Sometimes when you're out making photos, things don't always go just as you'd like. You can be in the most stunning scenery, but the light won't cooperate. This happened to me a few days ago while traveling through the Big...

Although I rarely use the Split Tone panel in the Develop module (and I bet you can say the same), there are a couple of situations in which I find it extremely useful: Toned Black and Whites and full color...

Last week I discussed a technique for adjusting white balance in the Develop module of Lightroom. While writing that blog I thought it might be instructive to blog about how I work in the Basic Panel (right hand panel) in...

Ok, here’s a question that has me stumped. Maybe someone out there has an answer, The question comes from Eric Charles, directed to me on the ASMPNorCal Lightroom forum. He wonders if there is a way to set a specific...

This is a rather extreme example of digital camera noise reduction, but the camera used for this image is the fairly popular and affordable Nikon D40, so it is a valid example of a situation that many photographers find themselves...

There are three adjustment sliders in the “Presence” section of the “Basic” panel in the Development module (whew, did you get all of that?): Clarity, Vibrance, and Saturation. There have been a few posts here on Inside Lightroom about...

Some images simply pop in color and can stand a healthy dose of vibrance. Others just work better in black and white. Luckily, with digital RAW capture, you can postpone the decision of whether to finish an image in color...

Lightroom’s Develop module has 7 groups of adjustment tools: Basic, Tone Curve, HSL / Color / Grayscale, Split Toning, Detail, Lens Corrections, and Camera Calibration. These groups appear in the image below, and on all but the first group...

One of the things that really surprised me about my last post on the Inside Lightroom blog was how visually effective scrubbing through an image history is. I was amazed at how well it let me see the evolution of...

The other morning I was up unusually early, thanks to a hungry cat, and was able to photograph a great sunrise over Portland. It's not often that I'm up for sunrise, but whenever I am, I always sort of wish...

Now we're at the point in the Lightroom workflow where we're ready to move into working in the Develop module. Well, almost, anyway. Just before we do that, it's a good idea to put the Library's Sorting Order to User...

In the past couple of years of specializing in the workflow of digital photography and processing, there are two lessons I've learned above all others: (1) Any organized plan for a regular working procedure will save you hours of time...

Photographers often ask me how to get the right exposure with night landscapes. It's a tricky topic. My experience is that the light meter in my dSLR is pretty much worthless for anything that is dark enough to need an...

Judging brightness and white balance using any RAW processing software can be a tricky situation. In Lightroom's Develop Module I often use the Lights Out and Lights Dim feature to work with my images especially when I am working with...

Here's a situation that all of us face from time to time: We spend a day shooting as much as we can and doing it as fast as we can, return to home base, download a few hundred images, delete...

Many digital camera manufacturers offer custom image effects that are sometimes quite compelling. The Canon 5D, for example, offers you a choice of electronic filters and toning effects to create a specific black and white look. But if you are...

Sometimes some things seem very simple on the surface but are actually a little more complicated under the skin. For instance you would assume that the default setting for a RAW image file in the Develop Module of Lightgroom would...

Picking what tools to use in the digital darkroom is hard. For a while, it was difficult because all the tools were apparently built by people who weren't talking to photographers. For a long time, we all suffered through using...

This post was supposed to be all about how I am finally getting into making HDR (High Dynamic Range) images and how easy it is to do with Lightroom. Well I have plenty of RAW image files and I downloaded...

The other day I was going over the galleys for my Lightroom book, and I came to a comment by Doug Nelson, my technical editor. He highlighted a step in a step-by-step procedure created by the photographer Maggie Hallahan. In...