Yanik's Photo School » Video Tutorials

Creating Pseudo HDR Images in Lightroom 2

Yanik — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 11:19:39 +0000

If you haven’t heard yet, Lightroom 2 is great! Ok, ok you might have heard me mention it a few times but learning is about repetition.

So here I was post processing my Greece photos in Lightroom playing around with the main basic adjustment sliders when I thought to myself… hey! this kinda looks like an HDR photo. So I tweaked and tweaked until I got a pretty cool HDR look that looked cool. Then I thought that you guys might like to know how to do it too. So here I am.

Now, before I go on, and before the true HDR people out there burn me to the stake, I just want to say that this is NOT real HDR. It just kinda looks like HDR. Lightroom doesn’t have the ability to create HDR images without Photoshop or certain plugins like Enfuse. You can check out my tutorial on how to create HDR photos in Photoshop or in Lightroom using Enfuse. Ok, now that hat’s out of the way, let’s get to it.

You’ll see that it’s not at all complicated to create this HDR look in Lightroom. All you need to do is play with a few sliders. It’s all done Basic Panel. This is my workflow but you can do it in any order you want. I start off by bringing some of the shadow details out by using the Fill Light slider. Don’t be afraid to crank this one up.

Then I slightly increase the blacks or more contrast.

After that, if off to the Contrast slider and lowering it slightly.

Time now to boost the Exposure so that the image is properly exposed.

After properly exposing the photo, you might get some blown out highlights so the next step is to use the Recovery slider.

Now that we got most of the basic settings done, it’s just a question of tweaking Clarity, Vibrance and Saturation to your liking. And voilà! you’ve just created your pseudo HDR image directly in Lightroom.

To make things easier for you, I’ve created 2 HDR Lightroom presets to download. CLICK HERE to get them.

HDR1 is for high contrast scenes like a bright sky and a dark foreground. HDR2 is more grunge-like similar to what Topaz Adjust does. Both versions have a vignette option as well. Here are some before and after shots using these presets.

HDR1

HDR1 Vignette

HDR2

HDR2 Vignette

Here’s how you import Lightroom 2 presets. Unzip and place presets in a folder on your computer. In Lightroom, right click on any of your current presets and select Import… Find your folder with the presets and select them then click OK. Done!

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YPS’s Top Photography Tutorials of 2009

Yanik — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 16:49:05 +0000

I truly hope that all of you are enjoying this festive season and that you’re taking lots and lots of pictures!

Before sharing with you the top 5 most popular tutorials on YPS, I want to take this opportunity to thank you for your continued support. 2009 was YPS’s first full year live on the Web. It’s still a baby at only 21 months. I’m filled with gratitude knowing that my posts are helping many passionate photographers from around the world. Your comments and support keep giving me the motivation to keep sharing my knowledge and photography adventures with you. From the bottom of my heart, thank you!

Now to the fun stuff. Without further ado, here are the top 5 most viewed YPS tutorials of 2009 on Yanik’s Photo School.

1- Adding Texture to a Reflection in Photoshop

2- How to Create HDR Images in Photoshop

3- Split Toning in Lightroom

4- Creating HDR Images in Lightroom

5- Lighting Tutorial on the Brooklyn Bridge

Click on the photo to view the tutorial.

Wishing you a 2010 filled with wonderful images!

How to easily start up and market your own
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Adding a Virtual Frame in Lightroom – Video Tutorial

Yanik — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 11:30:36 +0000

Back in Adobe Lightroom 2 today and I’ll be showing you a cool way to add a virtual photo frame to your images without ever leaving Lightroom.

Of course, you don’t have the versatility and complete control of doing it in Photoshop (which I’ll cover in another tutorial) but you can still have great black or white frames. This is, in my opinion, the quickest and easiest way to add a virtual photo frame to a photo. And what makes it even faster is when you sync your images so that the selected ones all get the same frame in just few clicks! Gotta love Lightroom!

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Top Free Lightroom Presets

Yanik — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 11:18:14 +0000

One of the great things about Lightroom 2 is the ability to create presets and share them with the world.

If you’re not familiar with presets, it’s basically a saved series of photo adjustments that you can then apply to any image. Kind of like actions in Photoshop.

In this post, I thought I would share with you the many places where you can get a ton of free Lightroom presets to play with. But before I list them all, you’ll need to know how the install them. It’s actually pretty easy.

1- Put your downloaded presets in a folder somewhere on your computer (a place you’ll remember).
2- In Lightroom, right click on “user presets” in the Presets tab located on top left

3-You’ll be given 2 options: New Folder and Import. Feel free to create a new folder if you want. Once you’ve done that right click again on your folder and choose Import.
4- Select the presets from where you saved them in step 1.
5- You’re done!

Top Free Lightroom Presets

Lightroom Killer Tips has lots of great presets. Don’t forget to click on “previous entries” for more.

Check out the preset list (top right) on Inside Lightroom.

Over 140 presets from OnOne software. The 1st set I ever downloaded!

LightroomPresets.com has a growing list of presets. Some of them are quite nice.

I found some very interesting presets over at Seim Effects.

Did you like the picture effects in the movie 300? Then you’ll love this 300 preset!

Watch CSI Miami? Love the look? Get it HERE!

PresetHeaven.com has one of my favorite sepia presets called Sepia Chic. Love it! More presets here.

A nice collection of presets from Nelkas Art.

The Warming Vignette preset from albertdebruijn.com is a must! Check out the other presets as well.

More presets from CameraDojo.

Some nice presets directly from the Adobe Website.

Some pretty cool presets from Laconic!

There you have it! Those should keep you busy for a while! Experiment, have fun, and feel free to post photo link of your tests in the comments!

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How to Create a Vintage Photo Look in Photoshop – Video Tutorial

Yanik — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 11:12:11 +0000

This was a fun Photoshop tutorial! A reader asked me if I could do a tutorial on making a photo look washed out and old like in the 70s and I thought that was a great idea!

I’ve done this style a few times in the past but it had been a while. It came back to me very quickly though.

This video tutorial is a 3 step process to creating a vintage look in your photos. The first step is modifying the colors. Step 2 is to create that “de-contrasted” or washed out look. And the last step is to play with saturation.

So let’s get right to it!

Here are some great books from the YPS bookshelf.

ddddd

How to easily start up and market your own
profitable photography business