool, you can click anywhere in the photo and that will become the sharpest part of the photo. Yes, this is like focusing the photo after you have taken it. (Remember, a blurry photo will still be blurry though, so nail that focus in camera!).

See the focal range.

If you move it to the left, it will focus closer to the viewer.

Move to the right and the focus will be further away from the viewer, with the close objects blurred.

If you make the slider more narrow, the focus area will be less, aka shallow depth of filed.

Widen the slider to expand the depth of field and have more of the photo sharp at once.

Lets look at that Depth map thing shall we?

Turn on Visualize Depth.

Now you see the depth map. The lighter areas are closer to you and the darker areas are further away.

The trees to the left are blurry but should be sharp.

Under refinement, choose focus

As you paint on the image, ypou can paint the areas that you want more in focus, or more out of focus.

See how the trees on the left are nice and sharp like they should be now.

If you look at the presets, you’ll see that there are new Adaptive presets for the blur. Adaptive means the ai adapts for each photo. Basically selecting the unique subject in each photo and then applying the preset blurs and settings.

Content Credentials

You can embed Content Credentials into the photo if you like. This is a way to protect you are the creator, as well as apply a layer of safety to viewers who need to know if ai was used on an image. It helps protect from deep fakes and reveals synthetic media.

Click the export button

You’ll see in the export panel, Content Credentials. Currently this is only working on jpg.

Producer, lets you attach your name. Connected Accounts, lets you link some of your social media accounts.

Edits and activity, embed any known edits or ai information.

You can store just locally and embed the data into the image, or into the cloud where the data will be attached to the image and recognized, even if its stripped locally. I haven’t tested the latter. Or you can use both options.

Save the image.

You can check any image on the Content Credentials Cloud. https://Contentcredentials.org/verify

You can test your image by dragging it into the website.

It will provide info on the image and also reveal if any editing has happened. Here i says ACR was used and ai was used.

More software and Hardware companies are building in Content Credentials as part of the CAI. Content Authenticity Initiative. Some of the partners include Adobe, Canon, Nikon, Leica, Getty, Microsoft, Nvidia, Qualcomm, arm, Reuters, universal pictures, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and many, many more.

Eventually all image will be part of this and contain a pin that people can use to check if the image is real or not. Solving one of the big fears about ai generated content.

I hope this was a useful tutorial for you.

Great to see you here at the CAFE

Colin

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Lets take a deeper look into Generative Remove in Lightroom Classic. It works exactly the same in Camera Raw.

If you can’t upgrade Lightroom see this

Here is a photo with lots of extra people in it. Let’s remove them.

Object aware

Turn on Generative ai and Object aware from the Remove panel.

Scribble select the man in the corner

Because Object aware is on, the scribble select becomes a nice selection. You want to go over the boundaries a little with Gen remove.

When you apply, it removes the man nicely

Skip the Refine Panel

Scribble select while holding down the Ctrl/Cmd key to skip Refine

Now this man is instantly removed.

Because the resolution is 1024 x 1024 larger removals will leave a softer background. (1024 x 1024 is 3.5 inches at 300ppi)

You can use the stamp tool to fix the softer patch area, this is a lot easier now the ai removal has already taken place.

Variations

For the next removal, select the group of people in the left. Notice a potential problem; the back half of the dog os behind the group. What will happen?

Generative Remove, removes the people and generates the back half of the dog. So it is capable of generating things.

Click the variations button to cycle between 3 variations.

Choose “Refresh” if you don’t like any of the variations. Unlike Photoshop, Lightroom only holds 3 variations at a time. You can choose the history panel and access the other variations though.

Multiple ai patches at once

Notice the photo has raindrops on the lens. This would have rendered the photo useless in the past. With Generative Remove, we can now save the photo.

Turn off Object aware for this task

Use the [ and ] bracket keys to adjust the size of the brush.

Apply the brush to both rain drops.

Notice they are nicely removed.

If you look, you will see that 2 pins have been created. Each of the spots has aplied its own instance of Generative Remove. This means that each spot gets its own variations, as well as not sharing a large area with one fill which will limit the resolution.

Each spot has its own 3 variations to choose from.

Generative ai and Masks

Lets remove these people from an image that has already been editing with masks.

Select the people and apply the Generative Remove tool

Notice the people are removed, but it leaves behind artifacts.

This is because Gen Remove is working off the original image pixels.

The solution to to apply Generative remove at the beginning of the workflow.

If you have images that you already used masks on, not problem.

Click the ellipses menu and choose Update al masks.

The mask updates and now it looks nice.

I hope you enjoyed this deeper look in the new Generative Remove in Lightroom.

For more on the new features in this release (13.3) check out this tutorial

Great to see you here at the CAFE

Colin

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This tutorial in an overview of the newest Lightroom Classic features released this morning by Adobe. This tutorial shows you how to use the main new features in classic. Remember these are also in ACR, with the exception of Sony Tethered shooting. I’ll make more tutorials in the future and go more in depth on the relevant features.

Generative Remove (All Lightroom versions /Adobe Camera RAW)

If you go to the remove panel and choose the eraser option, you’ll see a box that says generative ai. The remove tool with use Generative fill when you have this option on. With it off, you can still use the tool in the old way. In the old way, it works well for smaller areas and doesn’t need cloud access.

Let’s test out Generative AI remove.

Paint over an area to remove. I’m removing the light stand.

The red shows the selected area. We have Object aware on, so it also detects the object we want to select, so your selections can be rough.

Once you paint, you will get the refinement, where you can add or remove brush strokes. (Hold Ctrl/Cmd key while applying to skip this option).

I added a little bit to the bottom left of the light stand.

Click the apply button in the remove panel to apply the Generative ai

As you can see, it did a superb job.

Click on Variations to cycle through 3 variations, just like Gen fill in Photoshop.

Just to test how well this works, let’s select our model. No, in real-life, we wouldn’t generally be removing the model, but this is a test, just to see if it can.

Click apply

Look at that. Pretty amazing!

Tethered Capture with Sony Cameras

I feel like hell froze over. Yes, we now have Sony cameras joining Canon and Nikon! Very unexpected (Sony are very tight on their APIs). And yet, very cool. See the Adobe sire for the supported cameras, just the newest ones right now.

I am using a Sony Alpha 1 (A1) to test this feature.

How to set up Sony Alpha cameras for Lightroom Tethered shooting

There are some settings you need to change on the camera for this to work.

Network>Smartphone Connect>Smartphone Connection>OFF

Network>Transfer/Remote>PC Remote Function>Connect Method>USB

Network>Transfer/Remote>PC Remote Function>PC Remote>ON

Once the camera is setup, plug in the USB-C cable from the camera to your computer.

Choose File>Tethered Capture>Start Tethered Capture

Start the tethered shoot

Choose the Session name and the location where the images will be saved.

Click ok

When your camera is detected, you’ll see a tether bar where you can change the settings and remote shoot by clicking the shutter button. You can, of course change the settings and shoot directly from the camera too.

If you click Live, a window will open where you get a live view from the camera.

From what I experienced, the shooting speed was faster than I expected, and very snappy transfer of the 50mp images, with very little lag. I did notice a but more lag when using the onscreen shutter button vs the physical shutter button on the camera. Another nice surprise, if I turned the camera off, I was able to reconnect without restarting the tether session. something I was not able to do with a Canon camera while tethered to Lightroom. I hope these newly updated settings in tethered shooting make it to Canon and Nikon too.

Updated Lens Blur

I’m not going to go too in-depth with Lens blur here because I already have a detailed tutorial on it here. 

We will touch on its functionality and then focus on the new features. Lens Blur is no longer an Early Access, it’s a finished feature now.

When you click on apply, Lightroom detects the subject and builds a depth map. It uses this to blur the background, or the foreground if you prefer. If there is already a depth map (smartphone shot in portrait mode), Lightroom will use this.

Turn on Visualize depth to see the depth map.

Darker colors are further away from the viewer, whereas lighter colors are closer.

The focal range now has Near and Far labels on the slider, as well as numbers. The bar on the left was added by me as a way to show the depth map..

Use the sliders (shown on the video, and the linked tutorial) to refine your depth map and adjust your bokeh and blur.

Syncing Lens Blur

The Lens blur can now be included in presets. These are called adaptive presets, because they will automatically adapt for the image and choose a unique subject for each and apply the preset settings.

When you copy the settings (Copy settings or Sync) you will see Lens Blur is now included.

Let’s choose a different photo of the cab in NYC.

Let’s paste the settings

Notice how the background is now blurred

The area in the window is missed.

You can easily modify the Lens blur settings after a preset has been used, or you copy or sync settings.

Simply go to lens blur, choose the blur refinement brush and paint in the wood to include it.

Alright!

Other features include a “Exported” label. This works in the attributes filter, in Smart Collections and collection that allow you to filter images by those that have been previously exported. There is also an alt tag and description filed added to the meta data.

Let me know in the Comments, which features you would like to see me go deeper into.

I hope this was useful!

Colin

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Have you ever wondered how to use the Color grading tool inside Lightroom and Adobe Camera Raw? Here is your complete guide to all the settings in the Color Grade tool in Lightroom and ACR.

This isn’t a tutorial on color theory, it is a tutorial on how to get the best color grading results using this tool and it covers 2 important sliders that are often overlooked.

You can find the color Grade tool in Lightroom (v10 2021 and newer) under the develop module. I’ll start with an explination of the settings, then we will apply them to 3 images to show how to work highlights, shadows and add a cinematic color grade to photos.

You will also find it under Filter>Camera RAW in Photoshop 2021 and newer.

If you want a larger view of the color wheels, click the Shadows, midtone or highlights buttons.

Shadow, Highlight and Midtones

Here I created a gray and color scale so you can see the effects of the adjustments. This part is best viewed in the video at the top.

As we move the shadows, notice how it affectsa the left side of the grayscale bar as well as the blacks in the image.

The highlights shifts the left side of the scale and the bright parts of the image.

Midtones affects the mids in the image, see the middle of the grayscale bar.

Hue, Saturation and Luminance

Drag around the circle (wheel) to change the color (Hue).
Drag towards the edges of the wheel to increase saturation (amount of color). Drag towards center to reduce the saturation.
Drag the Luminance slider to increase/decrease brightness.

Tips for using Color Grade

Hold down Ctrl/Cmd to constrain adjustments to Hue only

Shift key constrains to Saturation only without changing hue

The Alt/Option key allows you to make fine adjustments as it slows down your movements.

Balance

The balance slider will favor a color and apply the tint to all the ranges in the image

Balance to the left will favor the Shadow tone (If you have changes it, otherwise it will have no effect).

Move Balance to the right to favor the color on the Highlight wheel

If blending is in the middle, it favors the midtone wheel. The midtones are also influenced by the shadow and highlight colors.

Blending

The blending slider will separate the colors in the regions, or blend then together.

Move the Blending slider to the left and the colors are more separated and contained to their respective regions.

As the slider is pushed to the right, the colors are now distributed through the other tones and blend with each other more.

Color Grading Highlights (Blending use case)

Remember this is a Color grade, not a color correction. You should do color color correction first, grading is to add some style.

Let’s color grade the highlights on this photo I shot in Maui Hawaii.

Add a little pink to the highlights

Add a little blue to the shadows (a very common color grade move).

See how the color is present in the highlight/shadows regions, but it’s very separated and doesn’t blend much.

As we move the blending to the right, the colors blend together much better. See the highlights on the water.

Experiment with the Balance as well

Color Grading Shadows

Here is a photo, that has lots of shadows.

It can look nice to add a little greenish tint to the shadows to add a bit of style

Or we could add a little blue.

(Optional) Sometimes when you add some color in the shadows and midtones, you will need to reduce the saturation a little bit to keep skin tones more natural.

Cinematic color

Lets make a cinematic color grade

here is the starting photo

The most common look is the Teal and orange, or blue and orange color grade, also known as the Blockbuster look. This is achieved by adding teal or blue to shadows and orange to highlights.

Notice the Luminance in the shadows and highlights. I have boosted the darks in the shadows and increased brightness in highlights to add contrast punch.

Let’s do another vintage period color grade, that I enjoy.

Add some greens into the shadows.

Adding yellow to the highlights adds a nice look.

Usually this is accompanied by reducing the saturation somewhat

Hopefully this tutorial has given you some insight into this very powerful tool in Lightroom and camera raw.

If you are getting value from my tutorials, please tell your friends about PhotoshopCAFE and share them on social media.

Great to see you here at the CAFE

Colin

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Continuing on my deep dive series into the different settings in Lightroom and Adobe Camera RAW (The adjustments on both are identical). This time I break down Texture, Clarity and Dehaze. They aren’t the same. I’ll explain what each does, provide the best times to use each on your photos and then we will wrap up by applying all 3 to an image selectively using masks. For previous tutorials in this series, check out Contrast | Shadow/Highlight vs Black/White

Before we dive in, I want to quickly define 2 terms.

Contrast and Frequency in images

Let’s start with contrast. Contrast=The difference between the lightest and darkest pixels in an image.

On the left side of this photo, you will see the darkest and the lightest pixels.

Because there is a large distance between them (on the grayscale), this is known as high contrast.

Look at the right side of the same photo. There aren’t any real blacks.

The difference between the darkest and lightest part is less. This makes a low contrast image.

Here is an example of full contrast, blacks and whites exist in this image. It looks punchy.

An example of a low contrast image. No true blacks or whites. The image appears softer. There isn’t any right and wrong here. Use what works best of each photo.

Frequency. The details in an image

Max Wendt from Adobe said it the best I’ve heard it. High frequency is the details, mid frequency is the features, while low frequency are the areas.

All that means, areas of fine detail are known as high frequency and areas that have little detail are known as low frequency. Most images contain all the different frequencies.

Finding the Texture, Contrast and Dehaze sliders

Both Camera Raw in Photoshop and all the Lightrooms have these 3 sliders.

In LIghtroom Classic they are under the presence portion of the adjustments panel

In Photoshop, choose filter>Camera RAW

You will find them under the Effects panel. When you are in masks in Lightroom and ACR, they are called Effects.

Clarity

Time to demonstrate the 3 sliders and explain them.

I will use this chart on all 3 of the adjustments so you can see how it effects different parts of an image. This isn’r a standard chart, I made it myself for testing purposes.

This is the chart with no adjustments for your reference.

When we increase the clarity, you will notice the image looks sharper and more punchy.

Clarity adjusts the contrast in the midtones of the image (Grays). It doesn’t really affect blacks ands whites as much as midtones. It also adjusts the colors and makes them appear muddy. It adds a grunge to the image at higher settings.

Because of this, it makes details pop.

How clarity works.

Clarity works in a similar way as unsharp mask in Photoshop.

Choose Filter>Sharpen>Unsharp mask

When cranked up too high you can clearly see whats happening. It adds a halo around edges and details. This gives the appearance of sharpening.

Clarity is useful for bringing out details in an image.

Here you can see the details on Chrystal’s shirt as well as the raygun. But be careful, this effect is not flattering on skin. We will address this at the end where we use a brush to apply clarity.

When Clarity first came out, it was widely used as an cartoonish effect known as the Grunge look or the fake HDR look in an attempt to emulate the work of photographer Dave Hill. (Trend followers might not have been aware of Dave Hill by the time it became mainstream, poor Dave).

While it still has it’s place for certain effects (I have a client that loves it, and forces me to use it often under protest), I would suggest against overusing this look unless you are after this particular effect. (I show how to do it on the video at the top, but essentially you crank Clarity, highlights and shadows to the maximum setting).

Another place where Clarity is great is with landscape photos.

Clarity can really bring out details in things like rocks.

Dehaze

Dehaze works mostly on Low frequency areas on an image. It was designed to cut through fog, smog and glare. Dehaze boosts low frequency contrast and saturates the colors.

Notice how it doesn’t really affect the light parts of the image when added. But it really boosts the contrast in the rest of the image. This works well for things like skies as well as cutting through glare. It’s like cleaning a dirty window.

If used in the opposite direction, dehaze can be used to add fog.

Dehaze works well on areas like the waterfall that is losing detail due to the mist.

Remember, the primary goal here isn’t to fix a photo, but to demonstrate what these tools do. (I say this because, someone will say “the waterfall looked better before” and they might be right according to their subjective tastes. while others will prefer the “after” effect. It doesn’t matter, the point is to observe what these tools do so you can use them on totally different images.. your images. I look forward to the day when I don’t have to preface these obvious things, but photographers…).

Here you can see Dehaze affects the washed out area the most. While the whole image is affected, its not as much as the area of low contrast.

If we push the dehaze to the left, it will actually introduce haze.

Dehaze on skies

I love to use dehaze on skies and clouds.

See how it pops the details on the clouds.

But be aware, dehaze also boosts saturation

If we reduce saturation afterwards, we can enjoy the detail of Dehaze without over saturating the colors.

Texture

The newest of the three Presence sliders is Texture. This is actually my choice in most cases and has largely replaced clarity in my personal workflow.

Texture Increases medium frequency contrast and doesn’t affect color too much (because its higher frequency than sharpening, it doesn’t exaggerate noise as much,

See how the details are showing better, but the color isn’t affected.

Texture was originally created by Adobe as a way to soften skin without removing the fine details like pores.

A subtle amount of negative texture can quickly make skin look great without making it look fake. Go too far and it will become plastic looking.

Originally designed to reduce texture, Adobe wondered what would happen if they allowed it to increase texture. What they go was an excellent sharpening effect that pops the textures in images.

Here is an image with texture applied. It brings out the gravel and texture of the road.

Texture works similar to sharpening, but sharpening is applied to finer details than texture.

Here the image has sharpening applied but no texture. See the finer details. This also enhances noise grain if any is present in the image.

The ideal mix is a bit of sharpening and a bit of texture.

Applying Texture, Clarity and Dehaze locally with a Mask brush.

Now for the holy grail. This is how I like to use these 3 adjustments.

Here is the before image. Remember, the goal is to pop the details as a demonstration.

Lets create a mask brush

Click on the mask icon

choose brush

Apply the brush to the low contrast area.

Increase the Dehaze.

Lower the saturation so we are affecting the details and not the color.

Continue to paint on the areas of the image that you want to cut through haze.

Add a second mask for Clarity.

Click> Create New Mask and choose brush

Add some clarity.

Paint over the bamboo and the leaves on the left to pop the details. You cam also paint over some of the areas we app;ied dehaze and see how combining these reveals a lot of detail. (The video at the top of the page shows this very well).

Add a third brush.

Increase texture

Paint over the ground and details in the leaves on the left. Even add a little texture to the model.

Texture is my go to tool for a lot of detail, but also combine it with sharpening.

Here is the image before adjustments

And here is is after only applying the 3 tools (and a lowering of saturation on the dehaze).

This tutorial was to demonstrate Texture, Clarity and dehaze, You would use other tools on your image as well of course. “What about contrast?”  you may ask. That is covered in it’s own tutorial here. Contrast | and Shadow/Highlight vs Black/White

If you found this tutorial interesting, then maybe you are ready for my comprehensive course on Lightroom Classic or Camera Raw. I also recently released a tutorial on Masks in Lightroom and Camera RAW here.

For the next few days you can use this code ACRLR15 to save 15% of these valuable master classes/courses. (You won’t see the fake 97% discounts here, because we never artificially inflate the prices of our courses, they have been some of the best value courses available for 20 years).

Thanks for checking this out

Colin

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The post Texture, Clarity and Dehaze in Lightroom + ACR explained. The Ultimate Comparision appeared first on PhotoshopCAFE.

This tutorial focuses on the Tone adjustments in Lightroom and ACR. These are the most important settings to begin editing your images.

This simple tutorial shows you an effective way to prepare your photos for further enhancement. It gives you a solid base of quality image details. (In many cases this is all you will need).

This tutorial works with Lightroom Classic, Lightroom and Adobe Camera RAW

A quick tip to start.

If you are using Lightroom, drag the develop panel to the left to widern the panel and elongate the sliders. See the red )original length) thia gives u almost 2x the amount of control.

Recover details

Here is the original image showing a loss of detail in the bight areas in the sky and on the left of the image.

We will use the Tone panel and this is the order I use it.

First, we want to reveal as much detail in the highlights and shadows as we need.

Drag the highlight slider to the left to reveal details in the sky. (Dehaze also reveals the details, but it also increases contrast, so it shouldn’t be used yet.)

If you still need more details, (depends on the image) reduce the exposure slightly.

I like to slightly reduce the contrast slider to open up more detail (See this tutorial on Contrast to see why)

Lets reveal detail in the shadows (lower right of the image)

Slide the Shadow slider to the right.

Use the Shadow and the highlight sliders as recovery sliders. Always more the Shadows to the right

And always push the highlights to the left.

Note: The amount you move these will vary from image to image and from camera to camera. These are shot on a drone with low dynamic range files, so they are pushed more aggressively that I would need to move them on camera like the Sony A1 for example.

Now we have opened up the details in the image. Next we want to add some punch.

The Whites and Blacks are used to add the contrast back into the image with minimum loss of details.

Lets do the whites first.

Hold down the Alt/Option key as you move the whites. You will see clipping indications on the screen. This lets us know if we have gone too far and lost highlight details.

Move the whites to the right to clean up milky areas in the highlights. This image is already bright, so it doesn’t need much.

Move the blacks to the left to add punch to the shadows. (Hold down alt/Option to see clipping too).

At this point, you can go on and use other tools including curves and Presence. This tutorial is focusing on the tone adjustments and I hope this helps you get to a good start point in getting better edits!

Check out this companion tutorial on Contrast vs Whites/Blacks that fits right in with this tutorial.

Great to see you at the CAFE

Colin

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The post Tone Panel, most important settings in Lightroom and Adobe Camera RAW appeared first on PhotoshopCAFE.

Here is a photo which has a blue light hitting one side. You can also see issues where the strands of hair are casting a different colored shadow. This is an especially tricky image because it also has a strange highlight on the other cheek that looks like a birth mark. we can easily fix all of this using the new Point Color tool.

Choose filter>Camera Raw (Or open in Lightroom, it works identical. Point color in Lightroom tutorial)

Scroll down to the Color Mixer section and click on point color.

The first thing we do is sample a color with the eyedropper.

Click on the blue color with the eyedropper.

Notice it adds a colored swatch

The first thing we will do, is refine the area we are targeting.

If the tools aren’t showing under Range, click the little triangle.

Hold down Alt/Option as you move the sliders and you can visualize the are you are selecting.

The range determines how close to the exact sampled color will be included.

Use the Hue, Saturation and Luminance range to further refine the selection based on color(Hue), how much color (Saturation) and lightness (Luminance). (The Hue/Saturation in Photoshop can select by hue only).

Once you have selected you color, its time to change it with the color swatches, or the Hue, Saturation and Luminance sliders.

Change the Hue in to match the color

Adjust saturation and luminance to match the rest of the image. Notice even the shadow on her hair looks correct now.

There is still the problem with the harsh shadow on the other cheek.

Once again, grab the eyedropper.

Click on the shadow color, notice you see a second color. You can add up to 8.

In the same way, make adjustments until it matches.

If you want to reduce the transition area, we can use the healing brush. Here is how.

Choose the healing brush tool

Select a small sized, feathered soft setting

Drag over the transition area.

and the healing brush fixes it.

Here are the before and after images for you to look at.

I hope you found this tutorial useful. Drop a comment and say hi!

Watch the video at the top and subscribe to our YouTube channel for lots more free Photoshop tutorials.

Great to see you here at the CAFE

Colin

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The post Remove Color shadows from a face with Point Color in Photoshop appeared first on PhotoshopCAFE.