Photo Adventure Transcript

Download the photo here.

Welcome, everyone, to another episode of Macro Photography --- and today we are going to turn this photo of a small finch... into this photo using Lightroom. So let's get started.

To help speed this photo up, I've already saved snapshot of all the "Basic" panel edits. I'll switch in on and off so you can see the difference and I'll do that throughout the video. Over at the "Temp" slider, I decreased to minus 25. You can see that adjustment was a big improvement. Moving down to the highlights, I decreased to minus 100 to bring back some detail in the face. Then I increased the shadows to plus 100 to bring up some details. I increased the "Whites" to plus 14. You can see a little bit of a difference here. And I decreased the "Blacks" to minus 43. Moving down to the "Clarity" slider, I increased to plus 21. I increased "Vibrance" to plus 26. And with that the "Basic" panel is done.

Moving down to the "Tone Curve" panel, I have my edits off so I'll turn them on. I set the "Point Curve" to "Medium Contrast". I decreased the shadows to minus 18. Moving down to the "HSL" panel you can see that I left each tab as default. Moving down to the "Split Toning" panel, I also left these as default. Down to the "Detail" panel, I increased the "Luminance" to 71. Here you can see the difference. On the "Lens Corrections" Panel, I check marked both. My lens isn't recognized with this photo so I left it as is. Moving down to the "Effects" panel, I decreased the "Amount" to minus 14.

Ok that's all of the standard adjustments, now let's do the fun stuff. I'm going to brighten up the sides by using the "Graduated Filter". I'll turn it on since I've already done it. Here you can see the areas and angle I placed them at. The red color is just showing you the area affected. And over at the panel you can see that I set the "Tint" to plus 57 to change the green to a more purple color. I increased the exposure to plus 2.19.

Next, I used the "Adjustment Brush". I'm going to turn the panel on so we can see what I did. Starting out with the darks, you can see that I have the exposure set to minus .86. I just painted over some dark areas on the chest, forehead and tail feathers. I'll turn it on and off so you can see the difference. Next I'm going to do the highlights with a new brush. I painted the forehead, the eye, and some feathers. You can see that I have the exposure set to plus .76. I'll turn it on and off. And the contrast is set to plus 62 to bring out more color. I'll turn that on and off. Also notice I have the saturation set to plus 67. Turning it on and off you can see the blue more in the feathers.

Next I'm going to darken the branch a little with a new brush set to minus .86. I also added more to the feathers in this round. Next I want to focus on bringing out the eye more so I used a "Radial Filter". I'll turn that on here. And you can see I placed it over the eye. I have the "Clarity" set to plus 64 and the "Sharpness" set to plus 100 to give the eye a sharper look.

And now let's see the before and after. And there you have it, here is the final result. If you liked this video please give me a thumbs up to help out this channel. You can also download the photo if you liked it. Thanks for watching!