Part 5 Lesson 4: advanced edits

This week's optional theme: capture a mood

A more challenging theme to finish this module. Capture a mood or emotion with your camera. Use all your composition, viewpoint and editing skills to speak to your viewer.

1. Split toning

This is where you change the colour of the dark tones and the highlights separately. In darkroom days it was how you got a golden sepia tone to your black and white images, but now we can use any colours we like. In Lightroom the split toning controls are in the Develop module on the right. Pick a highlight colour, and a shadows colour, and watch the whole image change. In October 2020 Lightroom updated the split toning controls into a new “Color Grading” panel. Depending which version you are using you will see the older “Split Toning” panel as shown below, or the newer “Color Grading” panel. You can learn more about the new panel in this video.

This is the 'before' image to compare:

Here are a few more examples of what you can do with split toning. The first image is straight out of camera; the next 3 have been split toned:

2. Graduated filter

Imagine a sheet of acetate that has a gradient painted on it that starts clear at the top, and finishes black at the bottom:

Now imagine you put this over your image and then increase the exposure, but the increased exposure is affected by the gradient. You would get all of the effect at the top, and then a decreasing amount of increased exposure as you go towards the black, and finally none of the effect at the bottom. This is what the graduated filter in Lightroom and other software does. You put the filter on your image, and then make your edit. The edit only happens in the clear or semi-clear parts of the gradient.

Here's what happens with a graduated exposure filter:

The decreased exposure (look at the slider on the right) has only taken effect in the area of the gradient, ie. in the sky. This post-shoot neutral density graduated filter technique is useful for bringing back detail in blown out skies, and is another reason to shoot RAW rather than JPEG. RAW files keep the information about the clouds; a JPEG would not.

In Lightroom the filter is the 4th option along just under the histogram, after the red-eye correction. You can apply different edits, not just exposure: contrast, saturation, and all the sliders listed on the right hand side.

3: CLONING

Sometimes you need to take out a piece of dust that's found its way onto the sensor, or an annoying highlight, or seagull. In Lightroom you can use the "spot removal" brush in the Develop module. It's not particularly sophisticated, and I always switch over to Photoshop if I need to do extensive cloning or healing. The Photoshop content-aware fill tool has to be seen to be believed.

I don't know of any free desktop software that has a cloning tool, where you can sample one area of the image and use it to paint over another part. If you know of a free tool, please hit reply and let me know, and I'll spread the word.

Some apps have elementary cloning options. My favourite, Enlight app has a "Heal" option under "Tools".

4: VIGNETTE

A vignette can subtly draw attention to the subject in your photograph. Try not to overdo it. In Lightroom they are all the way at the bottom of the Develop module column, under Effects > Post crop vignetting.

THIS WEEK'S PROJECT: advanced edits

Pick one or two of the edits described this week, and have a go. Start with your image, and work out what could be improved, rather than trying to shoehorn an editing technique onto a particular photo.

As in previous weeks, don't worry too much about keeping your photos realistic. This module is all about working out what your editing software can do. You've got the rest of your life to remember that just because you can do it, doesn't mean you should do it.

1. If you want to share in the app, join your start date’s group (eg. “June 2020”) and share there.

2. On Instagram, share with the hashtag #AYearWithMyCamera and the date for your start, eg. #AYWMCNov2020.

The Workbooks

If you want to catch up on previous lessons, or just like to have a book in your hands, you will enjoy using the A Year With My Camera workbooks. Designed to be written in, they will give you a complete record of your whole year. Editing is the first chapter in Workbook 2. Search on your local Amazon store.