Most useful tipp for switching to LR4

[drmaxx]

After my switch from 3.6 to 4.0 I was struggling with the sliders. I like the results I achieved, but much of it was somewhat random hit or miss.

Until I discovered the following instructions by Victoria:

• Whereas in the past you’d use Exposure to set the white point, now you use it to set the midtones, and don’t worry if that blows out highlights. That’s the hardest change to get used to, for me, at least!
• Once you’ve got the overall midtone brightness about right, tweak Contrast, again focusing on midtones. You’ll fix the highlights and shadows separately. Even if you never used to use Contrast on the old sliders, you’ll probably need it now.
• From that point, Highlights does upper tones, Shadows does lower tones. If you go too far (50+), it can start to get a tone mapped HDR type look, which is why you need to get Exposure slider right (or close) first. If you get that right, the others fall in nicely.

This are probably the single most important three points for using the development module of LR4 effectively. Thanks Victoria. This just changed everything for me! Not kidding. Still struggling with the exposure slider, but at least now I know what I am aiming at.

 

[Victoria Bampton]

It's a pleasure drmaxx! I'll admit I was really struggling with it to start with too, and ended up having some long emails conversations with Eric Chan on the subject. Thanks for posting them here - I'm sure others will benefit too.

I ended up doing a load of measurements and drawing them out as curves to understand exactly what was happening, so they ended up in the book for those who want more detail and like more technical explanations. It's just the way my brain works!!

Oh, one tip for exposure. Look at the Navigator panel when you're setting exposure, rather than the big preview - it's easier when you're not getting distracted by detail because it's small. And pretend it's the only slider that's available to get it in the right ballpark.

 

[LouieSherwin]

Hi Victoria,

I had pretty much come to the same conclusion. It it consistent with my previous method of developing in LR3 that I learned from Jack Davis, his "Four Step Tango "which was sometimes five steps if you needed step 0. With a little practice I can get a raw file to 90% complete in maybe 10 seconds. That technique is as follows:

0) Crop and set White Balance if needed.
1) Auto to set the exposure and black points.
2) Brightness to set my mid-tones, which Auto almost always missed add Contrast to taste
3) Fill Light to bring back shadow detail often lost in step 2 and Recovery to do the same for highlights
4) Clarity and Vibrance to taste.

For extra credit I adde a step 3a. I found that I could get dramatically better results in the shadow detail and contrast if I would over shoot the Fill Light setting to an unnatural level but if I followed that by dragging the Blacks way up until started clipping.

With the new PV2012 I am still struggling to find a decent strategy to replicate these results. I can get there but it is taking more like 10 minutes and a lot of back and forth comparison with the same image using developed in LR3 with my modified "Four Step Tango".

The new sliders seem too specific and I'm afraid that in the effort to create more elegant algorithms we have lost the more realistic feel of the previous version. With Brightness you can really sculpt the entire tonal range between the whit and black point. There is no equivalent in the new PV. To make the same kind of tonal adjustments with the new PV you have to adjust each of the 5 ranges separately which is at best tedious.

I think that Brightness and Fill Light or new versions of them should be brought back into Develop. I wonder what your thoughts are on this.

-louie

 

[Jimmsp]

... With a little practice I can get a raw file to 90% complete in maybe 10 seconds. That technique is as follows:

0) Crop and set White Balance if needed.
1) Auto to set the exposure and black points.
2) Brightness to set my mid-tones, which Auto almost always missed add Contrast to taste
3) Fill Light to bring back shadow detail often lost in step 2 and Recovery to do the same for highlights
4) Clarity and Vibrance to taste.

...

With the new PV2012 I am still struggling to find a decent strategy to replicate these results. I can get there but it is taking more like 10 minutes and a lot of back and forth comparison with the same image using developed in LR3 with my modified "Four Step Tango".

.....

I think that Brightness and Fill Light or new versions of them should be brought back into Develop. I wonder what your thoughts are on this.

...

Personally, I prefer the new treatment, as I think the processing algorithms are superior. I can process most raw files in less than a minute (untimed). I follow a similar process to what you defined above.

0) Crop and reset White Balance (generally needed).
1) Auto tone - which then sets whites and blacks pretty well; and generally gets the exposure close
2) Exposure to set the overall mid-tones, add Contrast to taste for the main subject
3) Shadows to bring back shadow detail and Highlights to do the same for highlights
3a Fine tune the Whites and Blacks
4) Clarity and Vibrance and saturation to taste.

I view the whites and blacks like I do "levels" in other software.
I generally don't go backwards, unless I mess up the exposure.

I can fine tune with the tone curve, or I'll sometimes use the mask area corrections for specific detail I want to enhance.

As I have been taking a lot of photos recently in bright sunlight, I find the new shadows adjustment superior in bringing out detail from the deep shadows.

Jim

 

[Harry Briels]

I just ordered LR4.0. I am using LR 3.5 right now.
I am not pleased by the information that the sliders in "Basic" are resulting in fundamentally different effects making LR 4.0 more complicated to use.
I wonder whether I should continue using LR3.5 and forget about my investment in LR4.0?
In what way can I keep LR3.5 operating and install simultaneously LR4.0 to see whether I possibly like this new LR?
If you like to help me please let me please have step-by-step instructions, because I am not a software professional, just a user of LR!
Thanks!

 

[Jim Wilde]

No step-by-step instructions are needed.....simply download LR4 and run it for the 30-day free trial period. It will co-exist alongside your LR3 installation, it will create a new catalog when it upgrades the existing one (it leaves the existing one in place), you can switch between the two versions, and you have 30 days to decide if you like it or not.

 

[Victoria Bampton]

Muizen, the LR3 sliders are still available in LR4, so I wouldn't panic.

Louie, try:
0) Crop and set White Balance if needed.
1) Set midtones using Exposure.
2) Add Contrast to taste, again focusing on midtones.
3) Shadows to bring back shadow detail often lost in step 2 and Highlights to do the same for highlights
4) Whites & Blacks to adjust white/black point if needed (very rarely needed, in my experience)
5) Clarity and Vibrance to taste.

 

[Harry Briels]

No step-by-step instructions are needed.....simply download LR4 and run it for the 30-day free trial period. It will co-exist alongside your LR3 installation, it will create a new catalog when it upgrades the existing one (it leaves the existing one in place), you can switch between the two versions, and you have 30 days to decide if you like it or not.

Although it does not really matter much I have as I wrote, already ordered LR4 and it will be coming next week in the mail.
1) What does it mean when you write: "when upgrading the existing (catalog)"?
2) What "happens to the LR3 catalog?
3) When I decide to start using LR4 can I just remove LR3 and will LR4 start using the former LR3 catalog alongside the new LR4 catalog?
4) How can I in case of point "3", integrate the two catalogs into one complete catalog?
Thank you for assisting me!

 

[Jim Wilde]

1. When you start LR4 for the first time, it should find your existing LR3 catalog and ask you if you want to upgrade it, and will give you options about what to name it and where to place it. The point is that the existing catalog is read by LR4, and a new LR4 catalog is created. If LR4 does not find your existing LR3 catalog when first started, simply do File>Open and point to the LR3 catalog and it will go through the same upgrade process. As Victoria mentioned, all the pictures from the upgraded LR3 catalog will first appear in LR4 using the older 2010 Process version, meaning all the develop controls will appear as they do now in LR3. All subsequent new imports to LR4 will come in with the new 2012 Process Version, so will have the new develop controls. You can, at your convenience, choose to upgrade existing PV2010 images to PV2012, although that is entirely optional. Best advice so far is do not batch update, do it selectively if at all.

Note: it is not mandatory to upgrade your LR3 catalog to LR4....you can use LR4 going forward with a new catalog, and retain LR3 for your current catalog. That may get a bit messy trying to manage your portfolio across two different catalogs/versions. I would imagine most LR4 users would have upgraded their LR3 catalog.

2. Nothing. The LR3 catalog stays exactly where it currently is.

3. There is no need to 'remove LR3' when you decide to start using LR4. Both programs can exist on your system independently, and I believe on a Mac they can both be run at the same time (that's not possible on a Windows system). LR3 will continue to use the LR3 catalog, and LR4 will continue to use the LR4 catalog, which may or may not contain the upgraded information from the LR3 catalog, depending on your upgrade approach in point 1. If you DO upgrade your LR3 catalog to LR4, you can subsequently unistall LR3 when you are sure there's no longer a need to keep it.

4. If you have allowed LR4 to upgrade your LR3 catalog, this question is not applicable. If, OTOH, you decide start off with a new clean LR4 catalog, keeping the LR3 catalog separate and not upgraded, and then subsequently decide you want to merge them back into one catalog, you would need (using LR4) to do File>Import from Catalog and point to the LR3 catalog. At this point LR4 will first need to upgrade the LR3 catalog to LR4 before importing it. Personally, that's a messy approach....unless you have strong reasons to keep the two catalogs running separately I would go with the upgrade from the outset.

 

[macjim]

I would suggest you hold off getting 4.0 and await the 4.1 update version as 4.0 is full of bugs just now. Save yourself a lot problems just now. Check the Adobe Lightroom forums to see what I mean.

 

[drmaxx]

I am not pleased by the information that the sliders in "Basic" are resulting in fundamentally different effects making LR 4.0 more complicated to use.

LR4 is not more complicated to use. It is just different. If you developed a strong routine in LR3.x how to achieve a desired look then you need to change your strategy. Victorias approach works really well.

However, LR4 is not more difficult to use - I would even claim that it is easier once you rewired your brain from LR3 to LR4. You can be much bolder with the sliders and don't have to be as careful as with LR3 not to introduce artefacts.

And I am certainly no software or LR guru - not even by a long shot.

P.S. LR4.0 works well for me. There are some bugs, but the core functionality is there and working well. Still, not a bad strategy to upgrade to 4.1 - hopefully in a few days.

 

[LouieSherwin]

Victoria and Jim,

Thank you both for your suggestions of a method to use the new develop sliders. It seems that the only difference between the two is whether to use Auto or not. So far I have found that Auto gives me a better starting point than starting from scratch. Although I have seen some reports of strange behavior with Auto on some images I have not experienced that problem.

Following your suggestions I have gone back and reworked several images that I had developed in LR3.6. I am happy to report that I am now getting comfortable with the new tools and that I am seeing better results. Not only in the shadows, as you noted Jim, but across the whole tonal range.

I have noticed that in PV2012 setting the new Exposure slider has a big effect on how the rest of the sliders work. I find that it is much more central to the develop process than any of the sliders controls in PV2010 were. If, when trying to regain detail in their respective regions, I am moving either Highlights or Shadows sliders to extreme settings (+-90) I will get better results if I go back and adjust the Exposure in the same direction first. Then when I return to Highlights or Shadows the missing detail I was looking for is easier to extract from the image.

Here is an example of the difference that I am now seeing now that I am getting more practiced with the new tools.

-louie

View attachment 2089View attachment 2090

 

[Victoria Bampton]

I have noticed that in PV2012 setting the new Exposure slider has a big effect on how the rest of the sliders work. I find that it is much more central to the develop process than any of the sliders controls in PV2010 were. If, when trying to regain detail in their respective regions, I am moving either Highlights or Shadows sliders to extreme settings (+-90) I will get better results if I go back and adjust the Exposure in the same direction first. Then when I return to Highlights or Shadows the missing detail I was looking for is easier to extract from the image.

Yep, spot on Louie. That's why the recommendation to work down and nail the exposure first.