Lessons
Day 1
1Pre-Show Banter
07:02 29:00 am - Introduction: Why Lightroom®?
13:23 3The Lightroom Library Catalog
16:42 4Staying Organized
15:00 5Backing Up Your Library
11:12 6Importing Your Photos
34:20 7Preferences & Settings
28:57Settings Q&A
10:49 9Reorganizing Files and Folders
33:25 10Using Views and Labels to Evaluate Photos
45:00 11Filtering and Stacking Photos
13:37 12Assigning and Managing Keywords
31:42 13Keywording Q&A
12:43 14The Metadata Panel
14:38 15Searching for Photos
20:54 16Creating a Collection
15:25Day 2
17Day 2 Pre-Show Banter
09:09 18The Map Module: Assigning Locations
43:33 19The Develop Module
11:37 20Fixing Your Photos: Histograms and Cropping
22:02 21Fixing Your Photos: Spot Removal Tool
33:25 2211:30 am - Upgrading to Lightroom® 4
12:14 2311:45 am - Basic Developing in Lightroom® 3 & 4
21:29 24Basic Developing Part 2
19:43 25Color Adjustments
23:36 26Tone Curve Panel
18:59 27Making Subtle Adjustments
13:22 28Lens Corrections
10:54 29Local Adjustments: Partial B&W
13:03 30Local Adjustments: Portrait Touch Up
26:05 31Additional Local Adjustments
09:55 32Graduated Filter
24:24 33Bonus: Day 3 Preview
01:19Day 3
34Day 3 Pre-Show Banter
12:44 35Bonus: Recap of the Develop Module
08:44 36Virtual Copies
08:58 37B&W and Creative Effects
20:50 38Noise Reduction
12:23 39Sharpening
18:33 40Sharpening for Portraits
08:46 41Syncing Changes to Multiple Photos
17:53 42Autosync
21:09 43Creating and Using Presets
15:53 4411:45 am - Lightroom® and Photoshop
22:49 45Sharing Your Work
08:42 46Exporting for Web
16:59 47Exporting for Print
26:06 48Workflow Recap
40:50 49Thanks + Credits
07:02 503:00 pm - Lightroom® 4: Publishing
20:52 513:30 pm - Lightroom® 4: Video Editing
12:38 523:45 pm - Lightroom® 4: Book Module
19:36Lesson Info
Noise Reduction
We do have some fine detail to talk about, though, and that's in fact, using the detail panel now, the detail panel is used for sharpening and noise reduction, So I want to talk about these. But I do want to say that particularly when I get into the conversation on sharpening that I realized that there's a lot of detail in here, meaning that it could be a little bit of overload for beginners. So I do have some recommendations. You know, after I go through all the explanations, I'll have some recommendations to kind of make it manageable for those that, you know, maybe maybe hitting overload. Let's start, though, with this photo here that I'm gonna click on a snapshot here that I created that has my 2000 and 12 work that I've done on this photo. And if I zoom in on this photo, let me just, uh, go back in time to show you this is before any work had been done at all. So the foreground is very much under exposed. In fact, I I took several photographs and was playing to use Photoshop to me...
rge the exposures together to have a great exposure everywhere. But we can do a tremendous amount here in light room with just one photo. It's no substitute for HDR, but the problem that we have if I zoom in is that we have a lot of noise in this photo. If you under expose your shadows collapses, filmstrip. If you under exposed the shadows, this is what you're gonna find. If you brighten up the shadows, you never need to brighten them up. You might not notice it. Even in the mid tones. There is noise in here and believe it or not, um, some noise reduction, I think now I guess I'm running that. Okay, so in the midterms, we have some noise and in the shadows we have a ton of noise. So what can we do about this? That's where the detail panel comes in. And this is true for both light room three and light room, for we have noise reduction sliders here Now, by default lie. Trump has already done some noise reduction. It's already done 25 of noise reduction. If you have a raw file, light room automatically assumes you need 25 of color noise reduction. And for most general exposures that I take that 25 is perfect. I don't continue to see color noise. Now, in this sofa here, I'm seeing primarily what I would call grain or luminous noise. So it doesn't have odd colors to it. But down here in the shadows, I've got colored specks of noise. If I slide the color noise reduction slider to zero, you'll see that before it did any, we had a tremendous amount, right? So it had already taken out some. So it looks pretty bad now, will it? Will we ever be able to get it to look as good as it would if we took a proper exposure for that area? No, but the noise reduction sliders are still powerful in a photo like this. It's got a lot of noise in some areas and not so much noise in other areas. What I would do in the detail panel here is focused on the average areas. So I'm not gonna focus on the shadows. I'm gonna focus up here in the sofa. I'm gonna reset this color noise reduction slider to go back to the default and see if that's enough color noise reduction. Now I'm still seeing a bit here in the pillow that I believe is color noise. So I'm gonna slide this up, and I'm gonna test myself by sliding it all the way. So it is removing that blue. So I know that that was valuable. So then I'll simply back off to get to a point where I've gotten rid of that noise without, without going further than I need to next, I'm still seeing the grain. So net. At this point, I would go to the loo minutes, noise reduction slider. So back in here, click on the luminous noise reduction slider sliding too far and looks like we've got either user error or we've got a lag going on. Here, let me check something There we go way have a lag going on Mbesuma. And so you can see it. See it at home. So no luminous noise reduction. Okay, so no loan minutes. Noise reduction. I'm zoomed into, like, 200%. If I go too far and this is gonna take a second for to do, there's a lag. It's gonna look like a painting. I've gotten rid of all of the detail in the photo so that again, it's a balancing act. Do you want to go far enough to get rid of the noise, or at least to make it acceptable to you? You don't have to get rid of all the noise, but without turning it into a painting. So let's go halfway here and I'm zoomed in too far, meaning I'm zoomed in more than 1 to 1. So I would seeing noise that I wouldn't see in a printed photo so fifties not quite enough. I'll go up a little bit more now. Once I have it acceptable for the average areas, I would do any further noise reduction meaning down here in the side of the sofa in the adjustment brush. So if you have light room for you now, have local noise reduction light room three. You would just do the best that you could do here in the detail panel, given that you can vary the amount across the photo, but I'll zoom out a bit more and I will go into the adjustment brush. This time, I'm going to remember to double click on the word effect and right here I've got noise reduction slider. I've got a nursery. So I'm gonna go ahead and go with positive noise reduction. And I can simply paint on the side of the sofa here and let me go ahead and go down to the switch here of the bottom of the adjustment brush. And I'm seeing nothing happened. OK, so when I see nothing happened with the adjustment brush, I make sure my flow is at 100. I make sure my density was 100. I slide the slider to the extreme, hit the switch on and off. Okay, so I am seeing more effect. I've actually smoothed it out so much. I think I applied so much global noise reduction that when I got to the adjustment brush, frankly, I don't think I really needed anymore so we can go ahead and leave it at this. But so set your noise reduction globally for the mid tones or for the average values in the photo. And if you in fact, do you need anymore which it looked like I didn't at that point you would use the adjustment brush to paint an additional noise reduction in the shadows. Questions? Yeah, Question from Damien Vines. Should you do noise reduction before sharpening and Damien's and see Drew Willy Washington. I would do noise reduction before sharpening, So I think that's that's a great question. Nice reduction can soften your photo. Okay, now, that's one reason why you don't want to do any more noise reduction than you have to, because again, soften the photo. So it's best to make those decisions first and then get back whatever you can with sharpening, I might go into sharpening and just a bit here. Yeah, yeah, underneath both the ruminants and color, there's this detail slider. I think they're both set the by default with Right. So let me go ahead and go back down to the detail panel here and let me see. I guess we use use this photo here. So all zoo man space bar to click and drag now sometimes. Well, let's actually use the We had a face with a lot of noise that my might work better, but let's let's see if this illustration will will work for this. So when you're using heavy duty noise reduction like I mentioned, you can start turning it into a painting in your battle to get rid of the noise. So in the side of the couch here, even you can start to lose the texture of the underlying material. So when I'm doing heavy duty noise reduction, I'll then turn to the detail in the contrast sliders to try to pull back some of the underlying texture. And I'm usually turning to the contrast lighter to do that. But the detail slider can also be used to kind of kind of walk that fine line. So the being moved this up get rid of the adjustment brush, and what I want to do before I do this is I want to look at the before and after on this pillow based on how much noise reduction I have going on. So I'm gonna turn this switch on and off, so that's off. But it's there's a little bit of a lack here. Okay, off And by the way, the release candidate for light room 4.1 is out. It's supposed to address some of these performance issues we've actually had. This is the first time we've had any performance issues at all, but that is out on Adobe Labs. If you are having performance issues with light from four point. Oh, So the release candidate is put out to the public. It's it's they're still asking people to test it once it's fully tested than the official light from 4.1 will come out, and that will be a free update. Okay, so I'm gonna go ahead and come down to the noise reduction slider, and I'm gonna bring the detail up. I'm gonna bring it up all the way and see if we can see some difference here. So down. You know, what I'm gonna have to do to address this question effectively is find a better example. Um, and come back to it. Okay. Another question from the chat room from J. Law Law. What is the difference between the two details lighters? So the detail one is for luminous noise and what is for color noise. So if you're doing heavy duty color noise reduction and you're trying to pull back some of the detail from the underlying surface because of that work, you'll use the detail slider underneath the color noise reduction slider. Otherwise, you use the detail slider under the luminous noise reduction slider. And again, I'll look for my examples that I have here and see if I have a better example. If you have, If you have it home. A photo. A portrait with a lot of noise in it. You'll see that you start to soften out the skin so much that you lose the texture of the face and you'll see is you slide up that contrast slider, that you can bring back that normal texture. Another question from Damien Vines is the adjust. When you're in the adjustment brush for noise reduction, Is that using the reduction settings that you have chosen below? Or is there some preset, luminous and color settings? They are linked, so you are using the settings from the detail panel. Cool. Yep.
Class Materials
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Ratings and Reviews
Miguel Lecuyer
Great workshop! New to Lightroom and found it very helpful. Saved me a couple hundred dollars and time by not taking an evening LR class. Creative Live workshops match my learning style perfectly. Laura is awesome! My only complaint is maybe Laura can use a PC next time which is what she seems more comfortable using. Her shortcut mix-ups on a Mac were making me a bit dizzy :)
a Creativelive Student
I cannot express enough how impressed I was with Laura and this class. I learned more in the 3 days of this workshop than I did in all 6 weeks of a class I took online that cost three times as much. I left not only impressed by the class but MOST importantly - refreshed and energized to put my new knowledge to use! Thank you for that!!!
a Creativelive Student
Excellent workshop bar none. I learned more about Lightroom than I did from any other tutorial/workshp that I previously encountered. Thanks Laura!