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First off, it is great to see Inside Lightroom continue with so many fresh and insightful blog posts. Kudos to Brad, Bob, Brandon, Gene, Steve, Mark and Jao for fanning the flames to keep this website going.

The Adobe engineers have built in so many great localized adjustments in Lightroom 2.2 that makes my life at lot easier, and keeps me from having to round-trip images into Photoshop as often as I used to. One example I'll illustrate here is using the Gradient tool.

I was recently reworking an image and realized that by adding a color gradient I could improve the image (and my lighting skills). I shot this image a few years ago on a stock shoot in White Sands National Monument using an Nikon SB800 flash and a Nikon D2x. The SB800 flash was sitting on the sand pointing straight up (with a diffussion cube on it) so I could keep the sand from getting too bright. It was fairly dark outside and if I would have had time I could have flagged the flash to keep the sand from being illuminated in the foreground. As it is, it certainly isn't a bad image but by using the gradient filter in Lightroom I was able to adjust the image as if I had used a flag to block some of the light emitted from the flash. The top image at right is the shot before I added the gradient and the bottom image is with the gradient.

To create the gradient I first selected the gradient tool in the HUD display in the right hand panel. As you can see from the screen shot at right I drew the gradient from the bottom left corner and angled it so it matched the slope of the sand dune the model was standing on. Once I had the gradient drawn, I adjusted the exposure so it matched the brightness of the sand dunes in the background. And finally I wanted to match the colors of the background dunes so the foreground didn't stick out like a sore thumb. To do this I clicked on the color dialog box in the bottom of the gradient tool dialog and chose a color that was as close as I could find to the background dunes. Voila, there you have it, in a few easy steps I have removed the brightly lit foreground and created a finished image that looks like I used a soft grid spot to illuminate just the yoga instructor.

Also, just a note, my 124-page updated and revised workflow e-book using Lightroom 2.2, entitled Adobe Photoshop Lightroom: A Professional Photographer's Workflow is available on my website. The new version of the e-book includes information on all the new upgrades to Lightroom and how I integrate Lightroom into a complete workflow from camera to Photoshop. If you'd like to check it out click here.

Adios, Michael Clark