Simulating Photoshop's "Shadows and highlights" command in Lightroom

[Tim Armes]

Hi all,

After having finally worked around a bug that's stopped me from fully testing lightroom on my PC(*), I've been testing it's functionalities far more fully than I had before.

In general I'm very impressed with the Tone Curve control. It allows me to control the curve much more quickly and effeciently that I can in Photoshop. This said, I'm finding that it has severe limitations with high contrast images in which I wish to retain detail in the highlights.

A typical image might be a landscape taken such that the sky hasn't blown out. The sky contains lots of cloud detail but the landscape itself is underexposed. Of couse, there are lots of techniques for dealing with this situation, such as developing two versions from the RAW and blending in Photoshop, or better still taking two images on a tripod and blending those, but I'm interested in seeing if I can get good results in Lightroom alone.

Have any of you successfully used Lightroom's tone curve to get good results from such images? By that I mean the sort of results that might be expected from Photoshop's "Shadows/Highlights" command.

I realise that the Shadows/Highlight command is doing some particularly clever things under the hood, and that it doesn't simply apply a curve. It may be that these sorts of results aren't currently possible with LR.

Regards,

Tim

* I describe the bug and the workaround here:

http://www.openphotographyforums.com/forums/showthread.php?p=7901#post7901

[Michael Tapes]

I would suggest taking a look at the beta 4 version when it is released. There should be a lot of changes.

[Tim Armes]

Of course, I'll be grabbing it as soon as it's available.

Are there any members here who have had experience of it? My biggest problem with Beta 3 is that I can't use it to organise my images for speed reasons. Adding a new category takes about 8-15 seconds. Adding keywords to an image takes about the same.

I realise that Adobe have already stated that speed will be addressed, but I wonder if these particular issues have been addressed in beta 4?

Tim

[Diane Fields]

Of course, I'll be grabbing it as soon as it's available.

Are there any members here who have had experience of it? My biggest problem with Beta 3 is that I can't use it to organise my images for speed reasons. Adding a new category takes about 8-15 seconds. Adding keywords to an image takes about the same.

I realise that Adobe have already stated that speed will be addressed, but I wonder if these particular issues have been addressed in beta 4?

Tim

Tim, I only add small 'shoots' to demo LR. I have it set so that it references the folders where they are--rather than moving them to LR--where it puts them in MD/MP I believe. In actuality, I use Imatch as my database and probably will continue to do so, but that could change when vs. 1.0 is released (or at least I may try using LR also--won't put all my eggs in one basket at that point)..

Personally, I like the conversions more than I expected to like them---the RC is of more interest to me. I understood that speed was a problem and just overlooked it at this point. I'm anxious for beta 4 and expecting some nice changes as alluded to by Michael Tapes and Jeff Schewe on LL.

I'd just hang in there and not try to push it to do too much--just use it as a 'tryout' so to speak. I understand that the Mac folks have less problem with speed than the PC folks--but that would be expected as the Win version has to catch up. So far I would say that it holds promise but since I always end up in PS---I wonder if anything other than the develop module will hold interest for me--but I'm withholding judgment on that at this point.

Diane

[Mike Spinak]

As Michael said, Beta Version 4 will address your shadow/highlight recovery needs. It has some other interesting additions, too. It shouldn't be too much longer of a wait.

Mike

www.mikespinak.com

[Tim Armes]

As Michael said, Beta Version 4 will address your shadow/highlight recovery needs. It has some other interesting additions, too. It shouldn't be too much longer of a wait.

Mike

www.mikespinak.com (http://www.mikespinak.com)

OK, thanks.

I'm looking forwards to seeing what they offer next. If LR continues the way it's heading, It'll certainly become my most used workflow tool.

Tim

[Andrew Stannard]

Looking forward to Beta 4 too - wish those in the know weren't so good about abiding by NDA's!

I gather from the Lightroom Podcasts that an RSP style 'Vibrance' control might also make it way in. Seems to be coming together into excellent tool...