kotography4u

Thanks for the info! I had not known about the "reset" button. What PP areas in LR6 do you explore to achieve the vividness, or is this just a matter of explore and experiment? I'm not reluctant to explore - the reason I ask is that some tools will affect the look of others down the line, and if you take a wrong fork in the road, you may be looking in the entire wrong room in the house without knowing it - i.e., looking in the living room for the toilet (probably not a good [or apt] analogy)

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

Keep in mind, when you decided to capture in RAW, you decided that you personally would edit every RAW image, controlling every and all aspects. You made that decision whether that was your intention or not. You can find any number of example approaches from various artists in utube, explaining, free of charge, the purpose of every individual slider in LR (and similar software) as well as demonstrations of how these artists approach their use of the tool. There's not a right or wrong way, although the logical top to bottom arrangement of the panels on the right side of the LR Develop Module lend to a top to bottom approach when using the tools.

minniev Loc: MIssissippi

Most was experimentation. I found some help online, by googling LR profile info for my particular camera (the most helpful was on the DPR website). A little contrast, a little clarity, reduced highlights and raised shadows a bit, a little vibrance (not saturation), curves, some sharpening adjustments, then most of the rest was color adjustments in the HSL panel. The basic LR treatment for my raw files does unhappy things to my greens and not enough happy things to my blues, so I adjust for that. I put up onscreen a file that my camera software had adjusted, and referred to it while working on the same picture in LR to get as close as I could without over-committing. I was seeking, for lack of a better term, a semi final result, knowing I could tweak further quite easily. I do understand your analogy, it is best to be conservative when you build an import preset, to avoid what you're describing. But when using such a preset, it's important to understand the result is NOT baked in, all the sliders are simply adjusted for you. If you realize, for instance, that this particular image is not in need of any highlight reduction, you can change just that slider without touching the others. I do not include anything related to WB or straightening in a preset, for instance, that is too variable. It took me several tries to get the one I liked, but it saves me a lot of work now. And I actually learned a lot by digging into the weeds of curves and color.

via the lens Loc: Northern California, near Yosemite NP

To learn more about the Development Module in LR I recommend the Martin Evening books. Also, read the online Help Manual put out by Adobe which tells you what each slider does.

kotography4u

All of that info is a tremendous help. Thanks so much!

texaseve Loc: TX, NC and NH

I agree with the others. I would add that editing in LR is really fun once you get going and you can always step back in your history if you don't like it. You can also make virtual copies to play around with different looks. If you like what you did on one photo and you wish for that edit to be done on another or several more in your filmstrip, it it easy to sync all of those (once you highlight them) so they all have that edit. The best part about raw, is the ability to pull in highlights and lighten dark shadows that you might not otherwise be able to do with a jpg.