LIGHTROOM 5FOR BIRD PHOTOGRAPHERSBY LEE HOY

WWW.LEEHOYPHOTOGRAPHY.COM

© Lee Hoy 2014

No part of this document may be republished in any format without express written consent of the author. This document may not be copied or shared. Any inquiry into republication or use may be made by contacting the author at leehoyphotography@suddenlink.net

or

Lee Hoy1601 Watercrest DrGeorgetown, TX 78626

All photographs are also copyright of the author.

COPYRIGHT

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The purpose of this booklet is to provide supple-mental information specific to bird photography with regard to importing, organizing, and editing photos in Lightroom 5 (LR5). There are already many outstanding books that are much more comprehensive with regard to all aspects of LR5. The author has read many different manuals on LR and suggests owning and reading at least two different. One of the best is Lightroom 5 Un-masked by Piet Van den Eynde. This may be pur-chased and downloaded at the Craft & Vision website. In addition, I would highly recommend The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5 Book for Digi-tal Photographers by Scott Kelby and/or The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5 Book: The Com-plete Guide for Photographers by Martin Eve-ning. Evening’s book is probably the most de-tailed in nature and it may be best to start with the Kelby book if you are brand new to Light-room.

While these books do an excellent job of teach-ing you how to use Lightroom; yet, there still re-mains a deeper understanding of the what or why behind the how of post-processing a photo. For this purpose, I highly recommend a book The

Digital Negative: Raw Image Processing in Light-room, Camera Raw, and Photoshop by Jeff Schewe.

I do not tend to use keyboard shortcuts except for a select few (primarily command-Z on my Macs for undo). Hence, I will not attempt to re-list what can already be found in virtually every other LR book. Early on I developed a complete disdain for trackpads and the like. I much prefer using a mouse for almost all post processing functions. If you prefer a trackpad or a tablet with pen, then more power to you.

This booklet is a summary of LR tips, tricks, fea-tures, and pointers specifically related to bird photography. My hope is that you will continue to develop your photography skills so that you usually capture the best image in camera and thus very little post-processing is needed. Never-theless, a strong understanding of LR can help you take a good photo to a great photo.

PREFACE

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When it comes to Lightroom 5 (LR 5), there are several features that make it excellent as the choice of digital editing for the bird photographer (or any other type of photography for that matter. I have been using Lightroom regularly since version 3 and the additional features since that version are of tremendous benefit for bird photography. On the following pages, I highlight the top ten features that LR 5 has to offer:

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LIGHTROOM TOP TEN

Barred OwlGranger, TX

#1 - ORGANIZING & EDITING

LR 5’s strength lies in its ability to not only edit photographs but in it’s ability to catalog and organize. There are countless meth-ods and ways of organizing photos for archiving, storing, search-ing, and retrieving. If you can think of a structure for organiza-tion, odds are excellent you can achieve it in LR 5. You can or-ganize by date, trip, species, family or genera, or any other cate-gory you desire.

#2 - NON-DESTRUCTIVE EDITING

In most photo editing software packages, when you make changes to a photo, those changes are saved over the original image and the file is permanently changed. In LR, each edit or adjustment is saved separately from the original file (think of a list of instructions if you will) so that the original image is never al-tered. At any point in time you can reset the “list of instructions” and go back to the original because it hasn’t been modified. The “list of instructions” is referred to as a catalog in LR 5.

TEN BEST THINGS ABOUT LIGHTROOM

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#3 - MULTIPLE OUTPUT OPTIONS

LR offers you the ability to produce prints, photo books, web pages, and slideshows and the stages are very intuitive. Through the LR Publish Services you can output photos directly to services like Facebook, Flickr, Smugmug, and others. Finally, LR’s export feature will let you export photos with very specific settings and even send photos direct to email.

#4 - CUSTOMIZED PRESETS

Presets are one-click settings that let you import, edit, organize, and output photos with one-click of the mouse. The beauty of LR is that not only does it come with some presets, not only can you down-load and/or buy presents from others, but you can even create your very own presets! This is one of the most powerful, time-saving features for the bird photographer. Imagine being able to apply one edit to fifty photos with one-click!

#5 - GEOCODING

One of the features of LR 5 that bird photographers can combine with their love of birding is the use of the Map module. This module lets you use either the geocoordinates captured at the time the im-age is taken or it will let you assign coordinates interactively with Google Maps directly within LR. It is as simple as clicking on one or more photos and dragging them to the map.

#6 - ABILITY TO EXPORT TO OTHER PROGRAMS

One of the features of LR 5 is the power of being able to edit photos directly in other software pack-ages through plug-ins from LR. Whether you want to create a HDR photo in Photomatrix, convert to black-and-white in Nik Silver Efex, or jump to Adobe Photoshop for some advanced adjustments, you can do it all directly from LR.

#7 - SHOOTING IN RAW OPENS TONS OF OPTIONS

The real power of LR becomes most apparent when in shooting in RAW format. With RAW and LR you can adjust white balance, exposure, contrast, color, hue, and even add different types of vignet-ting if you want. As you begin to understand non-destructive editing and shooting in RAW format the possibilities of what you can do are limitless. Of course, we all know it is best to get the shot right in camera first!

#8 - SYNCHRONIZATION OF EDITS/METADATA

Bird photography, perhaps more so than many other types of photography, lends itself to large num-bers of photos at the same time and of the same species. While your camera body may be capable of capturing 7 frames per second, odds are excellent you can’t edit or add metadata that quickly!

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White-crowned SparrowRocky Mountain National Park, CO

Synchronization can make the same edit or edits to a dozen or hun-dreds of photos at the same time. You can also add captions, key-words or metadata to many photos at once.

#9 - LIGHTROOM KEEPS A HISTORY

Every single step of your editing history is maintained by LR and you can see what a photo looked like at any step of the process. This is a great way to see exactly what has been done and how it looked at the time.

#10 - LOCAL ADJUSTMENTS KEEP GETTING BET-TER & BETTER

Version 5 added a much improved clone/heal, a powerful radial filter, and visualize spots to name a few. The visualize spots is a great tool to help you find dust spots on each photo and remove them with the clone/heal tool. The radial filter has all the features of the adjustment tool but lets you use an elliptical shape to apply them. Every version of LR has added improved editing tools that makes Photoshop less and less necessary.

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If you are planning on building a solid house, you must build upon a solid foundation. While this class is focused on using LR for bird photography, I want to make sure you have a solid foundation to build upon. In the following sections we will ad-dress the concept of a catalog, backing up your catalog/photos, and understanding the LR inter-face and preferences. Making sure you start well will help avoid catastrophic pitfalls or mistakes later down the road.

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LIGHTROOM BASICS

MallardFemaleSt. John’s, Newfoundland

By default, when you start LR for the first time you are asked about creating a catalog in a default location. Your probably just clicked ok and a catalog called Lightroom 5 Catalog.lrcat was created. This default location is a subfolder within your Pictures folder.

You are probably wondering what the catalog you created really is? The catalog is the file in which LR stores all the instructions (edits) to each of the photos that you have imported into LR. This file is THE most important file outside of your individual photo files. If you lose or corrupt this file, you will lose all of the edits you have ever made.

THE LIGHTROOM CATALOG

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Tree SwallowRidgeway State Park, CO

One of the most critical things to understand about your catalog and photos is that if you EVER move one of your photos OUTSIDE of LR, the catalog will lose the link between the photo file and edits. If you do this, do not panic yet. It is possible to reconnect a photo file to the cata-log. The biggest warning is to not ever move a photo file or photo folder outside of LR.

While LR does off you the option of working with more than one catalog, I do not generally recom-mend this approach in general. My editing proc-

ess involves working on an iMac at home and a Macbook Pro on the road. This workflow in-volves having one large catalog on the iMac and then I create a new catalog on my Macbook when I take a trip. I upload photos on the Macbook and do some editing on the road. When I get home, I export the catalog on the Macbook Pro and import to the large catalog on the iMac.

Another option would be to put my main catalog on an external drive and then just plug it into the

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Reddish Egret - White MorphSouth Padre Island Convention Center, TX

Macbook on the road. For a variety of reasons, I choose not to do this. One being my main external drive is large and not conducive to port-ability.

If you do decide to go with this option, be sure and either go with a thunderbolt, USB 3.0 or solid-state drive (SSD) drive for speed. And when it comes to external drives, always have them backed up, it isn’t a question of if it will fail, but when. Whatever route you choose, you must make sure your drive letter remains static so that the catalog and photos will be linked in LR.

BACKING UP YOUR CATALOG AND PHOTO FILES

Under your “catalog settings” and “general” tab be sure and set the op-tion to back up your catalog as frequently as you desire. I choose to back up my catalog “Every time Lightroom exits.” The backup is made to an external drive directly and then by Apple’s Time Machine backup to a separate external drive.

Note that backing up your catalog DOES NOT back up your individ-ual photo files. If you learn ANYTHING from me at all, learn that you simply can’t afford to keep your catalog and photo files in one location

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Red-billed TropicbirdPacific Ocean off of San Diego, Ca

without regularly backing up both. Ideally, you want to have a back up in a secure, fireproof and/or off-site location. You can export your entire catalog at times as a way of backing up all LR files but depending upon the size of your catalog, this can take quite a while.

You will want to make sure that any folder/file structure in your backup is the same as your folder/file structure in LR. This will make reconnect-ing your catalog file with the photo files much easier in the event of a catastrophic loss.

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When you buy a new camera body, if you are a wise photogra-pher, you spend time getting familiar with the controls, settings, buttons, dials, and customizations. The same is true for LR. If you want to be able to get the most out of it, you have to familiar-ize yourself with its basic layout and where the key features and controls can be found.

LR is comprised of seven (7) modules: Library, Develop, Map, Book, Slideshow, Print, and Web. For our purposes, we will spend most of our time in the Library and Develop modules with a brief undertaking of the Map module.

LIGHTROOM INTERFACE

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Northern PintailsRound Rock, TX

The Library Module is the heart of the organizing of your photos. The interface has 7 basic areas that you should familiarize yourself with by getting to know each area well. Each of the sidebars and the top and bottom control panels can be hidden.

The first area is the main menu bar at the very top. Just below this is the Module Picker Panel where you can navigate between the seven (7) modules and on the right side is the progress bar that shows when an action is being undertaken. You can customize this panel (Identity Plate) by adding your own text or logo.

The left panel is the home of the organizational tools where you can manage your folders, collec-tions, and publish services (such as Facebook

and Flickr). I use the publish to Flickr the most of all the services.

The right panel is where you find the quick de-velop feature (something I never use), keyword-ing, and Metadata. For me, I use the Large Cap-tion option in the Metadata section most fre-quently.

The center is the Content Panel the real editing takes place. What is displayed varies based on the module and the view you have chosen.

Immediately below the Content Panel is the Tool-bar and if it isn’t visible, you can use the “T” short-cut to hide/unhide the panel. The tools vary from one module to another. I use the view options on the left most option.

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The very bottom module is known as the Film-strip. Here you can see thumbnails of the fold-ers, collections, or part of a catalog that are se-lected. You can turn this filmstrip on/off and you can vary the size of the thumbnails.

The Develop Module is where you will be spend-ing a great deal of time.

The Left Panel now contains a couple of sub-panels different from the Library Module. The Preset Panel is where you can find one-click ad-justments and you can create your own.

The Right Panel is where you find all the tools necessary for post-processing your photo. It is designed such that the workflow is normally top to bottom. At the very top is the Histogram

Panel and this is where you will want to learn how to read the histogram and edit accordingly.

Just below the histogram is a row of six (6) sym-bols which represent from left-to-right: crop tool, clone/heal tool, red eye tool, graduated filter tool, radial filter tool, and adjustment brush tool. When you click on the tool a panel opens up be-low the tool with options that vary from tool to tool.

The next panel down is the Basic Panel. Here is where we make a large number of our image ad-justments. We will look at these controls in more depth later.

The next panel is the Tone Curve Panel and it is where we can make very precise adjustments re-

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garding contrast. The HSL/Color/B&W Panel provides a means of fine tuning hue, saturation, and luminance of individual color channels. There are also controls for black and white images as well.

The Split-Toning Panel is not something you will really use for bird photography. The Detail Panel allows us to apply sharpen-ing to images and I want to point out right up front that sharpen-ing is not intended to improve a blurry or out-of-focus image. It is intended to correct issues from RAW files within the camera.

The next panel down is Lens Correction and is used to apply lens and lens/body corrections directly to the image. Most lenses are already included in the LR database but if not, a quick Goo-gle search will often turn up the proper lens profile.

The Effects Panel allows the user to apply vignetting and grain to an image. I will occasionally apply vignetting but rarely if ever use the grain effect. The final panel in the Develop Module is the Camera Calibration Panel where we can apply the various LR processes and a camera profile (I find Adobe Standard is just fine for my purpose).

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For the purposes of our class, we will deal pri-marily with the first two modules: Library and De-velop. However, another wonderful feature of LR 5 is the Map Module. The primary function of the map module is to assign geocoordinates to each image you capture.

The left panel contains two sub-panels the top which contains saved locations where you can created specific locations and when you drop an image on the map it is saved to this category. The next panel down allows you to work with col-lections as in other modules.

The right panel allows you to view and edit the metadata and in this module we are primarily concerned with the location metadata. When a

GPS coordinate is assigned or imported from your RAW data if your camera collects GPS coor-dinates at the time of capture, a small icon is placed on the map. The number within that icon indicates the number of images assigned to that location.

This module is not complicated but very helpful in locating where you saw/photographed a par-ticular bird. There are many possible uses of this information.

If you prefer to use keyboard shortcuts, then these handouts (PC or Mac) developed by Victo-ria Bampton can be downloaded at http://www.lightroomqueen.com/free-downloads/keyboard-shortcuts/.

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When you open LR preferences, there are five (5) tabs: General, Pre-sets, External Editing, File Handling and Interface. On the General Tab (Photo below), I want to make sure the “Automatically check for up-dates” box is checked and the “Show Import dialog when a mem-ory card is detected” box is checked. Under the Default Cata-log box you have several options on which catalog is initially loaded. While I only use one catalog, I still have “Load most recent catalog” option selected in the event I create another catalog for a brief period and need to be reminded to import into the main catalog.

The next tab “Presets” is mainly used in locating the LR Presets folder if you need to add new pre-sets that you have purchased or downloaded. Definitely make sure the “Apply auto tone adjustments” and “Apply auto mix when first con-verting to black and white” un-checked so that you can have full control over the editing process.

LIGHTROOM PREFERENCES

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The third tab “External Editing” con-trols how LR handles photos that are exported to eternal programs or plug-ins. I prefer to work in TIFF for-mat, ProPhoto RGB color space for maximum number of colors, and no compression. I also like having the photo stacked with the original when I return to LR.

The fourth tab (no photo shown) con-cerns how LR handles files and there really aren’t any settings here that are critical to bird photography. Most LR guides will help you with the settings on this page.

The fifth tab “Interface” basically provides options on how LR ap-pears. I turn off the end marks, set screen color to Black and for the Dim Level I leave it set to the default of 80%. The next setting I prefer is under Tweaks at the bottom. I pre-fer to have a photo zoom the loca-tion where I click on the image.

A workflow is a series of steps in a process where one step ends and the next begins. In LR 5 the workflow generally begins with importing images. The next step is reviewing images and marking for deletion and keeping. The photographer will then assign keywords, captions and/or labels. We then want to geocode our photos before we begin editing images. There are two forms of editing, the first is applying global adjust-ments and then we move to more local or specific ad-justments. Finally, we prepare photos for output.

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THE LIGHTROOM WORKFLOW

Seaside SparrowSea Rim State Park, TX

Every photographer must ultimately decide what workflow is the best for them and only then will your workflow be the most effi-cient. Trying to mimic someone else’s workflow without a proper understanding of why they do what they do will simply lead to confusion and frustration. Nevertheless, there are some guide-lines and processes that I use which I believe may help shape your workflow and save time in the long run. Ultimately, our de-sire is to be out photographing and not sitting in front of a screen editing.

You’ve just returned from your favorite bird photography location, your memory card is full and you are beyond impatient to see if

IMPORTING IMAGES

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Crested CaracaraLaredo, TX

you captured an image that makes you stop and pause. Many photographers simply rush to fine one they like, edit it and then share it with others rather than take the time to work through their en-tire workflow. Odds are good that as a result many of your images are never reviewed, never edited and never cataloged. Does this sound ee-rily familiar?

MEMORY CARDSThe majority of DSLR and compact cameras use either a a compact flash or a SD memory card. The first step of our workflow is importing images from our memory card to our LR catalog.

If your computer doesn’t have a built-in card reader then, if at all possible, be sure to buy a 3.0 USB card reader for maximum speed in trans-ferring your images from card to computer. That helps us deal with the hardware side of transfer-ring images, but the real ability to improve your workflow is in the import interface in LR.

The LR import interface is fairly straightforward and once you get typical import workflow estab-lished, you can apply all kinds of time-saving shortcuts and global adjustments.

On the top, far left is the “Source” where you se-lect where your images are currently located and this is usually your memory card unless you are importing photos already on a hard drive. At the top center are the four options for how to add the photos to the catalog. I always use the “Copy” option because I want the images put in a spe-cific folder and I want the originals left on the memory card (just in case a problem occurs dur-ing import).

The center of the import interface will show a pre-view of all the photos on the card. On the ride side of the interface, we have four (4) panels that are the heart of our importing workflow.

The first panel is the File Handling Panel and here we can choose the type of previews we want to build during import; whether we want smart previews built during import; a check box on importing duplicate images; and a very pow-erful backup feature of making a second copy of the images to another location.

Let’s look at how we can maximize our import workflow with this panel. First, their are four (4) options for the type of previews we want LR to build during import. The start with the lowest quality called “minimal” and go up to the highest quality of “1:1.” As you increase the quality of the preview you add significant time to the im-porting process. Because I usually have a com-puter that is relatively fast, I recommend select-ing standard or minimal and then let LR build a 1:1 preview when I click on the image for editing. If you don’t mind waiting longer on import, feel free to select 1:1.

Smart Previews are used to edit and adjust an image without have the original file available. It let’s you keep a catalog on a desktop computer and a laptop and edit the photos using smart pre-views. I personally do not like this option and keep it checked off.

I always keep the box checked for “Don’t Import Suspected Duplicates” as this compares file-names and will grey out images that have al-ready been imported into the catalog.

One of the best failsafe features of LR is the “Make a Second Copy To:” option. By checking

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this box and selecting a location, LR will make an exact copy at the location of your choosing.

The next sub-panel gives you the means to name the files according to any system you de-sire. My general preference is to name the file with an image #, sequence #, date (month DD, YYYY), minute, and second. Many people try to use the file name as a way of identifying the sub-ject of the photo, I find the Large Caption a much better option.

The Apply During Import panel can save a lot of time by applying develop (editing) settings and metadata settings as the images are imported. You can select any LR preset and apply it during the import process. If you have a “typical” profile you like to apply to every image before you start editing, now is the time to apply it and save a lot of work later on. At a minimum, you can apply a lens profile to every image. This is where the cus-tomization of LR really shows it capabilities.

The metadata drop down is how I apply all my copyright information at once to each and every image. Below is an image of the fields I use.

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Glaucous GullSt. John’s, Newfoundland

The final panel on the right side is the Destina-tion Panel. It is here where you select a location for LR to put the original image files. Be careful about your selection as it is all to easy to have the images put in the wrong location.

FOLDER ORGANIZATION

It is at this point that I need to talk to you about how you plan to organize your images for long term storage. Some of the options that people tend to utilize are filing by date, by trip, or even

just putting all images in one big folder. What-ever system you develop, the real key is how easy can you locate one specific image in a cata-log of 30,000 images?

My folder organization is two-fold and based upon images that are currently still in the post-processing production system and those that have already been through the process.

My current iMac also lends itself to a two-step process based on the hard drive configuration.

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The internal hard drive is a 250GB SSD drive that is very fast but limited on total storage. This drive is where I place my applications and im-ages that are currently being processed. Due to the speed of the drive, it makes performing edit-ing tasks much quicker.

The images on this drive are organized accord-ing to date. I structure the folders based on year and then date. I will sometimes add text to the day to indicate the location of the images. Once an image or group of images have been geo-coded, labeled, and edited, I then move (within LR) the images to a different folder structure on a Thunderbolt external hard drive. The highest level of folder structure is as follows: Astronomy, Birds, Butterflies, Damselflies, Dragonflies, Land-scapes, Mammals, and Reptiles/Amphibians.

The next level in my hierarchy would be to create folders by family or genera for animals (photo top left) or by state or type (i.e. night) for land-scape images.

The screen capture at top right shows the struc-ture of my editing workspace and the one at top left shows how I organize photos according to type. To reiterate, whether or not my structure is how you should structure isn’t really the question. The important point is to find a structure that works best for you and allows you to retrieve your photos quickly and efficiently.

Whatever structure you select, make sure it con-tributes to your overall workflow and makes edit-ing and storing photos easier and smoother so that you can spend more time photographing!

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FILENAMES

Because of a situation in which a large number of files were accidentally deleted, I now use a very specific filename which is applied upon im-portation. Since I often shoot on a given day with two bodies and thus, two memory cards, I name each image as follows:

1. Sequence # (1) - I only have the sequence number go up to 9 since I am not very likely

to have more than 9 different memory card uploads in a day.

2. Image # (0001) - Each image is assigned a unique number and I can go up to 9999 which is well more than the number of RAW files any one card can hold.

3. Date (Month DD, YYYY) - This applies the date the image was taken.

4. Minute & Second - For those images that are taken very close together, I can still figure out a chronological order of the image.

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APPLY DURING IMPORT

The next step in importing your images is applying any develop and/or metadata presets during im-portation. I have found that this in an opportune time to apply the lens correction to my images as I import them by selecting the appropriate develop setting in the drop down menu. I have created a preset for applying a lens correction for each lens I own.

When photographing birds, I usually use a setup of one camera body with a 600mm lens and one camera body with a 100-400 lens. So, photos on each memory card are usually shot with one lens for all photos. However, if you switch lenses on a body and have images taken with more than one lens on a memory card then you will want to be careful about applying a lens correction to all the im-ages on that card.

The next thing I apply during import is my copyright metadata. This is not the same as putting a wa-termark on an image which is a graphic you place on actual image to try and protect your image. The copyright metadata is embedded in the image by different means depending upon the image type. This is an excellent way of “marking” your images. The copyright symbol is created by typing Alt + 0169 on a PC and Option + G on a Mac. If you upload your images to an online service such as Flickr, you can view the EXIF data and see your entries. If you do upload any images online, I highly recommend you use the copyright metadata to protect your creation.

To create a Copyright Preset, on the drop down menu for Metadata select the new option. The New Metadata Preset window opens and as you can see, there is a ton of information that can be input

and some of the material is more applica-ble to portrait, wedding and fashion type photography. As you type in a field, that field is checked on the right and that will now be included in the preset. Once you have entered all the relevant data, click the Preset drop down menu and select Save Current Settings as a Preset. If you haven’t done this already, you can apply this metadata to all existing photos in the Library Module under the Metadata Panel.

My final recommendation is to always be careful about your import destination by ensuring you have selected the appropri-ate drive and folder combination. It is easy to place the images inadvertently in the wrong location.

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You have successfully imported your photos and the excitement to share those photos is overflowing your cup of social media possibilities; however, before jumping the gun we need to spend some time working through the images we have captured. Other-wise, we are liable to end up with a catalog full of images that haven’t been reviewed, geocoded, labeled, edited and archived. As you get further and further behind, the problem simply exacer-bates to the point you are overwhelmed.

The next phase of our workflow is what I call Image Review. Dur-ing this process, we want to review each image we have taken to determine what photos we want to keep and what photos we want to delete. Here is where I want to apply some discernment regarding possible present and future uses of an image. Let’s face it, memory continues to grow in size and cost continues to drop so storing photos isn’t the costly endeavor it might have been at one time.

Most of your work will occur in the Library Module and this is due to the wonderful feature called the Compare View. In Compare

IMAGE REVIEW

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Bald EagleGathering Nest MaterialLlano, TX

View the left photo is the select and the right photo is the candidate.

As bird photographers, we often capture many photos of the same bird and even of the same pose. The Compare View allows you to view two photos side by side and you can zoom in on one or both of the photos at the same time to com-pare sharpness, exposure, and other elements of photographic composition.

In the Toolbar under your image you have four view options: Grid, Loupe, Compare, and Sur-vey View. Grid View shows all photos at once; Loupe View shows the selected photo; Com-pare View shows the two selected photos; and Survey View shows all selected photos at once. I rarely use the Survey View mode; but the other three views I find very useful for differ-ent purposes.

I use Grid View for applying global captions

and synchronizing edits. Loupe View is great for checking out sharpness and applying local ed-its. Compare View is ideal for initial image re-view, particularly when combined with the vari-ous levels of zoom which can be adjusted in the left control panel at the top of the Navigator sub-panel. There are several choices for zooming

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Compare View in Library Module

Loupe View (Above)

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Grid View (Below)

varying from fit (all the image is visible) to 1:1 (where one pixel in image equals one pixel on screen) to 11:1 which is for removing nose boo-gers from hummingbirds!

In order for this approach to work well, you have to ensure that the order of the photos is based on capture time. This can be changed and set in the Toolbar.

The only time this might not be the best choice is if you have used two cameras while shooting and you upload two or more memory cards from the same day. In this case, you might choose to use Added Order.

The final technique you need to know is how to mark a photo for deletion. You can mark one or a hundred photos at once for deletion by select-

ing the photo(s) and then pressing “X” on the key-board or clicking on the . A photo marked for de-letion will be greyed out and a flag with an “X” will appear on the thumbnail in the filmstrip and in the Toolbar (see image next column).

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Survey View (Above)

IMAGE REVIEW - STEP-BY-STEP

Here is a step-by-step guide to how I perform Image Review.

Step 1: Quick pass through all photos deleting obvious out-of-focus and “missed” shots (bird flew out of frame).

Step 2: Second pass using Compare View/zoom for similar pho-tos and zoom on individual images to check for sharpness. NOTE: I do not automatically delete all photos without perfect sharpness. The amount of acceptable sharpness varies by type of photo and proximity of subject.

When comparing very similar photos and using zoom, I “lock” the zoom location so that both images zoom in on the same spot. This is done by clicking the “lock” closed in the Toolbar. You can also vary the amount of zoom by moving the slider in the Toolbar. To compare photos with different compositions I “unlock” the

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zoom and move the photos by clicking and dragging the photo to the de-sired position.

Step 3: Once all photos have been reviewed, I then delete rejected pho-tos from LR and from the hard drive. I do not want to simply remove the image from the LR catalog as this will leave the original photo file on the hard drive. NOTE: DO NOT delete the files from outside of LR. You de-lete ALL rejected photos using the “Delete Rejected Photos” command found under the Photo drop down list from the main menu.

Step 4: At this point, assuming the original files are still backed up on a separate hard drive, I empty the trash on my computer to free up the hard drive space because even in the trash can, the files still remain on my hard drive.

Here are some tips for the Image Review Process:

• If you have taken many photos of the same subject, do not keep just one photograph of a subject if you have several. There is always a chance some catastrophe could strike and you would not have another image.

• As your photography skill improves and time passes, the photos that will be “keepers” will change and it is always easier to delete a photo at a later date rather than get rid of something you wish you had kept.

• You might spend some time reviewing photos that are marked for dele-tion to determine where your lack of sharpness or other problem origi-nated. If everything is blurry, problem is camera shake or slow shutter speed. If part of the image is sharp but not sharp on eyes or other im-portant elements, maybe depth of field was insufficient or you just missed focus. Bad photos are better for learning than good ones!

• When using the Compare View mode, you must make certain that the proper photo is selected before pressing “X” or you could inadvertently mark the wrong photo for deletion.

• When in Compare View mode, there are several options for selecting photos and/or changing the photos displayed. The first with arrows in opposite directions is

There are times you will need to just remove a photo from a catalog without deleting the original file. This is when you will use the “Remove Photo” and “Remove Photo from Catalog” Commands.

This book is not an attempt to describe all LR commands, functions, tips, or tricks. Recommendations on comprehensive LR 5 resources may be found in the Preface to this book. It is recommended you have at least two different LR 5 resources.

There are many LR blogs, websites and periodicals that offer additional guidance, education, and tips on using LR. Here are a few of my favorites:

Lightroom Killer Tips

The Lightroom Queen

Lightroom Magazine

Lightroom Fanatic

Adobe’s LR Blog

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Red-winged BlackbirdMaleLaredo, TX

swap and this command will change the select photo to the candi-date photo and move the candidate photo to the select photo. The next option is the “Make Select” with arrow pointing left and this will move the candidate photo to the select photo and move the next photo in the thumbnail to the candidate photo. Finally, the two arrows will select the next photo in thumbnail as the candidate photo.

• Remember, this is your review process. There is no right or wrong on what photos to keep and what photos to delete. You just want a proc-ess that will help you sort your photos and make the process move smoothly and quickly so that you can move on to the next stage of geocoding your photos.

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One of the reasons I prefer LR over all other image software pack-ages is its ability to store, archive, and label images for easy re-trieval at a later date. The only limitations on searching, sorting, filtering, and retrieval is what you put on it. There are several ways of “labeling” a photo. You can change the filename; you can use a series of hierarchal keywords; or you can use a cap-tion. Initially, I began using keywords and almost as quick, I com-pletely ditched any use of keywording at all. The reason being that I photograph so many different types of animals, insects, landscapes, and other natural and man-made features that the number of keywords necessary to separate photos was quickly growing beyond a useful application.

KEYWORDS OR CAPTIONS?

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Least GrebeSanta Ana National Wildlife Refuge, TX

Almost immediately after I ditched keywording, a photographer friend showed me how he used the “large caption” under metadata and I quickly adapted this technique. However, he also changes the filename as another means of labeling. I do not follow his same workflow regarding filenames as noted at the end of Chapter 3, Section 1.

The image above shows LR in the Library Module with the Large Caption op-tion selected in the Metadata Panel. The image to the right shows a close-up of the Large Caption Panel. The clickable menu to the left of the Meta-data heading provides several options for what can be displayed in the Me-tadata Panel. By changing your selection you can view the EXIF data, loca-tion data, IPTC data, and other such information. I generally leave it set to Large Caption. This is where I put all the information that I might need to file, search, retrieve and share a photo.

For bird images, my captions generally follow the same guidelines.English (Common) NameLatin Name (Genus Species)Plumage (Male, Female, 1st Basic, 1st Alternate, etc.)Specific LocationCounty, StateDate (DD Month, Year)

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Occasionally, if the image captured a unique behavior, then an additional line of information will be added describing said behav-ior. An image that shows two (2) or more species will list every identifiable species in the image by common and latin name.

The reason I include so much information is that I can filter/search by a generic name (i.e., sparrow), common name (i.e, Blue Jay), Genus (i.e., Buteo), location (i.e., Big Bend National Park) or a county (i.e., Williamson) to find a photo or group of pho-tos. Captioning is not just for display purposes, but is a key ingre-dient in my archiving and retrieval process.

If I am preparing a presentation for a sparrow identification work-shop, I can simply filter all my photos by the word sparrow and select the photos I wish to use. This same captioning might not work as well for landscape or portrait photography, but I found it very beneficial for all wildlife photography. Of course, common and latin names can change at times and this is where doing a search for the old name will generate a selection of photos. You can then select all the photos and change the common, genus, or species name at once.

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With a catalog of over 70,000 photos, it can be quite the mental gymnastics exercise to attempt to remember where and when you took a photo. Lightroom offers many methods for keeping track of when a photo was taken; fortunately for users of LR 5 you now can keep track of where a photo was taken. While a few DSLR’s, many smartphones, and a few other camera bodies are GPS-enabled, for most this is still not an option within camera.

No worries, the process is as simple as dragging and dropping a photo or a selection of photos onto areal images taken from Goo-gle Imagery. All of this is done within the Map Module and in my workflow, this step of the process is general very quick and pain-less. The best part is that the GPS data is kept in the metadata and when I upload photos to Flickr, the coordinates are automati-cally uploaded (this is something you can turn on or off) and someone viewing my images can see exactly where they were taken.

While the Develop Module is before the Map Module in LR, in my workflow process the preference is to geocode before any edit-ing is applied. You might wonder if I am not wasting time by geo-

GEOCODING YOUR PHOTOS

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Orange-crowned WarblerLaredo, TX

Screenshot of Map Module showing location and number of photos by location.

coding an image I might later delete while refining edits? Good ques-tion, but the fact is that Geocoding usually takes a few minutes at most since you can drag and drop photos in groups. Even on a busy day, you probably haven’t photographed in ten or twelve locations through-out a day.

And if your camera does record GPS data, it is a automatically included in the metadata file and LR will recognize this and show the images on the map accordingly. If you use a separate GPS data logger, you can sync the data with your images in LR.

In the upper right corner of the center panel you will find a search func-tion. The key to the search function is that if you can’t find a specific lo-cation such as Sam Nail Ranch in Big Bend National Park, then search on Big Bend National Park and scroll the map to the proper location. Once you find the proper location, zoom in to whatever level allows you

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to accurately but quickly drop the selected pho-tos onto the map. Once a photo has been as-signed a location, the metadata panel (panel on upper right of LR) is automatically filled out with the city, state/province, country, country code, and exact GPS latitude and longitude.

There may be an instance where due to the sensi-tivity of a certain species or a nesting location that is might be best to not apply specific lati-tude and longitude coordinates to an image or to place them at a more general location for the

park, property or area. Certain web services such as Flickr will display the actual location an image was taken based on the coordinates you assign to the image. However, in the Publish to Flickr settings you can remove location informa-tion from your images as they are uploaded. De-pending upon the image sharing service you are using, check for options regarding image loca-tion.

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Once I have imported, captioned, and geocoded my photos, the next step in the workflow is to edit my images. This editing is general in nature and not for any specific type of output such as print-ing, sharing to the web or exporting. To make this process flow as smoothly and quickly as possible, it is best to always use the same workflow and ap-proach. Furthermore, if you find yourself using the same settings frequently, then creating your own presets might just be the ticket to efficiency.

4

EDITING YOUR IMAGES

Field SparrowSouth Llano River State Park, TX

This part of the workflow is designed to adjust the image and hopefully, I only need to make minor adjustments since I prefer to have the image look the best right out of the camera. The typical workflow for editing my RAW bird images is as follows:

1. Apply lens specific corrections in the Lens Corrections Panel (most lens already have a profile in LR but it not, a Google search may well turn up the correct profile).

2. Crop the image and straighten the horizon, fence lines, etc. if needed.

3. Check the histogram to see if there are any parts of the image that need to be adjusted.

4. Adjust White Balance if needed.

5. Start with Global Adjustments (entire image) in the Basic Panel work-ing from top to bottom. NOTE: I rarely find that using the “auto” set-ting produces an image that I find pleasing.

6. If further contrast adjustments are needed, I use the Tone Curve Panel.

7. Apply sharpness and noise reduction settings in the Detail Panel which for me are ISO specific with presets and then see if additional changes are needed.

8. The next step is only occasional as it involves applying adjustments such as vignetting, grain, converting to Black-and-White, or fine-tuning specific colors in the HSL/Color/B&W Panel.

9. After all global adjustments have been applied, make any local adjust-ments.

10. Synchronize (mostly global but occasionally local) adjustments across images where applicable.

I would like to emphasize that while you may find my workflow suitable for your needs, the best workflow is one that makes your image editing the most accurate and efficient. My workflow was developed over time as my experience with LR grew, as LR updates added editing features, and as my understanding of color management, custom presets and local adjust-

Bird Photography Workflow Tips:

1) ALWAYS delete rejected images before you begin image editing so you don’t waste time working on a reject.

2) IF you use the AutoSync feature in the Develop Module, be sure and turn it off when no longer needed or you can easily apply edits to incorrect images.

3) Always begin with global adjustments before making any local adjustments with the possible exception of spot removal.

4) Use synchronization as often as possible for global adjustments.

5) Use the flag to mark photos that you wish to share on social media, Flickr, your website, or through email.

6) Keep in mind that there is no right or perfect exposure for your image.

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ments grew. This workflow remains the same whether I have imported 30 or 3,000 images from a shoot.

We are going to take a look at each of the editing features and tools that I regularly use in LR 5. For a more detailed understanding of digital im-age editing, I highly recommend the book The Digital Negative: Raw Image Processing in Light-room, Camera Raw, and Photoshop by Jeff Schewe. While there are some excellent guide books to LR, the majority are focused on how to do something and this text will address more of

the why we do something. For example, a LR guide book might explain how to move a sharp-ening slider but Schewe’s book will help you un-derstand why you need to adjust the sharpening.

Some adjustments tend to follow along general photography principles and guidelines such as cropping requires you to maintain the “rule of thirds” to create a pleasing image and other ad-justments are more personal preference. Section 1 will address global (image wide) adjustments and Section 2 will address local (smaller areas within an image) adjustments.

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One of the best tools the digital photographer has in his/her arse-nal is the tonal histogram on the rear of the camera body. This histogram provides instant feedback on the exposure and allows the photographer to make adjustments to their shutter speed, ap-erture or ISO. One of the worst mistakes a bird photographer can make is to rely on the image on the rear LCD of the camera body for information related to exposure. The image that is dis-played is a processed jpg file on a small LCD with more pixels than most computer monitor displays. The only really useful feed-back that image can provide is an assessment of image sharp-ness but even that can be difficult to gauge.

INTERPRETING A HISTOGRAM

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Northern PintailSt. John’s, Newfoundland

A standard histogram is a graph of the distribution of tones within an im-age. The far left of the graph is zero (0) which represents true black. The right side of the graph is two-hundred and fifty-five (255) which rep-resents true white. As we see in the image and histogram above most pixels are mid-range tones (note the peak of the histogram in the mid-dle). The height of any one column simply tells us how many pixels are in that tone.

Take time to get to know each area of a histogram by picking an image and creating a virtual copy. Practice adjusting the blacks, shadows, ex-posure, highlights, and whites with both the sliders and by clicking di-rectly on the histogram. As you make adjustments, watch the image to see how moving the sliders or sections changes the exposure.

In the example on the following page, there are three images of a Bald Eagle. The first photo shows a properly exposed image with its corre-sponding histogram. This image has nice detail in blacks and whites on the eagle. The second photo shows an image which is significantly underexposed with a histogram that reflects this. The third and final photo is an image which is seriously overexposed and while detail re-mains in the dark feathers of the eagle, the head and tail lack almost

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Histograms are found at top right of LR’s Right Panel in Library & Develop Modules. This graph reflects the distribution of tones by pixel for any image. You are not looking for the perfect histogram. There are three (3) things to keep in mind regarding a histogram:

1) Learn to interpret the histogram in such a way you know how to edit your photo so it appears as you desire.

2) You can actually make edits by selecting sections of the histogram and moving the area left or right.

3) While we pay particular attention to both ends of a histogram, the entire graph is important.

any detail. You can also see in the histogram for the underexposed image that the shadow indicator triangle is lit and in the histogram for the third image you can see the highlight triangle is highlighted. It is important to remember that the first histogram is not the correct histogram, it is simply relaying in-formation on what is represented in the image.

When a histogram is pushed up against one end or the other we describe that as clipping. To get the best image in the field, it is important to learn to not rely on the LCD image on the back of your cam-era body, rather you want to read the histogram. The LCD image on the back of a camera body is a converted JPEG image with adjustments already applied. My experience has shown me that an im-age which appears properly exposed on the LCD is in reality underexposed. The LCD image on a camera body can be very useful for evaluating focus and composition but rarely helpful in evaluating exposure. The histogram is your biggest ally in getting the proper exposure in the field and minimiz-ing post-processing adjustments in LR.

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It is critical you develop a consistent workflow for global adjust-ments since changing one element can have a significant impact on another. Certain adjustments are much more important than others and this is generally based on the top down order of the LR develop module panels. For example, it is very important that you make any exposure adjustments before you adjust blacks/whites or shadows/highlights. Noise can increase when you lighten an image so you will want to perform noise reduction after any such adjustments.

With that being said, let’s walk through the specific panels and adjustments that will take your bird images from neat to wow!

GLOBAL ADJUSTMENTS

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Green JaySalineno, TX

LENS CORRECTIONS

Every lens has certain characteristics that are a function of the design of the lens. Some of these design issues create aberrations that include vi-gnetting, chromatic aberration, and distortion. This is the first adjustment I make to any image and if possible, I have this done upon importa-tion.

CROPPING AND STRAIGHTENING

When photographing birds, it is often necessary to make tweaks to the image composition in or-der to make the photograph more pleasing. This might involve converting an image from horizon-tal to vertical orientation or adjusting an image to more conform to the rule-of-thirds.

You have many options when it comes to crop-ping your images. I recommend keeping the grid overlay set to thirds for most cropping pur-

poses. If you are preparing a photo for output, you can turn on the crop grid overlay tool “as-pect ratios.” This will help you see how to frame an image based on a specific output size (i.e. 8x10). You can then select the specific output crop size using the drop down menu next to the lock icon.

I find that many bird photographs are greatly im-proved by shooting in vertical format, but if you shot in horizontal format to begin with, don’t fear, you can easily crop to vertical format. I also use cropping to remove unwanted elements from the edge of the frame if possible.

WHITE BALANCE

One of the great benefits of shooting in RAW for-mat is that you can adjust white balance to best fit the scene as it was or to show it how you de-sire. White balance can be adjusted using the sliders or the eye-dropper tool. When it comes to bird photography, I find that the auto white bal-ance setting on my camera tends to work most of the time. However, there are certain situations in which the photo is too cool or too warm de-pending upon the light, background and camera limitations. If I need to adjust the white balance, I try to do this before making any other adjust-ments to the image. In the end, there may be a difference in a technically correct white balance and a visually appealing white balance. The choice is yours.

EXPOSURE

Let me start with a warning: You can’t simply ad-just exposure to correct seriously overexposed or underexposed images and have a nice image. It is preferable to get the best exposure possible

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in camera and use the exposure sliders to make minor adjustments. I have found that with bird photography, it is much better to slightly overex-pose an image and then reduce in LR than to have too increase exposure in LR. With dark sub-jects, increasing exposure tends to have a much more noticeable increase in noise than increas-ing exposure on pale subjects.

Example of Noise from Increased Exposure in Underside of Common Raven (Note the many colored pixels that should be black)

You will note that just above the exposure slider is a button for “auto” tone. Using this button is the equivalent of buying a DSLR and setting it to “program” mode. What is the point?

CONTRAST

You can increase the contrast of your image by adjusting the slider to the right and decreasing contrast by moving the left. Contrast only ad-

justs the highlights and shadows. When photo-graphing birds, I find that some situations almost always require adding contrast (i.e., birds in fog) and yet adding any contrast to other types of im-ages will lose detail (i.e., a crow against a nice blue sky). When you increase the contrast of an image, you also increase the saturation. Hence, it can be easy to overdo it with many bird images due to the bright colors of many birds.

Many people don’t realize it but you can often im-prove an image by actually reducing contrast if it is a very high contrast scene to begin. When you begin editing, it is best to start with just a hint of contrast (whether increasing or decreas-ing) and watch the image as you adjust the slider until the image looks good.

WHITES, BLACKS, HIGHLIGHTS, & SHADOWS

If you have an older version of LR (LR 4 or older), these adjustments are called Brightness, Blacks, Recovery, and Fill Light. I have found the the 2012 Process in LR 5 is a significant leap in qual-ity and well worth upgrading to LR 5 for this alone.

When editing I prefer to start with highlights and shadows due to the nature of the nature of the 2012 Process Version. Reducing highlights can help bring a high contrast scene back into bal-ance and you can increase detail in shadows by using a plus shadows adjustment. Always use discretion when adding details to shadows as you can easily increase noise to the point of de-grading the image.

Once you finish with highlights/shadows, you can address any clipping or map to pure white/black for the image. Most images should have

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This image of a Yellow-throated Warbler has a tough challenge with highlights and shadows. Our goal is to preserve as much detail as possible in both.

some pure black or white and so I will often adjust the image until the highlight/shadow clipping is just about to turn on.

It is important to keep in mind that there is no right or wrong here. It is a matter of taste and attempting to get the image to represent what you saw or what you want to communicate to the viewer of your image. However, having said that, it is important to keep in mind that there are settings that are more pleasing.

PRESENCE (CLARITY, VIBRANCE, & SATURATION)

One of the gifts to bird photographers in LR 5 is the clarity adjuster. Its intended purpose is to increase the contrast of the mid-tones. How-ever, it also has the effect of sharpening and adding some “punch” to your images. I use this on virtually every bird image but it is very easy

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to overdo this adjustment in which case your im-age will take on a horrible over-saturated/over-sharpened effect.

Vibrance is your friend for bird photography and saturation is your enemy! Images that have been overcooked with either adjustment are very easy to pick out. Vibrance has the beautiful job of adding saturation to the less-saturated colors and there are many bird species that are not vi-brant yellows, blues and reds! A nice subtle vi-brance adjustment can really make some images of brown, grey, and other mid-tone species stand out.

Vibrance can also be reduced which will give a faded look to an image but this is not generally helpful for bird photography.

My advice for the saturation adjustment is to leave it alone!! It can easily overdo an image with even a minor adjustment. If you need to ad-

just a color’s hue/saturation/luminance, I prefer to do a local adjustment using the HSL/COLOR/B&W controls which I will discuss later on.

TONE CURVE

It is easy to spend a great deal of time trying to understand the Parametric Curve Editor and the Point Curve Editor but you should know that both editors can be used to adjust highlights, lights, darks, and shadows. The parametric edi-tor is not the same as the basic panel controls of highlights, whites, shadows, and blacks. Those adjustments are image adaptive while any tone curve panel changes are simple curve adjust-ments.

For bird photography, I regular use the Paramet-ric Curve Editor but I generally only use for tar-geted adjustments. You can do this by selecting the targeted adjustment tool in the upper left cor-

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Field SparrowSouth Llano River State Park, TX

ner of the Tone Curve Panel. This is excellent at targeting specific ar-eas and decreasing highlights, adding contrast or brightening shad-ows. To gain an understanding of how each element of the curve im-pacts your image, it can be helpful to create a virtual copy and convert to black-and-white.

The Parametric Curve Editor is more designed for making specific color channel adjustments that is not normally necessary for bird photogra-phy.

DETAIL (SHARPENING & NOISE REDUCTION)

The sidebar explains the three “types” of sharpening but are more real-istically just different stages of sharpening. Capture Sharpening is ap-plied when an image is imported and edited. I have sharpening pre-sets for specific ISO’s that I apply globally. The next stage of sharpen-ing is often applied with a local adjustment brush to a perch, face or specific area of an image. I don’t apply any output sharpening until the image is exported, printed or uploaded.

It is best to apply sharpening with the image zoomed at a 1:1 ratio (this is one pixel image = one pixel screen) so you can gauge the impact of each adjustment. LR 5 applies default sharpening but these are not suf-

ficient for our purposes.

In the detail panel you have four different sliders that control dif-ferent aspects of the sharpening process. The first slider, Amount, controls the strength of the sharpening being applied to the image. Personally, I believe the acceptable amount of sharp-ening is much lower than what is often used by others.

The next slider, Radius, deter-mines how many pixels on each side of an “edge” is sharpened. Landscape images would need a low radius and bird images

Sharpening is often misunderstood and missapplied. There are three types of sharpening when working with RAW images. Whenever we turn light into pixels, there is some loss of sharpness inherent in the process.

1. Capture Sharpening is intended to correct this loss of sharpness.

2. Creative Sharpening is applied for effect and includes actually reducing sharpness to add blur to the background.

3. Output Sharpening is done after the image is at its final size and resolution and varies based on media type and output type (screen or print).

Too much sharpening is just as bad, if not worse, than not applying any sharpening at all.

Finally, sharpening is NOT intended to fix out-of-focus or camera shake issues.

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ISO 400 Sharpening Settings

would need a moderate radius.

The third slider is the Detail slider and its function is a little obtuse but important nevertheless. As you move the slider toward zero (0) it tries to re-duce halos created by your amount setting. As you move the slider toward one-hundred (100), it tries to deblur an image. For bird photography, I typically use values starting at twenty-five (25) and go up to fifty (50).

The fourth and final slider, Masking, is very help-ful in bird photography as it allows us to reduce the sharpening effect on non-edge areas (like the middle of a beak, eye and skies and focuses sharpening on things like feather edges, perches, and the like.

One of the most useful keyboard functions is to hold down the “Alt-Option” key (Mac) or “Alt” key (PC) when adjusting each slider for a graphical representation of the sharpening effects on the

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image. As you hold down the appropriate key, you can move the corresponding slider and view where the adjustment will be applied.

Sharpening and noise reduction are different sides of the same coin. Noise reduction can improve even low ISO images and we will take a look at how to best apply to your images. Noise varies from image-to-image, camera body to camera body and from low ISO’s to high ISO’s. Noise can be caused by trying to lighten a dark area or image, oversharpening, or using a high ISO.

There are two types of noise reduction in LR 5, luminance and color. Luminance noise is where the brightness of a pixel is af-fected and color noise is where the actual color is affected. Lu-minance noise reduction can easily led to degradation of image sharpness if overdone. Color noise is where the actual color of a pixel is affected. This is often found in photos where dark ar-eas have been brightened, shots taken at night, and shots taken at high ISO’s.

For the most part, when working with bird images, I only adjust the luminance noise slider and color is left at the LR default of twenty-five (25). The amount of luminance noise reduction I apply is entirely dependent upon the ISO of the image. As you increase luminance noise reduction, you will begin to lose detail in the image. Once you begin to develop settings that are pretty constant among your

camera body (ies) and ISO, then you can create a preset to quickly apply the settings to many images at once.

EFFECTS

When it comes to bird photography, I find that the only effect that I really like using is sometimes apply-ing a slight Post-Crop Vignetting. If done minimally, it can serve to highlight the main subject by ever so gently drawing the eye into the image. I primarily use a -7 amount and I generally leave all other set-tings at default. You can easily play around with these settings to create all kinds of tacky borders!

HSL/COLOR/B&W

This panel must be used with caution because with-out some constraint you can easily overdo it and lose any reality to your image. Brighter and bolder

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The speckles in the background of the image below are examples of luminance noise.

is not always better! Without a doubt, if any adjustment needs to be made to a color’s hue, saturation or luminance then this is much more effective than the saturation slider in the Presence Panel. I have used it to subdue an overly bold background, bring more realistic color to a bird, reduce a blown out bright red crown, or make grass or trees more authentic looking.

This panel doesn’t require that you have an extensive knowledge of colors since you can (and should) use the local adjustment tool found in the upper left of the panel.

CAMERA CALIBRATION

I only mention this section briefly as for the majority of situations, the Adobe Standard profile will be more than accurate. However, if you find it necessary, you can always create a custom profile for your camera body. You can also make sure you are using the latest Process Version (which for LR 5 is 2012 (Current)).

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Upon completion of global adjustments, I then examine the best photos to see if any local adjustments need to be made. I don’t really want to spend a lot of time on local adjustments to images that I don’t plan on using anytime soon but are still good enough to not delete. On occasion, a photo can benefit from some local dodging/burning, enhancing a birds face with clarity/sharpening, removing a bit of debris from a bill, cleaning up a background or or removing dust spots. The following tools will allow you to do the little things that can really push an image to that next level. However, these can also be the more time consuming adjust-ments so choose your images and local adjustments wisely.

Lest we think local adjustments can only be made on only one (1) image at a time, there are some functions that can be synchro-nized among similar images. For help with synchronizing edits, see Chapter 4, Section 4.

SPOT REMOVAL TOOL

It is inevitable, given the conditions in which we often photograph and that telephoto and super-telephoto lenses accentuate dust

LOCAL ADJUSTMENTS

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Snowy EgretLaredo, TX

spots, that at some point you will have to remove one or more from your images. LR’s spot re-moval tool has been continually improved to the point that even with busy backgrounds or on feathers it does a pretty good job on its own most of the time.

I usually leave it set to heal rather than clone but I do occasionally come across a situation where I need to clone to get a nice clean up. This step can become time-consuming if you have a lot of variation among shots and you have a large num-ber of images to edit. Of course, on occasion, spots get lost in a background and don’t even have to be cleaned. To help you find spots that can be hard to see, LR has added a new feature called “visualize spots” which can be found in the toolbar below the image in the Develop Mod-ule.

This is one local adjustment where I try to syn-chronize all at once and then make images to in-dividual images as warranted. However, if using the tool for non-circular clean up (which was added as a function in LR 5) then it is extremely difficult to be able to synchronize from one im-age to the next unless everything is exactly the same.

In addition to dust spot removal, I like to use the spot removal tool to clean seed hulls or mud off bills, to clean limbs out of backgrounds, remove parts of birds extending into an image, or bird poop off perches. This type of work requires a little more effort than simply removing dust spots and on occasion, this is where you might have to go into Photoshop for some clean-up.

RED EYE CORRECTION

Flash, when used in bird photography, can often create steel-eye (and red-eye on some birds as seen in Figure 1) which has to be fixed in order

for the bird photo to look natural. I have found that using the red-eye reduction tool on “bird red eyes” just changes the eye from red to the steel color (Figure 2). To get eyes back to a natural

black look I rely on the adjustment brush with a strong exposure reduction which can be seen in Figure 3 (following page). In normal post proc-essing, I usually choose to just skip the red-eye

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Figure 1

Figure 2

tool and use the local adjustment brush to darken the eye. On occasion, you just can’t get an eye to look right due with either tool.

SPECIFIC LOCAL ADJUSTMENT TOOLS

The remaining three tools all allow you to adjust the following elements of an image: color temperature, color tint, exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows, clarity, saturation, sharpness, noise reduction, moire, and deftringe. For bird photography, I tend to use exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows, clarity, and sharpness. While the following three tools all can be used to make adjustments to those elements, the manner in which they do it are very different.

GRADUATED FILTER

Due to the design of this filter, while I use it regularly in landscape photography, I do not believe I have used it yet on a bird image. There may be an occasion to use it, I just haven’t found a situation yet where I needed it.

RADIAL FILTER

The radial tool is new to LR 5 and the design of this filer may find some use in editing bird images but one has to be careful to avoid overdoing the adjustments and creating an “Instagram” looking image.

The radial filter can be used in a circle or ellipse and the effects can be applied to the area out-side the circle or ellipse (Figure 4) or by checking the invert mask box in the tool box you can apply the effects inside the circle or ellipse. In Figure 4, the effects were exacerbated to make it easy to see how the adjustments are applied. Since most of the local adjustments I make are to small, specific spots or parts of a bird, I much prefer the adjustment brush as I am able to control the ef-fect with greater accuracy.

Where I do believe this tool might excel is having a bit more control over vignetting and to blur the background around a bird. As this is a new tool, ex-perimenting will undoubtedly lead to some new uses for enhancing bird images.

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Figure 3

Figure 4

ADJUSTMENT BRUSH

The true workhorse when it comes to local adjustments for bird photography. Learning how to con-trol, manipulate, mask, and erase will help you make only those adjustments you desire and leave the remainder of the image untouched. Here are some of the things I like to do with the adjustment brush:

• Increase the blur to backgrounds by setting clarity to -100 and sharpness to -100 (you may have to adjust these numbers at time to match other parts of a background)

• Burn (darken) some parts of a bird that are perhaps blown out or lack detail (start at -0.30 and go from there)

• Dodge (lighten) some parts of a bird (lighten an underwing maybe) where detail is lacking (start at -0.25 and go from there)

• Perch Enhancement by adding Shadows (-11), Clarity (+30) and Sharpness (+25)

• Enhance Irises on large birds by adding Exposure (+0.35), Clarity (+10), and Saturation (+40)

• Enhance legs and feet by adding Contrast (varies), Clarity (+20) and Sharpness (+20)

• Enhance feathers with Clarity (+30) and Sharpness (+25)

I have created Presets for each of these so that I can just select the effect (i.e. Perch Enhancement), zoom in on the image and begin “painting” the effect. I generally leave “auto mask” checked all the time as I find it is generally accurate and on the occasion where it is applied outside the lines, I can easily erase the effect.

You can have two different brushes (the A and B brush). For A, I keep the size smaller with a fair amount of feather and the B brush is large with a smaller amount of feathering. You can easily adjust these settings and I find at times I have to turn auto mask off to properly paint over areas with strong contrast. It is possible to edit an existing area by selecting the pin that represents that area and drag-ging sliders for whatever effect you desire. You can turn on the Show Selected Mask Overlay feature which will show the “painted” area in red (Figure 5) and while this can be handy to see what has been selected; however, it does cover the area so that you can’t see the result until you finish the edit.

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Figure 5

There are times I have it on to show what has been selected and, at other times, I click it off to see the effect while leaving the edit active.

Several factors can ensure that your editing with the adjustment brush goes well and leads to the re-sults you want:

• Adjust your zoom so that you can select and paint with accuracy

• Use auto mask most of the time

• Don’t stop selecting if you have some selection “creep” outside your desired area, the erase brush works very well

• Be careful about what pin is selected if you are changing existing settings (the selected pin has a dark center)

• If you know you have used an adjustment brush but you can’t see it, make sure you haven’t set the “Show Edit Pins” to never or auto

• In general, synchronizing the local adjustment brush doesn’t work very well from one image to an-other unless they are exactly alike

• You can overlap adjustment brushes and the effect will be cumulative

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Great Blue HeronPort Aransas, TX

Image synchronization is the ultimate editing time saver in LR and will help in streamlining your workflow. In LR, we have the ability to synchronize metadata and image edits. I primarily use image synchronization for applying captions, copyright metadata, cropping, spot removal, white balance, clarity/vibrance, sharpening/noise reduc-tion, lens correction, and occasionally exposure, con-trast, highlights, shadows, whites, and blacks. There are a couple of different techniques you can use for synchro-nizing.

IMAGE SYNCHRONIZATION

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For metadata synchronization, you have three basic options: the painter tool, the “Synch Metadata” button, and selecting a number of photos in grid view and typing in the information which will then be applied to all selected photos. I find the painter tool handy but don’t really use it very often. I almost never use the “Synch Metadata” button; however, because of how I use captions, I find selecting a series of photos in grid view and then typing in my caption is the easiest to apply metadata to a large number of photos at once. The painter’s tool can be handy when you are dealing with a smaller num-ber of photos.

Once I have entered a specific caption for a series of photos, if you come across some more photos that would require the same caption, it is easy to select those photos and just starting typing as LR will remember other captions already entered and it can auto-fill for you. If you do have photos of the same species but different plumages or locations, you have to be careful as it will first pull up the last entered caption.

When it comes to edit synchronization, the process is a little more straightforward. The three options that I normally use are AutoSync, Sync and Presets. There are other means of synching edits, but I do not find them conducive to a smooth workflow. AutoSync is obviously the quickest method as it simply will make whatever edit(s) you make to the target photo to the other selected photos. While I do use this tool, you must be very careful to ensure that you turn it off when done and that you are ap-plying the edits to the correct photos. AutoSync is turned on by clicking the small switch to the left of the Sync Button. When clicked, the Sync Button turns into AutoSync as shown below.

When you click on the Sync Button, a dialog box opens with all editing options listed and check-boxes. The beauty of this setup is that you can apply any combination of edits you can image to one or more photos at once. It does require paying close attention because things like horizon adjust-ments and local adjustments (like fixing red eye) are not usually effective when synched because even minor differences in one photo to the next can lead to an undesirable result. I often use this even for synching just one adjustment when I have a lot of similar photographs.

I encourage you to practice using this tool on a series of photos (even those you might normally de-lete) so that you can see how it works. It is important that you always have the Process Version op-tion checked because each version has a different way of handling adjustments and if you uncheck this LR will give you a warning that you should not ignore.

Even with synching, I find that it behooves you to examine each photo as some tweaks may remain and even though an image might look very similar upon initial review, edits may need to be adjusted to your taste.

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The Sychronize Settings Panel in LR 5 lets you check the edits you will apply to the selected photos. Process Version should always be checked.

As you update to a new version of LR, it usually means that the process version (how LR handles edits) is also updated. I found the difference from Process 2010 to Process 2013 to be quite dramatic and that most images were improved by updating the process version. I would cau-tion you to just do a bulk conversion though as some changes were dra-matic and needed to be adjusted. You can tell when a photo is in an older process version by looking at the area under the histogram. If the image is from an older version, a lightening bolt will appear in the lower right. By placing your cur-sor on the bolt, the process year will be displayed. Clicking on the bolt will open a dialogue box where you can update the photo or all photos in the filmstrip. I don’t recommend adjusting all pho-tos at once un-less you have the time to review all images in the filmstrip.

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Despite the many advances of LR and our ability to recover some minor exposure issues, the devel-opment of HDR to capture greater ranges of tones, and tremendous advances in camera bod-ies and lens technology, we will always be better off when we are able to capture the best exposure in the field for what we are trying to communicate. Whether you are hoping to capture a silhouette, show a birds many bright colors, or reveal a unique behavior, your editing will be much better when your original image is the best possible.

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GETTING THE BEST EXPOSURE

Yellow-crowned Night HeronGeorgetown, TX

Exposing to the Right (ETTR) is best communicated as follows: when shooting in RAW format, you want to “push” the histogram as far to the right as possible without losing any detail by blowing out the highlights. In the photo of a Green Jay above, you will note that the histogram is pushed as far right without any highlights being “blown.” If the exposure were any lower, details in the darker parts of the image would be lost. Furthermore, for most bird photogra-

EXPOSING TO THE RIGHT (ETTR)

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This photo of a Yellow-throated Warbler is underexposed and would have benefitted from ETTR about a full stop.

phers the part of the image we are most interested in is the bird itself. Thus, we want to ensure as much detail as possible in a bird without los-ing detail in the shadows or blowing out the highlights on the bird.

In the next example of a Yellow-throated Warbler, we see that the image, and more importantly, the bird is underexposed (by about one full stop) but looking at the histogram and LCD on the back of the camera probably would have you thinking the image was properly exposed. When we use the exposure slider to add light, we increase noise in the darker parts of the photo. Adding one stop of light would have blown some of the sun lit portions of the photo to the left, but those are not the main focus of the photo and could have been fixed by adjusting the highlight slider in the Basic Panel. This image is an example of why we want to rely on the histo-gram and not the LCD display on the camera.

Benefits of ETTR:• Maximize the signal-to-noise ratio and the number of tones• Minimize posterization that can occur in the darker areas of the photo

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The Ring-billed Gull has very dark and very bright areas and our histogram is very well balanced to maintain detail in both.

In the photo above, we can see that a great deal of light is being re-flected back on the bird from the water, we have light hitting the top of the bird and the plumage of this bird has a wide dynamic range. Talk about a tough exposure! We want to maintain the detail of the black outer primaries and the bright underside of the bird. It was very impor-tant to not overexpose the image and lose the detail in the belly and back of this bird and yet we needed enough light to see the demarca-tion between the outer primaries. Using the highlight clipping warning on the back of our camera along with ETTR will help us get the best possible exposure.

On the following page, I have turned on the shadow and highlight warn-ings in LR and zoomed in on the wing of the gull. Turning on the warn-ings is accomplished by clicking on the small white squares in the up-per corner on both sides of the histogram. You can zoom in on the im-age by clicking where on the image you want to zoom and you can con-trol the amount of zoom by selecting the ratio in the upper left panel above the thumbnail of the image.

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As you can see in this image, there is very little solid black and no highlights are clipped. This photo is at optimum exposure in my opinion.

These warnings will indicate where, if any, parts of the image are totally black or totally white. Any pixels that are completely black will be shown in blue and any pixels that are completely white will be shown in red when the warning boxes are turned on. You have the choice of turn-ing these warning off as well. Many photographers seek to avoid hav-ing any complete black or complete white elements of the photograph but the reality is that there are times it is more than appropriate.

To conclude this section, I would like to emphasize the fact that there really is no such thing as a correct exposure. There are optimum expo-sures which probably help us best represent what we saw; however, we will best be served by seeking the optimum exposure in camera versus a perfect exposure in LR.

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