From my experience most of us are visual learners. If we watch someone and take notes through what they show us, we can learn, but it is much better when we put the methods that we are taught into practice and then repeat them over and over again.
Two primary teachers I have had are Jack "Wow" Davis and Mark S Johnson. Jack Davis taught me about Lightroom and Mark Johnson taught me about using Photoshop. I took what I learned from each other them and then worked it into my own workflow. Yes, I have learned techniques from other people like Blake Rudis, J.R. Rodriguez, Anthony Morganti and others, but this system works for me.
This will be a two part blog post separating my work in Lightroom from my work in Photoshop. They are two different programs and some people may only desire to use Lightroom and not include Photoshop in their workflow. If you happen to be using Photoshop, Lightroom works very similar to Adobe Camera Raw (ACR). For me Lightroom is less intimidating.
Once I have loaded my photographs into Lightroom (I use Lightroom to catalog my photographs rather than using Bridge which is part of Photoshop), I go way down to "Lens Corrections". Check the boxes that say "Remove Chromatic Aberration" and "Enable Profiles Corrections". Be sure to check your Histogram up at the top on the right hand side to see what the length of the lens you used was. You might find that it is giving you the wrong lens. Then go down to "Transform". Here I select "Auto" but I also look at the picture as I might have to manually adjust my picture to get it the way I want.
Next I go to the top and crop my picture to the way I want it. Then I go into the Basic panel and set my White Balance. On a RAW Photograph, you have choices (just one of the reasons I shoot in RAW). From there I adjust my Highlights and Shadows. Most of the time you will find yourself pulling the slider to the left to reduce your highlights and to the right to open up your shadows. It is important to make sure that you are not clipping your whites or blacks, but if you don't like what you are seeing you can always adjust them in Curves, when we get there. Then go down to Clarity and adjust your Clarity. You will see your photo sharpen right up.
Then adjust your Whites and Blacks. This might help some of your clipping, so it is why I don't adjust my Curves until I get there. Then you can adjust your Vibrance. You will really see the colors come to life doing this. From there I go into the Radial Filter. Hold the Ctrl (on MAC the Command key) and double click on the picture. You will see that you get a vignette. Make sure that "Invert Mask" is checked. This will allow you to adjust what is inside the mask. Most of the time all I adjust is the Clarity here, but you might need to make some other modifications Remember you are the artist. As Bob Ross would say, "It is your world, so present it the way you want."
So just a quick recap to this point:
Lens Corrections
Transform
Auto
Crop Tool
Basic Panel
White Balance
Highlights/Shadows
Clarity
Whites/Blacks
Vibrance/Vignette
Jack Davis calls this the "Wow Tango".
If you still need to fix your clipping for blacks and whites, go to Tone Curves and adjust the side of the curve on the left (for blacks) or the right (for whites). Just push it straight up to adjust the blacks for clipping and straight down for the whites (you need to be in the point curve for this maneuver). Once you get the triangles not to have white in the Histogram, you have done the job you need because we will make another adjustment in Photoshop.
Go into the HSL panel and adjust the colors to the way you want. I start with the Luminance, then go to Hue and then to Saturation.
Then go into Detail and adjust your Sharpening (typically 71 is enough for me), Masking, then Luminance if I notice grain (a look that looks like someone took and threw a handful of sand across your image.) and then do the Detail for the Luminance and the Masking (just about the Masking slider).
That is my basic Lightroom workflow. When I am finished in Lightroom, I right click on my picture, go to Edit In, and choose Photoshop and let the program transfer the program. That way I keep my pictures from being destroyed by Photoshop.
Stay tuned for my workflow by Photoshop.
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