Lightroom is liberating and fun. It gave me back the results I used to get finishing my pictures in the dark room, plus several techniques that I never learned. It’s a great tool. It’s just not enough.
I still need photoshop to help me finish the visions I have for my imagery, and there are three things I need to do regularly that Lightroom just can’t make happen. That’s why I pay for the CreativeCloud photography plan from Adobe (by the way, Adobe is a partner on this blog, but I pay for my CC subscription out of my own pocket). These three make it more than worthwhile.
1. Swapping Heads
Lightroom isn’t like an onion: it doesn’t have layers. Layers in Photoshop allow me to make several photographs of a group of people and combine the exposures together for the best expression of everyone involved. I shoot using a tripod so that nothing moves between frames, then in Lightroom I get the color looking good and apply the same settings to the frames with the best expressions. Now I just select the pictures I want to combine, right click on the images and choose “Edit In>Open as Layers in Photoshop.”
Now that the pictures are all stacked up, I place a Layer Mask on each image layer and use the paint brush to add the right face from the right layer. It’s really simple! Adjust the brush hardness and opacity to refine the changes. It’s a great way to get everyone looking great in a picture, and while you can do it if you shot handheld, it’s a million times easier if you use a tripod.
Here you can see everything I’ve added to my base layer, blending from the other frames I shot. In a group picture of more than 80 people everyone’s eyes are now open, and that’s no small feat.
Photoshop also has Layer blending modes. I duplicated the image twice and set one layer to Soft Light, the other to Screen and adjusted the opacity of each until the image looked good. These settings adjust contrast in a way I can’t explain…but it looks good.
This photograph still needs some color adjustments, but even though Photoshop could do those well, I’m a Lightroom man, so I’ll do them in Lightroom. Just save the image (File>Save) and it automatically pops back up in the thumbnails in Lightroom. It’s so easy.
Here’s the final image with a few White Balance and Camera Calibration adjustments.
2. Using Text
The fact is, I often have to help my clients use my pictures, which I consider the job of a marketer and graphic designer. Still, I’ve got to be able to help them, and that means more photoshop work. The text tool is a terrific way to embellish your image with a message, or even just finish it off for printing and sharing. Two ways I’ve had to use text with the image above were for the team’s Facebook page, and also for a gift print the whole team received. Simple to do in Photoshop, nearly impossible in Lightroom.
3. Panoramas
There are lots of applications that can stitch your images together to make a panorama, and some are better that Photoshop. I’ve never used any of them, though, because Photoshop works really well, and integrates perfectly with my workflow.
My suggestion for you is to expound your thinking of what a panoramic picture is. It may be a wide picture, but it may also be a grid of multiple rows and columns with increased depth of field control, as I described in this article, or it may be a vertical image, like this one I made under the full moon in Moab last month.
This vertical panorama also utilizes a long lens to create a shallow depth of field, ensuring the background is softly out of focus. This just isn’t possible with a wide angle lens and one frame. It’s also not possible to stitch this together in Lightroom.
Lightroom really helps me finish off my images–the color controls are incredible, as are all the brightness and contrast controls. Still, it’s not able to blend multiple layers together, embellish an image with text, or stitch a panorama together. Photoshop is an integral part of my workflow. At just $10/month, I think it’ll serve you well, too.
Sheesh! I didn’t even get to mention how I use Photoshop for time lapse! Another day…
spot on! i use photoshop infrequently, but almost every time i use it it is for one of these three things. i guess my list may be just a little larger with other things being (1) creation of a 32 bit tiff from bracketed photos to then edit in lightroom, (2) adjusting canvas size for printing (sometimes needing to add ‘dead’ space or margin for matting to the aspect of the photo). (3) it is also a little bit easier/more robust to use the nik software suite within photoshop.
Great article, thanks! In the section on swapping heads, after you’ve loaded the images into a stack, what do you mean by “make them into adjustment layers”?
Good question, Michael. I think I have a tutorial about it somewhere, but most simply, at the bottom of the Layers Pallette (under all your layers) you’ll see a button that looks like a circle inside of a rectangle, and it says “Add a Mask”. Press the alt key and click on this button. It hides the layer. Now get the brush tool and choose white as the foreground color. Make sure the Layer Mask is selected on the layer (just click on the black rectangle), and paint over the parts you want visible. Where you paint with white will… Read more »
Thanks for the reply, Levi. It sounds like what you’re talking about is just putting a layer mask on a layer, which has nothing to do with “Adjustment” as that word is used in PS. An adjustment layer, as you know, is a whole different — and equally useful — thing. They are added as separate layers above and/or between image layers by selecting one from the Adjustments Panel, if that’s open, or going to Layer Menu -> New Adjustment Layer and selecting the type of Adjustment desired (Brightness/Contrast, Levels, Curves, Hue/Saturation, etc.). Instead of the language you used, perhaps… Read more »
You’re right! My mistake. I’ll reword that. Thanks for double checking me.
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