# Developing Photos - Key Indicators



## getty29 (Jan 9, 2014)

Hi everyone,

I'm relatively new to LR and have spent the last few days playing around with old photos, taken on a combination of a Canon Powershot A1300 (Compact) and Nikon D3200 (DSLR) cameras. I have followed Victoria's advice to go through and rate photos, reject, etc and then to spend most time working on the best ones, so I have been tweaking my favourite of the photos to enhance them.

What I have found with a lot of the best photos is that initially I do not actually know what corrections to make to them as they already look pretty good originally. It is only after tweaking them a little bit and then comparing the before and after that I realise whether the photos are over/underexposed etc...

My question then is this: Am I working in a way that is actually detrimental to producing the best results? Do other people work on the assumption that if the photo looks good originally they don't need to make any alterations and therefore don't, or do people edit all their best photos regardless of whether they think they need to? What 'Key Indicators' do you use to work out whether a photo needs a decent amount of time in Develop? I'm trying to gauge the most efficient way of working on photos to produce the best results without wasting time editing photos that don't need it.

Any thoughts on the matter appreciated!


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## Tony Jay (Jan 9, 2014)

Hi Getty29, welcome to Lightroom Forums!

My main query is whether you are shooting JPEG (as your profile suggests) or RAW?
Although one can apply any Develop module edits to images that are JPEGS, one's camera is doing many of the edits itself according to what the engineers believe makes a good image.
If you are editing RAW images then we can discuss a logical editing workflow.

Tony Jay


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## Victoria Bampton (Jan 9, 2014)

getty29 said:


> What I have found with a lot of the best photos is that initially I do not actually know what corrections to make to them as they already look pretty good originally. It is only after tweaking them a little bit and then comparing the before and after that I realise whether the photos are over/underexposed etc...



Being able to see that at a glance comes with time and practise.  You'll get there.

One tip that helps - look at the navigator in the top left corner and squint your eyes.  Then decide whether it looks too bright or too dark.  It's easier to make that decision on a small blurry picture because you're not getting distracted by that content of the photo.


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## getty29 (Jan 9, 2014)

The photos that I took prior to getting LR are in JPEG, but I am beginning to shoot in RAW now after my boss sent me on a photography course and I started to realise the extra flexibility that RAW provides.


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## Tony Jay (Jan 9, 2014)

Thanks for the feedback Getty29.

With RAW images there are a few important issues to understand:
1. Using a parametric editing paradigm (ie Lightroom) it is impossible to harm an image by making editing adjustments. This is because the original RAW image is never altered. Lightroom keeps a record of all the adjustments you have made as instructions in its database (called a catalog in Lightroom). The only time these adjustments are "hard baked" into pixels are when one exports an image. So, feel free to experiment to your heart's content knowing that at any time you can just reset.
2. RAW image are just that, raw. They are not a finished product (a JPEG, in contradistinction, straight out of the camera is mean't to be a finished product). Almost every RAW image can benefit from targeted adjustments in a RAW converter.
RAW images are 16-bit images (unlike JPEGs that are 8-bit images) and can often tolerate fairly extreme adjustments without compromising on image quality.
3. Shooting RAW and shooting JPEGS are very different exercises. An optimally exposed RAW image in-camera will often look terrible (over-exposed) when first viewed. Research the term "expose to the right" on the internet.
4. Your profile indicates Lightroom 5.x as your current Lightroom version so I will discuss Develop adjustments as they apply to Process2012. Process2012 is an improvement on Process2010, and a vast improvement on Process2003.
5. A quick glance at the sub panels on the right in the Develop module immediately gives one a clue as to how to proceed. White balance, exposure, and contrast are the three key adjustments. All the others are for fine tuning only. The top-down order is the easiest way to go.
6. If a significant crop will be required for an image I will often crop first before making any other adjustments because it alters my aesthetic appreciation of what needs to be done.
7. With regard to tonal adjustments after exposure and contrast adjustments have been optimised, shadow and highlights adjustments are tackled next. These are usually just fine tuning. Blacks and whites are there only to adjust the black and white points respectively.
8. With regard to the "Presence" sliders my suggestion is to only play around with the saturation slider to see what happens but, in general, to avoid using it for serious image adjustment. I would just use the vibrance slider for boosting or toning down colour because it respects gradations of colour. (A full explanation of how differently the saturation and vibrance sliders work is beyond this post.)
8. Although the tone curve and the HSL controls can be very useful I will not go into any detail how and why to apply them now.
9. Capture sharpening and noise reduction are essential skills to know how to do well. Some images do not need noise reduction but many will will. All RAW images need capture sharpening but the characteristics of the image itself determine the approach to capture sharpening so no broad statements are possible.
10. Regional edits, using the adjustment brush or the graduated filter, come after all the global edits have been done.
11. Because of the parametric editing approach taken by Lightroom it is possible to do edits in any order. It is also possible to "round trip" and go back to a slider a slider previously adjusted and adjust it again. Lightroom will optimise all the adjustments made.
12. Lightroom keeps track of any and all adjustments made and the adjustment history is available so one can go back as many adjustments as are required to a prior state.
13. Snapshots can also be used to record the state of an image at any point if required.
14. Virtual images can also be used to develop images in different ways - say a black-and-white version of a colour image. In Lightroom a virtual image is just a set of instructions and a pointer back to the original RAW image. All the editing tools are available to modify a virtual image in the same way.

Considering whole books are written on this topic I cannot give every detail that may apply to editing your images.
Excellent resources to enlarge your knowledge in this area include Victoria Brampton's FAQ book, Martin Evening's tome on Lightroom 5, and various print and video resources by Jeff Schewe.

It may also be useful to find someone who knows Lightroom well and ask them what they would do with some of your RAW images, specifically the one's that you feel do not really require further editing. You may well be very surprised just how much better those images look after been appropriately adjusted.

Good luck and have fun!

Tony Jay


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## camner (Jan 10, 2014)

When I first started seriously with LR (about 8 months ago) I, too, felt overwhelmed by "how do I know what to do?"  (This was also my first experience with RAW.) I read books and watched videos, and while I learned a lot about how (and why) the various adjustment tools worked, I still thought to myself, "But how do I know what the image really needs?"  So, I did what Tony Jay suggested.  I just played around. I spent too long on images, trying to see what I could do to make them better, mostly for practice rather than for the end result.  I decided to shoot in RAW + JPG so I could always compare with what the camera did, because I figured if I can't make the RAW file look at least as good (not necessarily the same at all, just equal to or better in my subjective judgment of the quality of the end result), why bother with RAW? A bit to my surprise, it wasn't too long before it was abundantly clear that I could get to a result better than the camera jpg pretty quickly and on almost all images. While I'm still shooting in RAW + JPG, I know it won't be too long before I give up the jpg (unless I'm shooting something where I know I'll need to get out shots to people quickly via email and where I don't have LR with me).

I still shake my head when I (re)watch some of George Jardine's videos where he comments about what he sees in a picture that needs improvement and then shows how to accomplish it.  I now know how to accomplish it, but some of the things he sees I can't, even after he points it out.  But someday I probably will, and meanwhile, I'm WAY ahead of where I was before in terms of the quality of the results I'm getting, in comparison to shooting jpg.  So, again, to echo Tony Jay, "Just jump in.  Everything is nondestructive, so you aren't harming your image no matter what you do."


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## getty29 (Jan 10, 2014)

Wow! I didn't expect such detailed answers! 

Thanks to Victoria, Tony Jay and Camner for the great tips. I'm liking the idea of shooting in RAW and JPEG to assist editing, I think I will start using that until I get slightly more confident.

Tony Jay: I've gone back and looked through the unedited photos I've been working through and I can can see what you mean about JPEG being a more finished photo. It now makes a lot more sense to me why on some photos I find it difficult to see what edits to make. Thanks for all the tips in the post.

My wife wants some photos taking for her website this weekend, so I will try implementing the tips you've all given. If anyone else wants to contribute ideas, feel free, it's always helpful to learn about as many ways of working as possible (in my humble opinion, anyway!)


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