• listen

I've been playing with the Lightroom 2 public beta (free here) and finding some things I really like. Take the new Clarity, for example. Clarity controls are found under the Basic pane in the right panel of the Develop module. Traditionally, Lightroom's Clarity has been used for local contrast enhancement and gives dull images a "punch".

As other bloggers have noted, with Lightroom 2 beta, Clarity can have a reserve effect, a negative Clarity if you will. Negative values, (up to -100) when applied to a photo of, say, a face can give skin a smooth silky look (You can use reverse Clarity with the new localized adjustment tool as well). I was curious how negative Clarity might work on some of my Tasmanian landscapes and I was pleasantly surprised. Tasmania already has a romantic feel to it, but this simple adjustment really brought out the romantic quality even more, as you can see by looking at my Romantic Tasmania web gallery. I've also prepared a simple video that walks you through what I did using the public beta on one of the images. (Here is a link to my first attempt. I'm not happy with the quality I'm getting and I'll try and post a better quality video as soon as I figure out the best way.)

PS: I originally posted this on the Lightroom Adventure Site, but realized that it probably belongs here as well...