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Quick Image Enhancements Using Lightroom and Capture One

Lesson 23 from: Fine Art Landscape and Travel Photography

Peter Eastway, Tony Hewitt

Quick Image Enhancements Using Lightroom and Capture One

Lesson 23 from: Fine Art Landscape and Travel Photography

Peter Eastway, Tony Hewitt

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Lesson Info

23. Quick Image Enhancements Using Lightroom and Capture One

Lessons

Class Trailer
1

Overview of Fine Art Landscape and Travel Photography

08:44
2

Our Passion For Photography

07:38
3

Looking For The Next Great Photo

19:05
4

Peter and Tony's Photography

18:35
5

What is a Landscape?

15:48
6

Considering Color: What is Real?

13:16
7

Shooting Travel Photography: Exotic Locations

13:33
8

Preparing for a Travel Shoot: Research

16:35

Lesson Info

Quick Image Enhancements Using Lightroom and Capture One

I know a lot of people look at our work and think wow our cameras must be great, and they are, but it really is the post production that we make. Hold up, hold up Did I say something wrong? Are you telling me that it doesn't come out of your camera looking like that? No, not always. Not always. All this time I've been sitting there at night working on my pictures saying how do I get them to look like this way? It is true that the camera manufacturer's are adding more and more tricks and techniques to improve the files, because they acknowledge like we do that you can't always get absolutely everything in a single exposure. So we're gonna show you what we do. Good idea! It's all about how much and where and why you do the pushing. And yesterday we talked about our thought process, because with all these amazing tools, Photoshop Lightroom, Adobe Camera Raw if you're using that, in Photoshop, and Capture One. Capture One The processes are there, the tools are there, but ...

it still comes down to what's behind the camera, it comes down to us to make those changes. You know, I was just thinking you said it's about where you push, and that answers a lot of questions for me, because you know when we go to those locations in the early morning and I find myself set up and it's just perfect, you know, I'm waiting for the light, and you come along and you go like that and you take my spot, that's the pushing that put you in the right spot to get the best shot, is that what you mean? It's taken him 20 years to work this out! (laughing) Fast learner! But he is Australian. No seriously, one of the things that I'm really excited about sharing today, Peter, is that often we start off with a photo that looks pretty flat and boring sometimes to be honest, and in my case sometimes underexposed and sometimes we do that deliberately, and other times, you know, we talked yesterday about aerial, and often you push to take your cameras to a limit maybe beyond what they're supposed to be. So you expose, you go, I gotta keep my shutter speed up, my eye says where it wanna go, I'm gonna underexpose. As you said, with software and post productions sometimes we can get more out of it than we think we can. Yeah, I think that when we're using our camera it's all about capturing the pixels. The better quality pixels that you can get, the better you can make your photographs look later on in post-production. And people say, well, isn't a pixel a pixel? And what I mean is the closer you can get to perfect exposure, the closer you can get to perfect sharpness and focus and all that sort of stuff, it makes the next step that much easier. So when you see those amazing photographs and you see them improved with post production, they can only be improved so far if you-- Based on what you started with. Exactly. Thank you. You gotta get all that information in the cam first, don't you? So what we're going to try and do this morning, in this session, is go through both Lightroom and Capture One. Now, I'm going to be driving the software, I'm not actually a Lightroom expert. So when you see me make a few mistakes, you can laugh for around about 30 seconds to yourself quietly, and then would you let me know what I've done wrong because otherwise I'm gonna look bad on television. I was involved with Lightroom 2, there was a group of photographers invited from all around the world to go down to Tasmania, and I understand that a few of the photographers thought they were going to Tanzania, as opposed to Tasmania, but it is a slight little place, it's a little place part of Australia. From here they're a long way. And a group of Adobe engineers also, and we all got together for a week and we took photos, the engineers watched us work, we talked to the engineers to understand how Lightroom worked, and I'm enamored with Lightroom. It is a most amazing program. So many techniques and features have been added since I was involved with it. But I also use Capture One, which is for the phase one cameras that I use and Lightroom processed phase one files, but not as well as Capture One. And Capture One also processes all other files. Sony, Nikon, Cannon, Fuji, the lot. And what I think that you need to take out of a raw processing engine is the image quality. So to me, it doesn't matter what number of features you've got on either platforms, the only thing that I'm looking at at the end of the day is the quality of the file. Now for me, when we're in Capture One, I like the way it has slightly more color, slightly more contrast. Whereas I know some of my friends who are perhaps small portrait and wedding orientated they like the way Lightroom, or Adobe Camera Raw, does a little bit softer, a little bit more pastel. That's why my adjectives, but they're portrait photographers and so maybe that's more suited to their style of photography. So I'm not advocating one or the other, I'll let you guys ... you can download the software, and you can compare them side by side on the screen, and work out what works for you and what you like. Because it really is just about like. Both are perfect pieces of software. Yeah, and as you said, some people will use Lightroom because it sort of blends in with Photoshop a little bit easier if they're going to use both. But one of the things I'd like people to take away as well is that we all can be seduced into thinking that until you know everything, you don't wanna do anything. And so many people are afraid of using Lightroom, of using Capture One, using Photoshop, because they don't know enough. Well guess what? You never will! You know, like, as long as we've been doing it I still feel like, I don't really know that much, Peter, you know so hopefully nobody calls me out on it. But the reality is if you produce the work using three tools and there's 43,000 tools you can use, don't worry about the other 42,997. That was pretty quick maths! You only need those three. And then as you go along you might think what does this one do? And you start adding to your repertoire. So, hopefully we can show people who have basic knowledge of Lightroom and Capture One maybe, as well as those that have got advanced knowledge on both those and maybe Photoshop, so I'm looking forward to what we're gonna do. Okay, so, can I just say one more thing? The idea of this segment is to show you that you don't need to go to Photoshop if you don't want to, and you can go all the way that we go with a lot of our photos. We do go from Capture One into Photoshop for 99% of our photos I would say. Yes Can I? Yeah? Keep going. Alright, so okay, oh I know I remember, you got a little set so I'm alright. What we wanna show you is that the tools that you now have in Lightroom and Capture One will allow you to do 95% of what we have done on all of the photos that we showed you yesterday, so you don't actually have to go that step. The reason being is because it all happens up here, not necessarily down there.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with Purchase

The Incomplete Guide to Shooting Aerials
The Essential Manual For The Travel Photographer

Ratings and Reviews

Esther Beaton
 

Two Aussie blokes just having fun. Peter and Tone did us proud by representing the spirit of Australia, which is: don’t take anything too seriously. They hit off each other well, in fact, they are the best twosome I’ve ever seen on Creative Live, each giving the other respectful space yet not being shy about taking the micky out of the other guy when appropriate. The whole dialogue was spirited, informative, casual and fun. They also perfectly proved the symbiotic relationship between red wine and beautiful photography.

Swapnil Nevgi
 

Loved the positive energy of this class. Just finished watching it and I would definitely recommend it to someone who wants to take their landscape photography to the next level. This course is not about learning camera or software skills, but learning how to develop conceptualizing and composing skills. How an award winning creatives mind works is a lot more important than how to use camera. This is exactly what I was looking for and very happy with my purchase. Also it was good to see some of their raw vs post processed files to learn how far the professionals like Tony and Peter go with post processing (Something I have always been concerned about). Knowledge about exhibiting was also priceless. Thank you, I have learnt a lot in this class and I am sure it will reflect in my work in future.

Debra
 

This class is fabulous! One of the best on Creative Live. Peter and Tony share so much of themselves and their great art that you can't help but want to pick up your camera and get out to shoot. It was like watching two close friends. Thanks very much for a very enjoyable 2 days of learning and viewing.

Student Work

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