# LR4 vs. LR3 not fairing so well.



## 180q (Oct 11, 2012)

I shoot a lot of sports.  Some of which takes place at night.  I recently upgraged to LR4 albeit with cold feet...hence the delay.  I'm finding a few things that I not liking at all about LR4.  The first thing is skin tones.  They just seem to really get effected using the whites and highlights sliders; not in a good way.  That said, I haven't spent all that much time playing with it in that regard.

I have spent most of the night developing some night time images however.  I'm finding that I can't even come close to what I could do in LR3.  In LR3 I could completely control the exposure on the player and also the exposure of the background using fill, brightness and tone sliders.  In LR4 everything seems to effect the background (black) area when trying to get the player exposed how I want. I keep trying and trying but I just keep going back to 2010 because it just works.  Here are some examples:

Straight out of camera, converted to jpeg:



Edited in LR4 2010: 


Final after CEP4:


So, I shoot for the highlights on location then in LR I knock down the ambient (black) background and adjust exposure on the lit subject.  Whatever I do in LR4 I just can't get the fill on the subject where I want it. Nothing works.  At the same time everything I try to do to pull up the exposure of the subject also heavily effects the black areas (brightening) them.  This is easily controlled for me in LR3 but in LR4 I'm just failing big time.  Any ideas? 

Looking at it now, this may not be the best example image since it started out pretty well exposed but I do have many others where the subject needs fill and the background needs darkening. 

Thanks,
Chad


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## Mark Sirota (Oct 11, 2012)

Most likely what's happening is something that affects almost everyone who has experience pre-LR4 -- you need a different mindset when adjusting the sliders.  Specifically start with Exposure and *look at the mid-tones* while you do so. In LR3, you looked at the highlights.

Everything is keyed off the mid-tones. If you're finding that the sliders only seem to adjust the dark areas, then the exposure is set too high.

Victoria has a great way of explaining how to do this -- while adjusting Exposure, pretend it's the only slider you've got, and make it look as good as you can with that one slider.  And, importantly, don't do this while looking at the main photo in the center of the screen -- look instead at the Navigator in the upper left.  It's smaller, so you can't look at details, you have to look at the whole photo.


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