What happens if a veteran Lightroom user plays around with Capture One?

One of my new year’s resolutions was to pay closer attention to Lightroom alternatives. Not that I’m planning to switch over my 250,000 image catalog any time soon, but I think it’s good to know what’s out there on the market. I have been using (and teaching) Lightroom Classic for more than ten years now, but that does not mean that I should be blind to advantages other applications might have. As the saying goes: ‘It’s not because you already ordered that you can’t have another look at the menu.’

Not everybody likes subscriptions

Personally, I think the $150 a year or so subscription for Lightroom Classic and Photoshop isn’t outrageous, but still quite a number of Lightroom users don't like that in order to enjoy the most recent updates and features, you need to have a subscription. The most recent version of Lightroom that you can still buy as a so-called perpetual license, is Lightroom 6 and that version is now more than a year old. Even more, some features, such as the Map module simply don't work anymore and there’s also no official support anymore for it.

Lightroom alternatives: horses for courses

So, it's no surprise that there are a lot of alternatives popping up: Alien Skin Exposure, Skylum Luminar and On1 Photo Raw are but a few. They all claim to be the one and only Lightroom-killer and although they all have their merits in terms of image editing, in terms of image management they’re still miles away from Lightroom's catalog approach.

Capture One… The only real Lightroom alternative?

In my opinion, there is currently only one application that is really comparable to Lightroom and that's Capture One Pro 12. Just as Lightroom Classic, this Capture One Pro 12 works with a central database (although there’s also a so-called Session-based workflow) in which the edits are stored. It has a capable search functionality, keywords support, regular and smart collections and so on. And… not only can you subscribe to Capture One Pro, but you can also still buy it as a regular, perpetual license with optional (paid) upgrades.

Capture One exists in the number of versions. The Express version is a stripped version that amongst others lacks the layers functionality and which is sometimes bundled for free with specific cameras. But the most interesting and comparable to Lightroom is obviously the Pro version. This exists in a Universal version, which is compatible with hundreds of cameras by different brands and which will set you back € 349 / USD 349.

Save 50% on the Sony and Fujifilm version of Capture One Pro 12

However, there is also a Sony and a Fujifilm specific version (which also supports the film simulations). Those versions will only work with the supported cameras of these respective brands (including the GFX 50S and 50R in the case of Fujifilm) but in turn, it’s € 100 / USD 100 cheaper. And there’s even better news: until the end of April 2019, both of these brand specific versions enjoy a spectacular 50% discount, leaving you to pay only € 124 / USD 124. In order to enjoy that discount, just use the links below. No special code needed! If you want, you can add a number of Styles to your purchase and those will also be discounted by 50 percent. Styles are comparable to Lightroom presets.

if you're interested in Capture Oe and you are a Sony or Fujifilm user, now is your moment! Phase One (who make Capture One) doesn't often do discounts like this! The discount also applies to the subscription formula although it's not clear to me whether it’s only for the first year or permanently.

Capture One or Lightroom Classic?

Obviously, that's a choice that everybody has to make for himself. But the fact is that Capture One Pro 12 is very complete and especially portrait photographers seem to love it because of its many tools to work with skin tone - something I might do a future video of. If you're working with a Sony or a Fujifilm camera, the application is great value right now thanks to the 50% discount. In the video below, I walk you through a before and after edit from the perspective of a Lightroom user and I give you a number of useful tips that will help you make the transition. If you're already a Capture One user, and you know of other advantages or disadvantages compared to Lightroom, let me know in the comments.

Save 50 percent on Capture One 12 for Fujifilm.

Save 50 percent on Capture One 12 for Sony.

Disclaimer: the above links are affiliate links. If you buy Capture One true these links, MoreThanWords will receive a commission which is already included in the price. So you don't pay extra compared to purchasing directly. This commission helps me to run this website and to produce the many free video tutorials that you can find here. Thanks for purchasing through my links.

Meet Luminar Flex: a new plug-in for Lightroom that uses Artificial Intelligence - and save $10

If there is one developer of image editing software that doesn't seem to sit still, it's Skylum (formerly known as Macphun).

At the end of last year, Skylum released an update to their Luminar 2018 app, called Luminar 3. Luminar already had a couple of interesting filters on board, such as the Accent AI filter, that uses artificial intelligence to automatically enhance your images. Recently, they added the AI Sky Enhancer which, as you might guess, automatically recognizes and improves the skies in your photos. Another strong point is the ability to work with layers and layer masks in the plug-in.

Luminar 3…

The Luminar 3 update also added a Library functionality, or at least the start of it. While you could also use Luminar 3 as a plug-in for Lightroom and Photoshop, that wasn't really the intended use and the workflow wasn't ideal. Luminar 3 really positions itself more as a Lightroom alternative rather than a Lightroom plug-in.

However, not every Lightroom user is willing to throw their existing workflow overboard and start completely from scratch with a new application. Some people (such as myself) would prefer to integrate Luminar’s strong features in their existing workflow, such as the Artificial Intelligence driven filters and the ability to apply all adjustments locally instead of just a handful as is the case with Lightroom.

… versus Luminar Flex

If you're one of those people, then you will be super excited about the new Luminar Flex. At its core, Luminar Flex is basically Luminar 3 without the library functionality but with improved plug-in support for Lightroom Classic, Photoshop, Photoshop Elements and Photos (on Mac).

Existing Luminar 2018 and Luminar 3 users get a free license for the current version of Luminar Flex, which is a nice move from Skylum. The code for that free version should have been added automatically to your Skylum account. Skylum did announce however that from now on, Luminar 3 and Luminar Flex will be treated as separate apps with separate development trajectories and separate upgrade paths which will in the future also require separate upgrade fees. But that's only logical: normally, you will want to work with one or the other, not with both, and therefore you would only need to update one of them.

It's also important to know that future versions of Luminar 3 will no longer be usable as a plug-in.

Save $10 with code MORETHANWORDS

if you're not yet using Luminar, but this blog post raised your interest, then you can obviously just buy Luminar Flex. You can do so via this link. Luminar Flex is affordably priced at $59 and on top of that, code MORETHANWORDS shaves off another $10 (click on the blue text that says Enter Promotional Code in your shopping cart). Artificial intelligence has never been so cheap :-) By the way, the code also works for Luminar 3, if you prefer that solution.

Also for Lightroom 6 users

Quite a lot of Lightroom users are still working with Lightroom 6 and if you're in that situation, then Luminar has another ace up its sleeve for you: the ability to work with pixel layers inside of the plug-in. Indeed, it's possible to combine different images into one by using Luminar’s built-in layer functionality. I’ll explore this interesting feature in a future video on the blog!

The Steampunk Sessions, part 1

I’m connected to a lot of photographers on Facebook from all over the world. And as much as I like these virtual interactions, I like it even more when I get the chance to meet one of these Facebook friends in real life. This happened last week with David. David’s a Belgian photographer who lives in Thailand most of the year. He’s an amazing travel photographer and he popped over to Belgium for a couple of weeks. So we decided to go on a shoot together. I like doing these kinds of spontaneous, last-minute freestyle shoots with other photographers because I think we can all learn from each other.

Steampunk @ the factory

I love shooting in abandoned factories and lately, I’ve been into photographing steampunkers, too. These two subjects are a match made in heaven. So I called up Major TC Theodoricus, one of Belgium’s most passionate steampunkers and we all met up in an old paper factory about an hour’s drive from where I live. Another friend, Frank, came along to make some BTS shots.

Gear-wise, I brought the Fujifilm GFX 50S, the GF 110 mm, GF 32-64 mm and the GF 23 mm. As for lights, I packed my three trusted Godox AD600B flashes, my SMDV Alpha 110 gridded softbox and my two Nicefoto strip lights, which have become an essential part of my lighting kit. Last noteworthy item was my Scotty II portable smoke machine. No steampunk shoot should happen without a smoke machine :-)

I was immediately struck by the vast hall with the cast iron pillars and thought they’d make great compositional elements in the frame. Now I’m a slow shooter and I prefer to get a couple of images that I’m really happy with.

In total, I got seven images I like in about five hours of shooting.

That’s actually a nice harvest for me. Here’s the first two in this blog post. With a dramatic subject and a dramatic backdrop like this, I think the lighting and the postprocessing needs to be dramatic, too. So I used a cross lighting setup and I positioned my main light in a way that The Major would be short-lit. I also wanted a moody, atmosphere so although I could have made the entire scene a lot brighter (I was only at 1/32nd power on the flashes), I went for a low-key look.

As you can see from this setup shot, there are two more lights in this shot: one strip light to the left of The Major, just out of frame and a second one behind him, pointed at the steel pillar. I did that to make the lighting more coherent. Apart from editing out the softbox on the right and adding the flame coming out of the gun in Photoshop, the complete styling and color-grading was done in Lightroom, using the profiles in my Creative Profiles Starter Pack.

This ebook teaches you all you need to know to make dramatically lit images like the ones in this blog post.

The Fujifilm GFX, the ideal camera for this sort of work

Two things I love most about the GFX are the incredible dynamic range, which lets me do quite nice things in postproduction as you can see from the before & after above, and the resolution. In fact, this is a 16:9 crop from the 4:3 original and it is still over 36 megapixel! Having more flexibility in choosing your aspect after the fact is also one of the reasons I’m secretly already lusting for the GFX 100S…

Here’s a 1:1 crop in Lightroom. The detail of the GFX is simply amazing. I just love that camera.

Smoking gun

I personally like the version with the understated gunfire best, but I also played around with a more extreme version, as you can see below. Adding fire like that is simpler than you might think. I used an image from Adobe Stock. If the fire’s been photographed on a black background, in Photoshop, just change the blending mode of the layer to Screen, and you’re good. If you still see some artefacts around the fire, that’s a telltale sign that the background isn’t pure black. Just add a Levels adjustment and click with the black eyedropper on the black of the flame’s background to turn it completely black and in the Screen blending mode, the black will magically vanish!

The image above was shot with the 23 mm, which corresponds to an 18 mm on a fullframe camera. That’s a super wide lens so it takes in a lot of the environment. However, because of it being so wide, and having a relatively slow maximum aperture of f/4, it’s difficult to use shallow depth of field to separate your subject from the background. That’s why I also brought the 110, the bokeh monster of the GF lens lineup.

In the image below, I stitched a couple of vertical shots I took with the GF 110 wide open at f/2 into a panorama using Photoshop. I then colorgraded the image in Lightroom. If you’re on a fullframe camera system, try using an 85 mm 1.4 or 1.8. If you’re on a crop camera, try something like a 50 mm 1.4 or, in the case of Fujifilm, the 56 1.2.

With the GFX, I tend to underexpose more than I used to because there’s so much leeway in bringing up shadow detail.

The result is an image with a wide angle of view but at the same time the super shallow depth of field of a portrait lens. And as a bonus, you get an even crazier resolution. The image below is a whopping 10.860 x 8.145 pixels! That’s almost the resolution of the upcoming GFX 100S!

Fujifilm GFX 50S | GF110mmF2 R LM WR @ 110 mm | 1/125 sec. @ f/2 | ISO 250

Again, other than the merging of the panorama which I had to do in Photoshop because it offers more control, the entire look of the image was created in Lightroom. Below is a 1:1 screenshot.

The controlled lighting and the super shallow depth of field really make the subject stand out from the background.

That’s it for this blog post. If you live in or near Belgium, speak Dutch and you’d like to photograph The Major yourself, you might be interested in the next edition of the Epic Steampunk Workshop, which is held on March 8, 2019. More information here (in Dutch). Ticket sales start January 31, 8 PM Brussels time. Below’s a 90 second impression of that workshop.

Also, don’t forget that until the end of January, you can save 25% on my brand new ‘Learn Lightroom Classic in 2.5 hours’ video course. Check it out here.

Save 25% on my new Lightroom Classic Tutorial:

left to save 25% on my new ‘Learn Lightroom Classic in 2.5 hours’ course AND score a bonus set of 10 Creative Profiles

Learn all about Collections in this free excerpt from 'Learn Lightroom Classic'

As I blogged here, I’ve just released my latest tutorial: Learn Lightroom Classic CC in 2.5 hours.

This tutorial is the culmination of 10 years of experience in not only using Lightroom but also teaching it. Throughout these years, I’ve trained hundreds if not thousands of photographers and I’ve also noticed that lot of - especially self-taught - Lightroom users really aren’t using Lightroom to its fullest potential - or I'd dare even say not to half of it’s potential.

I’ve also noticed that most tutorials focus a lot more on the ‘sexier’ Develop module than on the ‘boring’ Library module. Yet, it’s the latter that’s far harder to understand and it’s also that one that will bite you in the tail if you don’t completely understand how it works. That’s why in Learn Lightroom Classic CC in 2.5 hours, I focus equally on both modules.

I’ve put a lot of time and effort in this tutorial to make it one of the best introductory Lightroom Classic tutorials on the planet. But don’t take my word for it, instead, I’ll let you judge for yourself. For the next five days, you can watch one of the 16 chapters completely free. I’ve chosen to share the one about Collections with you, as this is in my experience one of Lightroom’s most underused features. Even if you think you know all about Collections, you might pick up a thing or two about Target Collections or working with the Quick Collection.

Save 25% on the tutorial until end of January

From Feb. 1, 2019, ‘Learn Lightroom Classic CC’ will be $79.95 but before that, you can get it at the launch price of $59.96. That’s a 25 percent discount. On top of that, you’ll also get a set of 10 Creative Profiles for Lightroom and more than one hour of bonus content!

Buy the tutorial before the end of January, 2019 and you receive these 10 color grading profiles for free.

Introducing my new premium tutorial 'Learn Lightroom Classic CC'

For me, Lightroom Classic CC is still one of the best, if not the best applications out there for serious amateur and professional photographers. There is simply no other piece of software that offers such a unique combination of being able to manage your images, process them in a quick and non-destructive way and also share them, whether it is via a print, a quick slideshow or a real printed book.

However, as I've experienced over the course of 10 years using Lightroom and training thousands of others to use it, Lightroom can be deceptively simple. The emphasis being on deceptive.

• "How does this Catalog thing work?"
• "I've moved my images and now Lightroom throws a fit!"
• "What's the difference between Lightroom Classic and Lightroom CC?"
• "Do I still need Photoshop?"
• "How 'bout backup?"

These are all questions I get almost daily and it's also the reason why I created 'Learn Lightroom Classic CC in 2.5 hours'. After all, I can only train so many people in real life. In this tutorial, for less than the cost of a 45 minute 1:1 Skype session with me, I not only cover the basics of working with Lightroom in 16 easily understandable chapters, but I also teach you a perfectly scalable workflow. In fact, it's the same one I've been using and refining myself for the past years.

Above is a short video about the course. On the course page itself, you can watch the entire first chapter for free! I already answer a couple of the questions I often get in that video.

From Feb. 1, 2019, ‘Learn Lightroom Classic CC’ will be $79.95 but before that, you can get it at the launch price of $59.96. On top of that, you’ll also get a set of 10 Creative Profiles for Lightroom and more than one hour of bonus content!

Preparing your review of your best photos of 2019 with Lightroom Classic CC

At the end of last year, I saw a lot of ‘My best shots of 2018’ posts on social media. The cool thing is that Lightroom can help you curate those lists. In this short video, I show you how to leverage the power of Smart Collections for that job.

What's new in Lightroom Classic CC 8.1?

Adobe just released the latest update to Lightroom Classic CC: 8.1. In addition to speed improvements (faster grid scrolling and faster switching between Library and Develop on 4K and 5K monitors), there’s also a couple of interesting new features, the most noteworthy of which is that you can now customise the order of the Develop Panel Modules!

The video below shows you how, and also talks you through the other new features.

5DayDeal 2018 Flash Sale: a free preview of my new Lightroom Library Beyond the Basics Tutorial

The 5DayDeal irrevocably ends in…

A big chunk of this year’s 5DayDeal bundle is Lightroom-related: there are a couple of tutorials and almost five hundred presets and of course there’s the Luminar plug-in, which I talked about extensively in yesterday’s blog post and video.

“How Piet expertly curates the information is what makes this program truly stand out as one of the best Lightroom training programs I’ve come across (and I’ve seen a lot).”

— Chris O'Donnell (creativeRAW)

One of the Lightroom tutorials is a bit special for three reasons:

1. First of all, because it’s mine and it’s my very first full-blown English Lightroom tutorial, an accomplishment of which I’m quite proud :-).

2. Second because it’s a launch exclusive: for the moment, it’s only available as part of the 5DayDeal and you can’t get it anywhere else yet.

3. And lastly, because it focuses entirely on the Lightroom Catalog and Library. It’s an intermediate to advanced 3+ hour tutorial and I made it because every day, the workshops I teach and the emails I get in my inbox remind me that there are still a lot of people struggling with the whole concept of Lightroom.

Well, I made this tutorial for all of you: after watching it, you’ll be a full-blown Lightroom Library Ninja and you’ll leverage the advantages of Lightroom a lot better and avoid many of the pitfalls the program sometimes throws at its users, too.

Below is a 30 minute free preview of one of the chapters in the tutorial. I’ll leave it on the site as long as the countdown timer is running :-) This chapter’s about Collections and Smart Collections and although I personally consider that to be more of an entry-level feature, each workshop I teach there are quite a number of - even long term - Lightroom users that don’t (or hardly) use these powerful organisational tools. So I decided to include a video about them in the tutorial.

“Piet doesn’t throw a barrage of information at you, overwhelming you with useless data...instead, he’s taken that extra step to create an engaging curriculum that tells you exactly what you need to know.”

— Chris O'Donnell (creativeRAW)

Even if you feel like you already know your way around collections, I’m pretty sure you’ll pick up a thing or two. For example, I hardly know anyone who uses Target Collections and yet they’re super handy! And if you want to know what else I cover in the full course, here’s a list of all the other chapters. This 3+ hour video tutorial is the culmination of 10 years of teaching Lightroom, writing about it and most of all, using it almost every single day!

1. Introduction: 14’ 35”

2. Importing: 41’

3. Tethered Capture: 15’ 16”

4. File & Folder Management: 37’ 39”

5. Two Lesser Known View Modes: 22’ 29”

6. Collections, Smart Collections & Filtering: 37’ 55”

7. Metadata & Keywording: 24’ 30”

8. Exporting: 21’ 23”

9. Publish Services: 10’ 52”

10. Exporting as a Catalog & Importing from Another Catalog: 26’ 19”

11. Working with an External Catalog Drive: 13’ 40”

12. Bonus Chapter: Back up or Back off: 14’ 40”

“If you learned something new in this free 30 minute clip, imagine how much you can learn from the 60+ hours of tutorials in the entire 5DayDeal bundle!”

— Yours truly :-)

Still on the fence? The 5DayDeal also includes Luminar 2018 (a $69 value), one of the most innovative Lightroom plug-ins out there. I did a free 30 minute video tutorial about it. You can watch that here.

And don’t forget, if you buy the 5DayDeal through the links on my MoreThanWords blog, you’ll receive a special bonus: my brand new high resolution Textures Pack, Vol. 01!**

*: + VAT for European citizens. If you have a valid VAT number, you can enter that upon checkout and you won’t be charged VAT.

** Texture pack will be sent out free of charge in the week after January 15 to those people who bought the 5DayDeal bundle via the links on the MoreThanWords blog or in the MoreThanWords newsletter.

The return of the 5DayDeal 2018: my free Luminar 2018 mini-course

When the 5DayDeal originally was released in October, I put up a this mini-course on Luminar 2018. With the flash-sale reprise of the 5DayDeal, only until Midnight, EST, November 25th, I thought it would be a good idea to put bring the mini-course back. Regardless of whether you want to buy the 5DayDeal or not, there’s some interesting information in there, I think :-)

The 5DayDeal irrevocably ends in…

“The inclusion of Luminar 2018 makes this year’s 5DayDeal an absolute no-brainer!”

— Yours truly :-)

So, the 5DayDeal is a bundle of high-quality resources for photographers: tutorial videos, Lightroom presets, textures, actions, you name it. It’s a whopping 50 gigabyte of goodies at a super steep discount. In yesterday’s blog post, I dug a little deeper into the training content that’s in this year’s 5DayDeal. But the 5DayDeal folks really outdid themselves this year, because there’s also two entire software packages included, the most important of which undoubtedly is Luminar 2018. My original plan was to make a quick three minute overview of what Luminar is but you know me: I don’t do quick very well. So it turned out to be a 25 minute mini-tutorial full of cool processing tips in general and Luminar tips in particular.

Unlike with some other bundles, this version of Luminar 2018 is exactly the same as the $69 retail version that you can buy directly on Skylum’s (makers of Luminar) website, but you’d be crazy not to pay the extra $20 and get it as part of the 5DayDeal bundle!

“Buy the 5Deal through the links on my blog and you’ll receive my High Resolution Texture Pack, Vol. 01 for free* !”

— Yours truly

This year’s bundle includes a Luminar 2018 license, an interesting Lightroom and Photoshop plug-in that some people even use as a complete Lightroom alternative. In one of the next blog posts, I’ll go a little deeper into the unique features of Luminar that make it stand out, especially when used in conjunction with Lightroom. Until Sunday, November 25th, a copy of Luminar 2018 is included in this year’s 5DayDeal bundle. Click here for more info.

*: + VAT for European citizens. If you have a valid VAT number, you can enter that upon checkout and you won’ be charged VAT.

** You will receive your bonus textures in the week after November 15, 2018

Surprise return: this year's 5DayDeal is back... for just 72 hours...

The 2018 edition of the 5DayDeal ended over a month ago, but… the 5DayDeal people decided to bring it back to life for 72 hours only on occasion of Black Friday and Cyber Monday. So, it’s effectively like a 3DayDeal now :-) If you have already purchased the 5DayDeal back in October (it’s the same thing), no need to buy it again obviously, but if you were on the fence then… now is your chance. You’ll get over $2.500 worth of photographic resources for only $89, including my not yet released Lightroom Library Beyond the Basics course. And… just like in October, I’ll throw in my $24.95 High Resolution Texture Pack if you purchase the bundle through my link!

The Reprise Flash Sale of the 5DayDeal really, positively and irrevocably ends in…

For those of you who don’t know, the 5DayDeal is a unique bundle of training content and creative tools for photographers. If you were to buy everything separately, you’d be out of more than $2,500. Now, and until November 25, 23.59 EDT only, you pay $89*. The bundle contains dozens of hours of top notch video training, multiple eBooks and hundreds of Lightroom presets and Photoshop actions. In total nearly 50 gigabyte worth of content! Specifically for this year, there’s a lot of attention to drone photography and videography, including a drone course by no one less than Trey Ratcliff.

Look at who’s standing next to Lightroom guru Serge Ramelli? Yes, that’s me and there’s also a brand new Lightroom course by me in this year’s 5DayDeal! That alone should be a reason to buy it :-)

Of course, you’re wondering if the bundle is really worth it. Is it worth $2,500? Maybe not: there’s always something that’s not quite your cup of tea but then again, there’s also a couple of hidden gems each year that you would never think of buying but that turn out to be really interesting. So, the real question is: ‘Is it worth more than $89'?’ And the answer to that question is a solid ‘Yes, absolutely!’ This bundle will do more for your photography than a new camera bag or a couple of UV filters!

Obviously, I’m slightly biased as in those 60+ hours of video training, there’s over three of my own: In 'Lightroom Library Beyond the Basics’ I guide you through some of the more advanced concepts of Lightroom Catalogs, including working with multiple catalogs, leveraging collections and smart collections, using publish services and more. This brand new course is currently only available as a part of this year’s 5DayDeal Photography bundle and is in itself valued at $99, which is more than the price of the entire bundle. As a matter of fact, there are quite a lot of tutorials in the 5DayDeal bundle that have a list price that is higher than the entire bundle.

So what’s the catch, I hear you ask? There isn’t one… by offering so much value, the 5DayDeal folks aim to sell lots of units as to make it worthwhile for all the contributors, even at that crazy discount. The only catch so to speak is that you have to buy before November 26 because the offer is valid for only 3 days. Why is it called the 5DayDeal then? Well remember, the original 5DayDeal ran in October. This is a surprise reprise, on account of Black Friday, and that’s why it only lasts three days. So think of it as the 3DayDeal :-)

If you think that you need insane budgets to produce fashion-style images, you’ll be in for a treat in Lindsay Adler’s ‘Creativity on a budget’: Lindsay first shows you how she makes six different fashion accessories on a shoestring and then continues to photograph all six.

An expensive hat? No, it’s an expertly folded placemat. Or how craftsmanship, light, lighting and pose can turn a cheap kitchen accessory into high fashion. An eye-opening course, and another one that normally retails for more than the entire 5DayDeal bundle.

To make it easier for you to determine if the 5DayDeal bundle is something for you, I’ve highlighted the content by three broad areas of interest: image editing, portrait and landscape photography. You’ll notice that even if you’re only interested in one of these topics, the bundle is already worth purchasing. If you’re interested in multiple topics, it’s really a no-brainer.

1. You’re mainly interested in image editing

The total value of the highlighted items alone is $1495. The full bundle is yours for less than a tenth of that.

In ‘The Art of Black & White in Lightroom & Beyond’, Andrew Gibson explores the beautiful world of monochrome.

Traditionally, image editing is one of the strongholds of the 5DayDeal. This year is no different. In addition to my own advanced ‘Lightroom Library beyond the Basics’ tutorial, on which I’ll expand a little more in a future blogpost, there’s also an entire Lightroom course by Serge Ramelli. Other highlights are:

• Travel Pro Kit:
  A vast collection of Lightroom presets that use a similar structure as I use in my own Black & White preset pack (which is currently being reworked for Lightroom Classic). By working with ‘effect-presets’ on the one hand and ‘finishing touches’ presets on the other, Travel Pro Kit creates a complete click-based editing workflow that yields impressive results in no time. The accompanying PDF shows examples of how specific looks were made in just a couple of clicks.

• The Art of Black & White in Lightroom and Beyond
  A great course on Black & White conversion in Lightroom by Andrew Gibson, who I know from back in our Craft & Vision days. His material is always spot on, well-researched and expertly taught. This is another course that retails for more than the 5DayDeal’s bundle price.

• Adobe Photoshop Foundations
  In this tutorial, Photoshop Guru (and founder of the well-known f64 site) Blake Rudis delves deeper into a number of Photoshop topics, ranging from selections and masks to retouching images.

Great news: this year’s 5DayDeal includes a full Luminar 2018 license!

There are several other editing-related goodies in the bundle, but probably the biggest highlight is the fact that this year’s bundle comes with a complete licence for Luminar 2018 by Skylum (formerly known as Macphun). This license alone is worth $69. Luminar used to be Mac-only, but now it’s also available for Windows. Some people use it as a Lightroom alternative, but I think it’s at its best when used as a Lightroom plug-in. In one of the following blog posts, I’ll show you a couple of the more interesting features of Luminar.

This year’s bundle also includes a Luminar 2018 license, an interesting Lightroom and Photoshop plug-in that some people even use as a complete Lightroom alternative. In one of the next blog posts, I’ll go a little deeper into the unique features of Luminar that make it stand out, especially when used in conjunction with Lightroom. Click here for more info.

2. You’re mainly interested in photographing people, with or without flash

The total value of the highlighted items is $732. The full bundle is yours for less than 15 percent of that. If you’re into photographing people, I found the following tutorials to be interesting:

Zack Arias takes nobody seriously and certainly not himself in his new Photo 101 tutorial. I like that attitude (or lack of it) :-)

• Photo 101.
  A new tutorial by Zack Arias, the man who, along with David Hobby, taught an entire generation how to use flash. This time, he leaves the flashes unplugged, though and focuses on the basics of photography. Photo 101 is Zacks own introductory course. I’m listing it with the portrait courses because after the introduction, Zack takes you along on three portrait shoots where he uses minimal means to produce cool shots.

• Creativity on a Budget.
  Lindsay Adler is another big name in the photo tutorial business and rightly so. Her course to me was the surprise of this year’s bundle. In ‘Creativity on a Budget’ she shows you how you can turn cheap and often everyday items into fashion accessories but she does not stop there: in part 2, she actually photographs the fruit of her handicraft and produces some amazing results!

• Photographing the Bride.
  This tutorial focuses on what is probably the most important type of portrait photography: bridal portraits!

• Finding Rembrandt: Shoot Like the Old Masters.
  One of my favourite tutorials in this 5DayDeal is by one of my favourite teachers. Just like me, Chris Knight has a thing for dramatic, Rembrandt-style lighting patterns. In this video course, he dives deeply into Rembrandt portraits and he also takes you through his postproduction. Another highly recommended tutorial that by itself costs more than the entire bundle.

“A new camera makes you no more of a great photographer than a box of cake-mix makes you a great pastry chef.”

— Zack Arias in Photo 101

My favourite light setup: short light (in this case: short loupe light). In this tutorial, Chris Knight explores the tools and techniques to create dramatic looking portraits. Until October 16, this tutorial and many others is yours for only $89 as part of the 5DayDeal.

3. You’re mainly interested in product, landscape and architecture photography.

Admittedly, this list is shorter but that’s mainly because I only highlighted the courses that deal with the photography side of things, not the postprocessing. In practice, the other courses (such as Serge Ramelli’s Adobe Lightroom Masterclass and the Mastering Luminosity Masks course by Nick Page) contain a lot of content that is geared towards landscape and architectural photographers.

Still not convinced? I’ve got 5 more arguments for you:

1. This way of learning is by far the cheapest way to improve your photographic skills at your own pace, when and where you want. Most of the tutorials are downloadable video files, so you’re not tied to subscriptions or internet access to watch them. The 5DayDeal bundle gives you 60+ hours of video tutorials for less than $1.5 per hour. Yours to keep forever! The eBooks and presets come on top of that. And that’s without counting Luminar 2018!

2. A large part of the 5DayDeal bundle is new and if it is not new, it’s never been offered as part of another bundle.

3. This extra flash sale of the 5DayDeal bundle is gone forever on Sunday, November 25, 23.59 EDT

4. 10 percent of the turnover goes to charity. In total, previous 5DayDeals have collected over $300.000 for various charities.

5. There are two optional bundles that you can purchase upon checkout:

   • The Charity Bundle and the Pro Bundle ($19 and $29, respectively). Here’s the complete list of what these bundles contain. The latter one focuses on pro photographers and includes a full wedding photography course!

*: + VAT for European citizens. If you have a valid VAT number, you can enter that upon checkout and you won’ be charged VAT.

Black Friday: save 50 percent on my ebooks, Creative Profiles & Textures

On account of Black Friday, almost everything in the MoreThanWords store is a whopping 50 percent off! My two ebooks (Light It Up! and Lightroom 6/CC Unmasked), my Creative Profiles Starter Pack and my just released Texture Pack. On top of that, I wanted to make it easy for you. No need to fuss around with discount codes: the discount is already applied in the prices you see. But don’t wait too long: Monday evening at midnight, the prices double!

New: ‘Piet Van den Eynde Collected’

Especially for Black Friday, I have also made a bundle, aptly called Piet Van den Eynde Collected, which contains my two English ebooks, my Creative Profiles Starter Pack and my Texture Pack. This bundle retails for 15 percent less than the individual products it contains and for Black Friday, it is also discounted by 50 percent! This means you can get these 4 products for less than $35!

‘Piet Van den Eynde Collected’:

until 11/26 only $34.97 € instead of $69.95

2 ebooks, (together over 600 pages of industry-leading instruction) + 25 high-res textures and backgrounds, photographed with the Fujifilm GFX + 10 Creatieve Profiles for Lightroom Classic CC and Photoshop CC - the very same profiles I use on a daily basis to edit my own images, including my recent Ethiopia series!

Buy the full bundle now

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25 High-Res Textures & Backgrounds

until 11/26 only $13.75 € instead of $27.50

25 high-res textures and backgrounds, photographed with the Fujifilm GFX, ideal for all your compositing projects or to overlay as a texture on a grey studio background.

Buy the high-res Texture Pack now

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Creative Profiles Starter Pack:

10 Creative Profiles for Lightroom Classic CC and Photoshop CC

until 11/26 only $7 instead of $14

10 Creative Profiles for Lightroom Classic CC and Photoshop CC - the very same profiles I use on a daily basis to edit my own images, including my recent Ethiopia series! With Lightroom’s Amount Slider, you can easily fine-tune the effect of a profile.

Improve your images with these one-click profiles

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Light It Up! Techniques for Dramatic Off-Camera Flash-

Deluxe Edition

until 11/26 only $17.47 instead of $34.95

Learn to light like a master with this comprehensive ebook. I teach you everything I have learned in the past 10 years of using big and small flashes on location. This book is aimed at beginners and more advanced users. The latter will appreciate the more elaborate case studies. Contains a special chapter on lighting and postprocessing. This Deluxe version contains 45 minutes of bonus video and five bonus Lightroom presets.

Learn how to light with Light It Up!

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Lightroom 6/CC Unmasked - eBook.

until 11/26 only $12.47 instead of $24.95

One of the most comprehensive Lightroom books on the planet.

Buy Lightroom Unmasked now

5DayDeal 2018: a free preview of my new Lightroom Library Beyond the Basics Tutorial

The 5DayDeal irrevocably ends in…

A big chunk of this year’s 5DayDeal bundle is Lightroom-related: there are a couple of tutorials and almost five hundred presets and of course there’s the Luminar plug-in, which I talked about extensively in yesterday’s blog post and video.

“How Piet expertly curates the information is what makes this program truly stand out as one of the best Lightroom training programs I’ve come across (and I’ve seen a lot).”

— Chris O'Donnell (creativeRAW)

One of the Lightroom tutorials is a bit special for three reasons:

1. First of all, because it’s mine and it’s my very first full-blown English Lightroom tutorial, an accomplishment of which I’m quite proud :-).

2. Second because it’s a launch exclusive: for the moment, it’s only available as part of the 5DayDeal and you can’t get it anywhere else yet.

3. And lastly, because it focuses entirely on the Lightroom Catalog and Library. It’s an intermediate to advanced 3+ hour tutorial and I made it because every day, the workshops I teach and the emails I get in my inbox remind me that there are still a lot of people struggling with the whole concept of Lightroom.

Well, I made this tutorial for all of you: after watching it, you’ll be a full-blown Lightroom Library Ninja and you’ll leverage the advantages of Lightroom a lot better and avoid many of the pitfalls the program sometimes throws at its users, too.

Below is a 30 minute free preview of one of the chapters in the tutorial. I’ll leave it on the site as long as the countdown timer is running :-) This chapter’s about Collections and Smart Collections and although I personally consider that to be more of an entry-level feature, each workshop I teach there are quite a number of - even long term - Lightroom users that don’t (or hardly) use these powerful organisational tools. So I decided to include a video about them in the tutorial.

“Piet doesn’t throw a barrage of information at you, overwhelming you with useless data...instead, he’s taken that extra step to create an engaging curriculum that tells you exactly what you need to know.”

— Chris O'Donnell (creativeRAW)

Even if you feel like you already know your way around collections, I’m pretty sure you’ll pick up a thing or two. For example, I hardly know anyone who uses Target Collections and yet they’re super handy! And if you want to know what else I cover in the full course, here’s a list of all the other chapters. This 3+ hour video tutorial is the culmination of 10 years of teaching Lightroom, writing about it and most of all, using it almost every single day!

1. Introduction: 14’ 35”

2. Importing: 41’

3. Tethered Capture: 15’ 16”

4. File & Folder Management: 37’ 39”

5. Two Lesser Known View Modes: 22’ 29”

6. Collections, Smart Collections & Filtering: 37’ 55”

7. Metadata & Keywording: 24’ 30”

8. Exporting: 21’ 23”

9. Publish Services: 10’ 52”

10. Exporting as a Catalog & Importing from Another Catalog: 26’ 19”

11. Working with an External Catalog Drive: 13’ 40”

12. Bonus Chapter: Back up or Back off: 14’ 40”

“If you learned something new in this free 30 minute clip, imagine how much you can learn from the 60+ hours of tutorials in the entire 5DayDeal bundle!”

— Yours truly :-)

Still on the fence? The 5DayDeal also includes Luminar 2018 (a $69 value), one of the most innovative Lightroom plug-ins out there. I did a free 30 minute video tutorial about it yesterday. You can watch that here.

And don’t forget, if you buy the 5DayDeal through the links on my MoreThanWords blog, you’ll receive a special bonus: my brand new high resolution Textures Pack!**

*: + VAT for European citizens. If you have a valid VAT number, you can enter that upon checkout and you won’t be charged VAT.

** Texture pack will be sent out free of charge in the week after November 15 to those people who bought the 5DayDeal bundle via the links on the MoreThanWords blog or in the MoreThanWords newsletter.

5DayDeal 2018: my free Luminar 2018 mini-course

The 5DayDeal irrevocably ends in…

“The inclusion of Luminar 2018 makes this year’s 5DayDeal an absolute no-brainer!”

— Yours truly :-)

So, the 5DayDeal is a bundle of high-quality resources for photographers: tutorial videos, Lightroom presets, textures, actions, you name it. It’s a whopping 50 gigabyte of goodies at a super steep discount. In yesterday’s blog post, I dug a little deeper into the training content that’s in this year’s 5DayDeal. But the 5DayDeal folks really outdid themselves this year, because there’s also two entire software packages included, the most important of which undoubtedly is Luminar 2018. My original plan was to make a quick three minute overview of what Luminar is but you know me: I don’t do quick very well. So it turned out to be a 25 minute mini-tutorial full of cool processing tips in general and Luminar tips in particular.

Unlike with some other bundles, this version of Luminar 2018 is exactly the same as the $69 retail version that you can buy directly on Skylum’s (makers of Luminar) website, but you’d be crazy not to pay the extra $20 and get it as part of the 5DayDeal bundle!

This year’s bundle includes a Luminar 2018 license, an interesting Lightroom and Photoshop plug-in that some people even use as a complete Lightroom alternative. In one of the next blog posts, I’ll go a little deeper into the unique features of Luminar that make it stand out, especially when used in conjunction with Lightroom. Until October 16, a copy of Luminar 2018 is included in this year’s 5DayDeal bundle. Click here for more info.

*: + VAT for European citizens. If you have a valid VAT number, you can enter that upon checkout and you won’ be charged VAT.

** You will receive your bonus textures in the week after November 15, 2018

The 5DayDeal: What's in it for you?

The 5DayDeal irrevocably ends in…

Oh yes, it’s that time of year again. Once a year, for 5 days only, you can purchase the 5DayDeal Photography bundle. This year’s edition runs from October 11 to Tuesday, October 16, noon PDT (that’s 9 PM Brussels time). For those of you who don’t know, the 5DayDeal is a unique bundle of training content and creative tools for photographers. If you were to buy everything separately, you’d be out of more than $2,500. Now, and until October 16 only, you pay $89*. The bundle contains dozens of hours of top notch video training, multiple eBooks and hundreds of Lightroom presets and Photoshop actions. In total nearly 50 gigabyte worth of content! Specifically for this year, there’s a lot of attention to drone photography and videography, including a drone course by no one less than Trey Ratcliff.

Look at who’s standing next to Lightroom guru Serge Ramelli? Yes, that’s me and there’s also a brand new Lightroom course by me in this year’s 5DayDeal! That alone should be a reason to buy it :-)

Of course, you’re wondering if the bundle is really worth it. Is it worth $2,500? Maybe not: there’s always something that’s not quite your cup of tea but then again, there’s also a couple of hidden gems each year that you would never think of buying but that turn out to be really interesting. So, the real question is: ‘Is it worth more than $89'?’ And the answer to that question is a solid ‘Yes, absolutely!’ This bundle will do more for your photography than a new camera bag or a couple of UV filters!

Obviously, I’m slightly biased as in those 60+ hours of video training, there’s over three of my own: In 'Lightroom Library Beyond the Basics’ I guide you through some of the more advanced concepts of Lightroom Catalogs, including working with multiple catalogs, leveraging collections and smart collections, using publish services and more. This brand new course is currently only available as a part of this year’s 5DayDeal Photography bundle and is in itself valued at $99, which is more than the price of the entire bundle. As a matter of fact, there are quite a lot of tutorials in the 5DayDeal bundle that have a list price that is higher than the entire bundle.

So what’s the catch, I hear you ask? There isn’t one… by offering so much value, the 5DayDeal folks aim to sell lots of units as to make it worthwhile for all the contributors, even at that crazy discount. The only catch so to speak is that you have to buy before October 16 because the offer is valid for only 5 days. Once you’ve bought, you’ve got until November 30 to download your 50 gigabyte worth of goodies, though!

If you think that you need insane budgets to produce fashion-style images, you’ll be in for a treat in Lindsay Adler’s ‘Creativity on a budget’: Lindsay first shows you how she makes six different fashion accessories on a shoestring and then continues to photograph all six.

An expensive hat? No, it’s an expertly folded placemat. Or how craftsmanship, light, lighting and pose can turn a cheap kitchen accessory into high fashion. An eye-opening course, and another one that normally retails for more than the entire 5DayDeal bundle.

To make it easier for you to determine if the 5DayDeal bundle is something for you, I’ve highlighted the content by three broad areas of interest: image editing, portrait and landscape photography. You’ll notice that even if you’re only interested in one of these topics, the bundle is already worth purchasing. If you’re interested in multiple topics, it’s really a no-brainer.

1. You’re mainly interested in image editing

The total value of the highlighted items alone is $1495. The full bundle is yours for less than a tenth of that.

In ‘The Art of Black & White in Lightroom & Beyond’, Andrew Gibson explores the beautiful world of monochrome.

Traditionally, image editing is one of the strongholds of the 5DayDeal. This year is no different. In addition to my own advanced ‘Lightroom Library beyond the Basics’ tutorial, on which I’ll expand a little more in a future blogpost, there’s also an entire Lightroom course by Serge Ramelli. Other highlights are:

• Travel Pro Kit:
  A vast collection of Lightroom presets that use a similar structure as I use in my own Black & White preset pack (which is currently being reworked for Lightroom Classic). By working with ‘effect-presets’ on the one hand and ‘finishing touches’ presets on the other, Travel Pro Kit creates a complete click-based editing workflow that yields impressive results in no time. The accompanying PDF shows examples of how specific looks were made in just a couple of clicks.

• The Art of Black & White in Lightroom and Beyond
  A great course on Black & White conversion in Lightroom by Andrew Gibson, who I know from back in our Craft & Vision days. His material is always spot on, well-researched and expertly taught. This is another course that retails for more than the 5DayDeal’s bundle price.

• Adobe Photoshop Foundations
  In this tutorial, Photoshop Guru (and founder of the well-known f64 site) Blake Rudis delves deeper into a number of Photoshop topics, ranging from selections and masks to retouching images.

Great news: this year’s 5DayDeal includes a full Luminar 2018 license!

There are several other editing-related goodies in the bundle, but probably the biggest highlight is the fact that this year’s bundle comes with a complete licence for Luminar 2018 by Skylum (formerly known as Macphun). This license alone is worth $69. Luminar used to be Mac-only, but now it’s also available for Windows. Some people use it as a Lightroom alternative, but I think it’s at its best when used as a Lightroom plug-in. In one of the following blog posts, I’ll show you a couple of the more interesting features of Luminar.

This year’s bundle also includes a Luminar 2018 license, an interesting Lightroom and Photoshop plug-in that some people even use as a complete Lightroom alternative. In one of the next blog posts, I’ll go a little deeper into the unique features of Luminar that make it stand out, especially when used in conjunction with Lightroom. Until October 16, a copy of Luminar 2018 is included in this year’s 5DayDeal bundle. Click here for more info.

2. You’re mainly interested in photographing people, with or without flash

The total value of the highlighted items is $732. The full bundle is yours for less than 15 percent of that. If you’re into photographing people, I found the following tutorials to be interesting:

Zack Arias takes nobody seriously and certainly not himself in his new Photo 101 tutorial. I like that attitude (or lack of it) :-)

• Photo 101.
  A new tutorial by Zack Arias, the man who, along with David Hobby, taught an entire generation how to use flash. This time, he leaves the flashes unplugged, though and focuses on the basics of photography. Photo 101 is Zacks own introductory course. I’m listing it with the portrait courses because after the introduction, Zack takes you along on three portrait shoots where he uses minimal means to produce cool shots.

• Creativity on a Budget.
  Lindsay Adler is another big name in the photo tutorial business and rightly so. Her course to me was the surprise of this year’s bundle. In ‘Creativity on a Budget’ she shows you how you can turn cheap and often everyday items into fashion accessories but she does not stop there: in part 2, she actually photographs the fruit of her handicraft and produces some amazing results!

• Photographing the Bride.
  This tutorial focuses on what is probably the most important type of portrait photography: bridal portraits!

• Finding Rembrandt: Shoot Like the Old Masters.
  One of my favourite tutorials in this 5DayDeal is by one of my favourite teachers. Just like me, Chris Knight has a thing for dramatic, Rembrandt-style lighting patterns. In this video course, he dives deeply into Rembrandt portraits and he also takes you through his postproduction. Another highly recommended tutorial that by itself costs more than the entire bundle.

“A new camera makes you no more of a great photographer than a box of cake-mix makes you a great pastry chef.”

— Zack Arias in Photo 101

My favourite light setup: short light (in this case: short loupe light). In this tutorial, Chris Knight explores the tools and techniques to create dramatic looking portraits. Until October 16, this tutorial and many others is yours for only $89 as part of the 5DayDeal.

3. You’re mainly interested in product, landscape and architecture photography.

Admittedly, this list is shorter but that’s mainly because I only highlighted the courses that deal with the photography side of things, not the postprocessing. In practice, the other courses (such as Serge Ramelli’s Adobe Lightroom Masterclass and the Mastering Luminosity Masks course by Nick Page) contain a lot of content that is geared towards landscape and architectural photographers.

Still not convinced? I’ve got 5 more arguments for you:

1. This way of learning is by far the cheapest way to improve your photographic skills at your own pace, when and where you want. Most of the tutorials are downloadable video files, so you’re not tied to subscriptions or internet access to watch them. The 5DayDeal bundle gives you 60+ hours of video tutorials for less than $1.5 per hour. Yours to keep forever! The eBooks and presets come on top of that. And that’s without counting Luminar 2018!

2. A large part of the 5DayDeal bundle is new and if it is not new, it’s never been offered as part of another bundle.

3. The bundle is gone on October 16, noon PDT.

4. 10 percent of the turnover goes to charity. In total, previous 5DayDeals have collected over $300.000 for various charities.

5. There are two optional bundles that you can purchase upon checkout:

   • The Charity Bundle and the Pro Bundle ($19 and $29, respectively). Here’s the complete list of what these bundles contain. The latter one focuses on pro photographers and includes a full wedding photography course!

*: + VAT for European citizens. If you have a valid VAT number, you can enter that upon checkout and you won’ be charged VAT.

Exporting Facebook cover photos with Lightroom

Your Facebook Cover photo is the digital equivalent of your house’s front door. So, a new paint job every once in a while does not hurt. In this video, I show you how you can easily and quickly change your Facebook Cover Photos using a crop preset and an export preset in Lightroom.

Creating Book Cover Pages with Lightroom Classic CC

The Lightroom Classic CC 7.5 update brought a number of new features to the Book module, which I covered in this video. With some out-of-the-box thinking you can use one of these new features to enhance your Lightroom Blurb book covers with text, without having to perform a Photoshop roundtrip. This video shows you how.

When the Shadows slider does not cut it: The Radial Filter Shadows Turbo Boost

Does it ever happen to you that you want to lift the shadows in an image and even +100 on the Shadows slider in Lightroom's Basic Panel just does not cut it? In those case, you have to resort to the much coarser Exposure slider, but that sometimes brightens things you don't want to.

In this video, I show you a simple yet very effective technique that works wonders in situations like this. The only condition is that you use Lightroom Classic CC (or the new Lightroom CC). If you are still on Lightroom 6, you might want to have a look, if only to see what great stuff you're missing out on. Maybe you'll decide it's worth to switch to the subscription anyway.

This tip also works to recover highlights beyond what the Highlights slider allows you to. Obviously, only in so far that there is highlight or shadow detail left to recuperate.

What's new in Lightroom Classic CC 7.5?

Today, Adobe just released the Lightroom Classic CC 7.5 update. If you're a frequent user of the Book Module, you're going to love this update, because not only are there new styles (including Magazine) to choose from, but you also finally get to edit existing templates or create new ones from scratch and save them as custom pages.

If you have never used the Book Module before, I suggest you try it out because it really is one of the quickest and user-friendliest ways to save your images from oblivion and turning them into a touchable memory. There might be better options out there and there might be cheaper options out there, but overall, I really like the price-performance-speed ratio of the Book Module - Blurb combo, especially after these new updates.

And speaking about price, in the video I give you a tip on how you can save up to 40 percent on your Blurb books!

P.S. In the video, I use sample images from last year's Location Portraiture and Lighting Masterclass in Varanasi, India. If you're interested in being a part of next year's trip, the details have just been announced! Check them out here.

Varanasi Before and After

Is it the memories of the narrow alleyways, the photogenic people, the company of like-minded photographers or simply that fantastic hole-in-the-wall place with the heavenly chocolate coconut banana dosas? I don't know, but editing this picture sure made me want to go back to Varanasi for a new edition of the Varanasi Location Portraiture and Lighting Masterclass. The last one Matt Brandon and I did, dates back to 2017 and that's a long time to be without those delicious pancakes!

But first things first: I actually only wanted to do a before-and-after type of blog post on editing an image in Lightroom. While scrolling through my Library, I stumbled across this image that I made in 2016 with my Fujifilm X-T1. I still remember Matt and me seeing this photogenic sadhu and escorting him away from the busy main street into a calmer alleyway to have our participants photograph him using off-camera flash. While Matt was setting up the shot, I made this photo almost by accident. It was more meant as a behind-the-scenes type of shot, but as I liked the three characters (did you actually already notice the kid in the lower left part?) in the picture, I decided I would try to resuscitate it in Lightroom. 

A composition that's way too wide, a balance between flash and available light that's completely off and a light blue towel that matches none of the other colours in the image. There's work to be done! 

Step 1: Adjusting Exposure and Shadows

Time after time, I'm amazed at what you can do with the handful of sliders in Lightroom's Standard Panel in the Develop Module. I increased the Exposure and maxed out the Shadows slider all the way to +100. This made me see a new problem: Matt's also in the picture. That's what those ultrawide angle zooms will do for you!

Step 2: Cropping and Straightening the Image

I don't know if I should see a therapist, but I have a thing with straight lines. In an image, I want my verticals and horizontals either completely wonky or dead straight. Not something in the middle as in this shot. So I opened up the Transform Panel and activated the Guided Upright tool (1). I drew a line parallel over a wall in the left of the image (2) that I wished were vertical and did the same with a wall on the right (3). Doing so, I told Lightroom it had to straighten those lines and make them parallel. Sometimes, this correction will cause the image to become too compressed or too elongated, but the Aspect Ratio (4) slider can easily fix that for you.

I subsequently activated the Crop tool (R) (5) and made a square crop. This also almost solved the problem of Matt being in the picture. All that was left was a part of his camera, which I took out in one fell swoop of the Healing Brush. In retrospect, I actually shouldn't have done that at this stage, as my subsequent vignetting took care of the problem automatically.

Step 3: Adding a Graduated Filter

Because I still did not like the light-dark balance between the left and the right part of the image, I added a Graduated Filter to brighten the darkest part of the alleyway a bit more. By choosing a relatively soft transition zone (1), this adjustment blends in unnoticed.

Step 4: Color Grading via the new Creative Profiles

The previous steps were mainly meant to improve the image's exposure and balance, but they weren't necessarily creative, rather corrective. In this step I decided on my Colour Grading: choosing the subjective 'Look and Feel' for the image. I used to use Lightroom presets for that, but ever since they've been introduced in  Lightroom Classic CC 7.3, I now prefer to use the Creative Profiles. Not in the least because of their handy Amount slider that lets you adjust their effect all the way between 0 and 200 percent! In this case, I chose the Dark Color Pop profile from my brand new Piet's Creative Profiles Starter Pack (available here for only $14.95) and I diminished its strength to 70 percent. 

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Buy now for only $14.95

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Step 5: Brightening (Dodging) the face of the man in the background

I sometimes jump around a bit while I'm editing my images. One of the things the profile caused was for the face of the man in the background to turn too dark. So I drew a Radial Filter over his face (1) and brought up the Shadows slider to +100 (2). That didn't do much, though. In those cases where the targeted Shadows or Highlights sliders don't seem to do anything, it's time to move to the broader range of the Exposure slider. However, its sledgehammer approach also caused the surrounding wall to brighten, creating a telltale halo around the man's head. So I turned to one of my favourite new tools in Lightroom Classic CC: the Range Mask. By activating the Luminosity Range Mask (3), I could direct the Exposure slider's effect to specific brightness zones within the overall limits of the Radial Filter's perimeter (in this case the levels between 0 and 26). This way, I could use a fairly blunt tool (the Radial Filter) and still create an utterly precise mask without having to paint it manually with the Adjustment Brush. Further in this Before & After, you'll see another example of the power of this tool, when I use it to simply change the towel's colour!

Step 6: Darkening the Foreground with a Graduated Filter

As I thought the lower right corner was still too bright, I added an extra Graduated Filter to darken it, thereby focusing even more on the subjects.

Step 7: Changing the Towel's Color

Ok. This step is the most spectacular one in this entire Before & After, I think! The towel that our sadhu used to protect his spotless white attire from the dirt of the Varanasi streets, is quite the attention-grabber. That's not only because of its size, but mainly because of its color. Baby-blue might look good on newborns, but it definitely is out of place in the otherwise warm color palette of this image. My first idea was to Photoshop the towel out but it's quite a lot of work to do in a believable way and... this is supposed to be a Lightroom tutorial! So I tried the following: I used the Adjustment Brush to paint a fairly rough mask over the towel. I increased the Temp slider (1) to make it warmer and subsequently lowered the Saturation slider (2) to reduce the saturation of the existing colour. Then I went on to choose a new color in the Color rectangle (3) that better integrated with the surroundings. In order to make the mask coincide completely with the actual towel, I activated the Color Range Mask tool  (4) and used its Color Picker (5) to drag and select the blue hues in the towel. This told Lightroom to only adjust those blue pixels within the original, slightly broader and rougher Adjustment Brush mask. You can see the result in the next picture: I changed the towel's colour from blue to beige without resorting to Photoshop!

Step 8: Adjusting the Color of the Sadhu's Clothes

With the color of the towel blending in more into the environment, a new problem surfaced: the sadhu's clothing looks a bit too neutrally white in comparison to the rest of the scene. I solved this problem in a way that was comparable to the previous step but I used a Radial Filter instead. I drew one over the sadhu and adjusted the color with a combination of the Temperature (1), Saturation (2) and a custom color (3). In this case, I did not choose the Color Range Mask but the Luminance Range Mask to further narrow down the selection. By setting the slider to only affect tones in the 89 to 100 values, I could direct the color change only to the sadhu's white clothes. So, a combination of a Radial Filter and a Range Mask once again let me perform a difficult task with relative ease. For me personally, these new range masks alone are worth the price of the monthly Lightroom subscription. Definitely something to consider if you're still using Lightroom 6.

Step 9: Adding Radial Filters to the three People in the Image

Because I was after a dark, moody image, I wanted to darken the area around our three subjects a bit more. I could obviously do that with the Adjustment Brush, but that involves painting and I try to avoid that. So I used a little roundabout technique: I added three Radial Filters, each brightening one of the subjects (you can see all three of them together in this screenshot - normally you can only see one at a time). So they were now brighter than their surroundings and in fact a bit too bright. Then I turned to the Basic Panel and lowered the overall Exposure. The net result was that the people kept more or less their original brightness value and the background got darkened. Sometimes, the fastest way to do something in Lightroom is to take a detour! 

Step 10: Burning with the Adjustment Brush 

It's a more or less a constant technique in my postprocessing that I will achieve the general look and feel of an image through one click on a preset or a profile. The time I save in doing so, I will reinvest in local adjustments that can really take the image to the next level. In this case, I used the Adjustment Brush to further burn (darken) the area around the sadhu.

Step 11: More Graduated Filters

Ok, we're definitely in the area of diminishing returns here, but in order to guide the eye of the viewer even more through the image, I added two more Graduated Filters (shown together here). These darken the edges of the image so your eye is drawn more tho the center. A little like a vignette would do, but only to the left and right, as I wanted to keep the alleyway as it was. As you can see in the Graduated Filter to the right, I used another Luminance Range Mask to protect my subject from being darkened as well.

Step 12: Radial Filter to simulate the Sun

Another technique for which I like to use the Radial Filter, is to simulate the effect of sun rays. The back of this picture is lit by sunlight and I wanted to slighly warm up the neutral (and by comparison cold) flash light we used on the sadhu. So I added a Radial Filter (1) with an increased Temperature (2). Another Range Mask allowed me to focus mainly on the brightest parts of the image.

Step 13: Adding a Split Tone and Grain

Brightening the left side caused some noise to appear in that part of the image. By itself, that doesn't bother me, on the contrary: some noise can add to a photo's atmosphere but... as the right part of the image was correctly exposed by flash, there was no noise over there. And that difference in noise level is a telltale sign that the photo has been worked on. So, in order to cover my tracks, I added some global Grain via the Effects Panel. Finally, I turned the Highlights in the image a little more yellow by adding a Split Tone. By dragging the Balance slider to the left, I told Lightroom to only tone the brightest highlights, like the ones in the sadhu's clothes.

Step 14: Burning the Lower Right Corner with the Adjustment Brush

As a finishing touch, I also darkened the lower right corner a little more, using an Adjustment Brush.

Finally...

In this Before-And-After tutorial, I wanted to introduce you to a number of techniques that I often use to improve my images. This was a rather extreme example, and I am already bracing myself for comments that will tell me that 'this is no longer photography' and that I 'should get it right in camera'. Believe me or not, but occasionally I do get it right (or at least better) in camera, but there wouldn't be a lot to teach with those images!  But most of all, I wanted to show you that sometimes, there's more in an image than you might think at first sight and that it can be worthwhile to invest some time into improving a seemingly hopeless image. Then, you can learn from your mistakes and next time, hopefully, you will get it right in camera!

Wanna join us in Varanasi?

Maybe, after reading this blog post, you're thinking that it might be cool to visit Varanasi, too. It's a fantastic place to hone your portrait skills and there is no better way to do it than through a photo workshop where you'll get all the logistical help you need to create great images yourself. That's why Matt Brandon and yours truly are nose-deep in our agendas trying to set up a new edition of our popular seven day Varanasi Location Portraiture and Lighting Masterclass. If you want to be amongst the first to know about dates and pricing, fill out this form. Below you can see some more images that were made during previous editions of this workshop and some of those came straight out of camera looking pretty close to their final version :-)  

Buy now for only $14.95

Choosing a cover for my Lightroom Profiles Starter Pack

Hello folks, it's been quiet on the blog but know that I am super busy with a couple of really interesting photography related projects that I hope to talk a little bit more about after the summer holidays... 

Say what? Haven't downloaded my Freesets yet? All you have to do is subscribe to the MoreThanWords newsletter at www.lightroomfreesets.com

In the mean time, I need your advice: now that my free Lightroom Presets (pictured above) have been downloaded over 4,000 times (get them at www.lightroomfreesets.com if you haven't already), I'm playing with the idea of offering them also - at an affordable price - as a set of Lightroom Creative Profiles for Lightroom Classic CC users. Profiles have a number of advantages over presets:

• Profiles are applied as one of the first steps in the Develop pipeline.
• Profiles leave the Develop sliders untouched. So you can apply them on top of any other Develop Adjustments you already have applied without them overriding those settings. They are cumulative.
• And... this is my favourite feature: you know how often a preset will be just a tad too strong to your taste? It's not so easy to dial the effect of a preset back, especially with presets you haven't made yourself, since they can be quite complex. With a Creative Profile, you have a handy Amount slider that easily lets you scale the effect from 0 to 200 percent, simply by dragging a slider.

You can lower or strenghten the effect of a Creative Profile simply by dragging the Amount slider around...

Now... here's my questions:

1. Do you like this idea of offering the presets as Creative Profiles?
2. Which of the following three box shots do you prefer? (Click on a thumbnail to see it bigger)

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You don't have to enter your email address to vote, but if you do, you will receive a 50 percent off discount code when the profiles become available and you might be one of three people to receive the profiles for free. Those three people will be randomly selected amongst the people who fill out this form (and fill out their email address so I can send them the prize).