• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Home
  • News
  • Reviews
  • Downloads
    • Adobe Photography Plans
    • Capture One
    • DxO PhotoLab
    • DxO Nik Collection
    • Exposure X
    • ON1 Photo RAW
    • Skylum Luminar
    • Aurora HDR
  • Editing A-Z
  • About

Life after Photoshop

  • Lightroom
  • Capture One
  • DxO PhotoLab
  • Nik Collection
  • Exposure X
  • ON1 Photo RAW
  • Aurora HDR

Porthleven power lines in Lightroom: one LUT, three graduated filters

September 30, 2020 by Rod Lawton

Porthleven is a small coastal town in Cornwall. It’s popular with tourists, but it’s a working town too, so not every scene makes the perfect postcard picture. You can either try to hide objects that don’t fit your vision of a place, or treat them as a part of what that place is and try to work them into the picture. That’s generally what I like to do.

There’s a fashion in photography and especially on social media for a kind of ‘idealised reality’, but mostly I find regular reality quite interesting enough.

I can’t say much, however, since I also edit images heavily to give them the mood and the ‘look’ that I want. In my defence I suppose I would say I like to condense and exaggerate what’s there rather than trying to change it completely.

You can see the before and after shots above. The original was pretty flat tonally, but I liked the composition with the strong diagonal lines and the quayside church framed between them, and I could see interesting tones in the sky, so I shot this in RAW to give me plenty of processing latitude later.

Here’s the ‘after’ shot. It’s been made in Lightroom, but you could use the same technique in any program that offers decent RAW processing and local adjustment tools. I’ve numbered the adjustments I made so you can see the settings and the reasons for each one in the steps below.

Note that all the screenshots show the ‘after’ version with all the steps applied. I’ve just picked them out individually to explain how they contribute to the overall effect.

Step 01: Choosing a profile

There are countless ways to convert a color image into black and white. The usual, technical method is to mix different color ranges to produce the effect of black and white ‘contrast’ filters. For speed and instant inspiration, though, I prefer profiles. Lightroom has its own black and white profiles, but I’m a big fan of Lutify.me profiles (they are actually LUTs, but adapted into profiles for Lightroom). The one I’ve used here is called BW Belium. It is a bright and contrasty profile with a look I really like.

Step 02: Adding a grad for the sky

I wanted to bring back the sky detail for this shot to add some stormy drama, and after much experimenting I decided I needed two. This first grad has a pretty tight gradation, as you can see from the mask, and I’ve lined it up carefully with the horizon to hide the transition as far as psossible.

I’ve used a pretty strong Dehaze setting to exaggerate the clouds. This does darken the sky at the same time, but I still need to reduce the Exposure value still further to bring back the detail. The brightest parts still look a little ‘blown’, so I’ve dragged down the Whites slider to bring those back too.

Step 03: A second grad for the sky

The first graduated filter darkened the sky, but because I had to position it tight up against the horizon, it hasn’t given the expanse of sky above that gradation in tone that skies usually have. So I’ve added a second, much more softly graduated filter above the first with the Exposure value reduced. This makes the sky dark and stormy, but progressively lighter towards the horizon.

Step 04: A third grad for the foreground

I think images need good ‘global contrast’ – in other words, they need larger areas of light and dark to give them some graphic impact when you look at thumbnails or view them from a distance. I thought that because I’d made the sky so dense and dark in this image that I needed a balancing dark area in the bottom left-hand corner, so I used a third graduated filter, lined up to follow the low wall in the foreground, and with an Exposure reduction. That didn’t quite look ‘punchy’ enough, so I pushed the Clarity right up to 100.

Step 05: A vignette effect

Just to add another dose of contrast, I finished off with a Post Crop Vignetting adjustment, just enough to darken the corners of the picture and focus attention on the central area. Vignettes are a very useful framing device to subtly enhance the image composition.

Read more

  • Top 10 graduated filter tips
  • How to add a new sky to a landscape without selections
  • Try out the Lightroom Graduated Filter color effect

Related

Filed Under: Featured, Lightroom, Tutorials Tagged With: Black and white, Graduated filters, Lightroom, LUTs, Vignette

Primary Sidebar

Get the Adobe Photography Plan

Reviews

The best image-editing software: what to look for, where to find out more

November 2, 2020

DxO PhotoLab 4 review

November 2, 2020

Exposure X6 review

October 9, 2020

More reviews

  • Lightroom CC review (2020)
  • Lightroom Classic review
  • DxO PhotoLab vs Lightroom vs Capture One – which is best for RAW files?
  • Best image cataloguing software: tools to keep your images organised
  • Skylum Luminar 4.3 review
  • ON1 Photo RAW 2020.5 review
  • ON1 360 review
  • Analog Efex Pro 2 review
  • Perspective Efex review
  • DxO Nik Collection 3 review
  • Exposure X5 review
  • Capture One 20 review

Contact

Email lifeafterphotoshop@gmail.com

Life after Photoshop A-Z

A

  • Aberrations
  • Accent-AI filter (Skylum)
  • ACROS (Fujifilm)
  • Adjustment brush
  • ... more
  • Adjustment layer
  • Adobe Bridge
  • Adobe Camera Raw
  • Adobe RGB
  • Affinity Photo
  • AI (artificial intelligence)
  • Album
  • Alien Skin Exposure X
  • Analog
  • Analog Efex Pro
  • Apple Aperture
  • Apple Photos
  • Aspect ratio
  • As shot (white balance)
  • Astia
  • Augmented Sky
  • Aurora HDR
  • Auto white balance
  • Axial chromatic aberration

B

  • Barrel distortion
  • Batch processing
  • Bits and bit depth
  • Black and white
  • ... more
  • Black and white filters
  • Blend modes
  • Bokeh
  • Borders and frames
  • Boundary Warp (Lightroom)
  • Bracketing
  • Brush
  • Burn Edges (Silver Efex Pro)

C

  • C4K video
  • Camera calibration
  • Camera Kit (Analog Efex Pro)
  • Capture One
  • ... more
  • Cataloguing software
  • Channel
  • Chromatic aberration
  • Clarity
  • Clipping
  • Cloud storage
  • CMYK
  • Collection
  • Color adjustment
  • Color cast
  • Color Efex Pro
  • Color fringing
  • Color labels
  • Color management
  • Color model
  • Color noise
  • Color space
  • Color temperature
  • Composition
  • Constrain Crop
  • Contrast
  • Contrast filter
  • Control Point
  • Corner shading
  • Creative Cloud (Adobe)
  • Cropping
  • Cross Processing
  • Culling images
  • Curves

D

  • Darks
  • Dehaze
  • Depth of field
  • Detail Extractor
  • ... more
  • Dfine
  • Diffraction
  • Distortion
  • Distortion correction
  • Dodging and burning
  • Dropbox
  • DxO FilmPack
  • DxO Optics Pro
  • DxO PhotoLab
  • DxO ViewPoint
  • Dynamic range

E

  • Effects
  • Export
  • Exposure latitude
  • Exposure value (EV)
  • ... more
  • Exposure X

F

  • Film simulation
  • Folders
  • Frame rate
  • Full HD

G

  • Gamut
  • Geometry (Lightroom)
  • Golden hour
  • Gradient mask
  • ... more
  • Graduated filters
  • Grain
  • Guided Upright (Lightroom)

H

  • HDR
  • HDR Efex Pro
  • HD video
  • Highlight recovery
  • ... more
  • Highlights
  • Histogram
  • History
  • HSL adjustments
  • Hue/Saturation

I

  • Import
  • Instagram
  • ISO

J

  • JPEG
  • JPEG vs RAW

K

  • Keywords

L

  • Lab mode
  • Laowa 9mm f2.8
  • Lateral chromatic aberration
  • Layers
  • ... more
  • Lens corrections
  • Lens profile
  • Levels
  • Light leak
  • Lightroom
  • Lightroom CC
  • Lightroom Mobile
  • Lightroom web
  • Lights
  • Linear gradient
  • Loawa 9mm f/2.8
  • Local adjustments
  • Loupe
  • Luma curve
  • Luminance (contrast) noise
  • Luminar
  • Lutify.me
  • LUTs

M

  • MacPhun Creative Kit
  • Masks
  • Metadata
  • Microcontrast (DxO)
  • ... more
  • Miniature effect
  • Mobile photography
  • Monitor calibration
  • Moonlight

N

  • Nik Collection
  • Noir
  • Noise
  • Noise reduction
  • ... more
  • Non-destructive editing

O

  • Old Photo (Color Efex Pro)
  • ON1 360
  • ON1 Perfect Suite
  • ON1 Photo RAW
  • ... more
  • Organising
  • Orton Effect
  • Overlays

P

  • Panoramas
  • Parametric curves
  • Perspective correction
  • Perspective Efex
  • ... more
  • PhotoDirector
  • Photography Plan (Adobe)
  • Photoshop
  • Photoshop Elements
  • Picktorial
  • Picture Control/Style
  • Pincushion distortion
  • Pixelmator
  • Plug-ins
  • Point curve
  • Polarising filter
  • Post crop or pre crop vignette
  • Presets
  • Printer profile
  • Print sizes
  • Profiles
  • Provia

Q

  • Quick fixes

R

  • Radial filter
  • Radial gradient
  • Radial mask
  • Ratings
  • ... more
  • RAW+JPEG
  • RAW file
  • RAW processing
  • Recipes (Color Efex Pro)
  • Repair tool (DxO)
  • Replace Color
  • Retouching
  • RGB

S

  • S-shaped curve
  • Saturation
  • Selection
  • Selective colour
  • ... more
  • Selective Tone (DxO)
  • Sensei (Adobe)
  • Sensor size
  • Shadow recovery
  • Shadows
  • Sharpener Pro
  • Sharpening
  • Sidecar file
  • Signal to noise ratio
  • Silver Efex Pro
  • Skylum
  • Slow motion
  • Smart Album or Collection
  • Smart Object
  • Smart Preview (Lightroom)
  • SmugMug
  • Snapseed
  • Snapshot (editing)
  • Soft focus
  • Solarisation
  • Sony A7R II
  • Sony A6000
  • Split toning
  • Spot removal
  • sRGB
  • Straighten
  • Structure
  • Sunlight filter (Color Efex Pro)

T

  • Targeted adjustment
  • Temperature (white balance)
  • Textures
  • TIFF format
  • ... more
  • Tilt shift
  • Timelapse
  • Tint (white balance)
  • Tone curve
  • Toning
  • Topaz Labs
  • Transform

U

  • Upright tool (Lightroom)

V

  • Variants (Capture One Pro)
  • Velvia
  • Versions (Lightroom)
  • Vibrance
  • ... more
  • Video
  • Vignette
  • Vignetting
  • Virtual Copy (Lightroom)
  • Viveza
  • Volume deformation or anamorphosis

W

  • Warmth
  • Watermark
  • White balance
  • White balance presets
  • ... more
  • Working space

X

  • X-Trans sensor

Z

  • Zone System

0-9

  • 4K UHD
  • 4K video
  • 8-bit image
  • 1:1 ratio
  • ... more
  • 14-bit RAW
  • 16-bit image
  • 3:2 ratio
  • 4:3 ratio
  • 16:9

Copyright © 2021 · News Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in

We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with it.OK