# Bring back fill light - Please!



## quantum (Jul 5, 2013)

After months of struggling to develop hundreds of wedding pictures I have reluctantly gone back to process version 2010. Although there's a gain in quality going using process version 2012, the gains are far outweighed by the extra time it takes.
2010 you need only to adjust exposure fill light and maybe increase blacks. Now each slider has a drawback in 2012 necessitating revisiting sliders to reajust.

Please for the love of God (BTIM) LR(!) bring back a fill light. Shadows and Darks together do a similar thing but it's at least twice the work.

John


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## clee01l (Jul 5, 2013)

quantum said:


> Please for the love of God (BTIM) LR(!) bring back a fill light. Shadows and Darks together do a similar thing but it's at least twice the work...


 You also get twice (or more) of the control. I think you will find yourself in the minority with this position.  To "bring back fill Light" would be to revert to PV2010.  You are already doing this.


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## sizzlingbadger (Jul 5, 2013)

PV2012 is quite complex and the names on the sliders are not entirely "in line" with common knowledge of photo processing applications. The Exposure slider for example is not a simple exposure adjustment as per many other applications. I teach Lightroom on an ad-hoc basis at our local club and many people struggled with PV2012. Those moving from PV2010 seemed to have the most trouble as they had to change their conception of the way the tools worked.

I found PV2012 a problem personally when I first started using it. It took me quite a long time to figure out the way to approach certain photos and corrections. The Adobe recommendation is to start at the top and work your way down the tools and this was worked pretty well in PV2010, I don't think it does so much in PV2012. I have found with many (reasonably exposed) images that starting with the sliders in the Tone Curve is a much better approach, every image varies of course.

I have worked with quite a few people that know LR well and when I demonstrate the tools and what they actually do with some working examples they suddenly have this "revelation" and are quite amazed that they were using the tools in the way they were. I'm talking primarily about the Basic & Tone Curve panels here. The Exposure slider is the one most people grab first and it can really muck up your starting point if you don't understand what its really doing.

George Jardine has a video where he explains the tools and demonstrates them and his technique is what I use now when teaching. 

http://mulita.com/blog/?page_id=5852


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## Tony Jay (Jul 5, 2013)

John, once you have "caught" exactly how the tonal controls work in PV2012 you will never look back.
In fact, not only is the image quality better but the process is easier and quicker.
I would seriously suggest following sizzlingbadger's advice and really understanding the warp and woof of PV2012.

Tony Jay


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## MarkNicholas (Jul 6, 2013)

Took me a while too but now would never go back to PV2010. One interesting thing I find though is that my exposure workflow consists of pulling the highlight slider to the left and the shadow slider to the right and then I adjust exposure to get the mid tones right and then I adjust the white slider to control highlight clipping and then the black point. This is not the way we are told to do it but for most of my photos it works for me. For very contrasty photos I can end up pulling the highlights all the way left and the shadows all the way right. I finally adjust the contrast slider.


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## Bryan Conner (Jul 6, 2013)

I would never go back to PV2010.  It also took me a while to get the hang of PV2012.  I had to forget about PV2010 and learn how to process in PV2012.  The theories, thinking, and techniques do not translate directly from PV2010 to PV2012.  But, of course if you are happy with the results you get from PV2010 then so be it.  This is precisely why Adobe gives you the option to choose your process version.


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## frozenframe (Jul 6, 2013)

BHPhoto & Video Event Space has some fantastic presentations about Lightroom. The nice thing is that they're free to view on YouTube. Here's a link to one of Tim Grey's presentations   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wm6OroP6CAU

Here's the presentation Tim Grey does on the Develop Module, called Optimizing Photos in Lightroom
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyYVvwCWVC0

I think Tim Grey is an excellent instructor/speaker. He's not a dry talker, has a sense of humor which is always a big plus for instructing. I find learning new things much easier when the instructor/presenter uses good humor. FWIW, I never saw or used LR until last month. I didn't have a clue on how to really use the program, until I discovered his presentations on YouTube.


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## sizzlingbadger (Jul 6, 2013)

Watched Tim Greys presentation, good presenter but classic mis-understanding of what the exposure tools are actually doing. He says he doesn't need the Tone Curve controls because the basic panel can do the same thing. This is wrong, honestly watch George Jardine's video carefully. The rest of the presentation is good though.

I have been testing Capture One for a few weeks and I can see why many people try Lightroom and don't like it. It is very easy to flatten an image in LR so it looks bland and un-interesting. LR has an aggressive compression algorithm and once you know how to use the controls properly you can avoid this and also use it to your advantage to improve things.

How many of you ever push the Highlights slider to the right ?  I'm betting not many but I do it quite a lot now with certain images and the results combined with other sliders are very good.


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## Jimmsp (Jul 6, 2013)

sizzlingbadger said:


> ..... LR has an aggressive compression algorithm and once you know how to use the controls properly you can avoid this and also use it to your advantage to improve things.
> 
> ....



Do you have a reference to this?
Thanks.


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## sizzlingbadger (Jul 6, 2013)

Yes the George Jardine video.  But you can see it for yourself too by watching the histogram.


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## Jimmsp (Jul 7, 2013)

sizzlingbadger said:


> Yes the George Jardine video.  But you can see it for yourself too by watching the histogram.


Thanks. I don't need to pay for the video. I do watch the histogram all the time. I always wish I could easily enlarge it.
I also use Capture One a lot, and follow all the details there as well.

I'm still trying to more fully understand the LR interplay between the tone curve and shadows/highlights.
I can follow what happens, but I'd like to understand the algorithms better; the curve is rather straightforward.

I have concluded it is better to adjust the tone curve before you adjust the shadows/highlights; similar to Capture One.
I have also been a fan of levels for years.


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## quantum (Jul 7, 2013)

*Thanks*

I haven't had much time to investigate the online links, but thanks so much to those who have commented and suggested tricks and tips.

My comments seem to have stirred up a bit of discussion. There seems a small discrepancy between actual practise and Adobe advised in terms of slider adjustment sequence. The thought of diving straight into tone curve seems alien to how I would normally work.
As I predicted I wouldn;t get much support in my request but I did at least get acknowledgement of the fact that LR has gone from being straighforward in terms of how photographers work to ...erm harder IMO.
Now I understand if there's substatial benefits in final image quality that this _may _be desirable, but for many jobbing togs I do wonder how many have been left feeling as I do.

What concerns me is that in the future LR abandons the 2010 process version, leaving no alternative for those of us who just need to get work out - decently and in a good timeframe.

Will take time to investigate your comments over the next few days. Cheers J


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