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How to edit in Lightroom using the “Dark Mode” technique for more contrast and drama

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When it comes to processing our images, there are all kinds of weird and crazy techniques out there. This is an interesting Lightroom one from Pye Jirsa over at SLR Lounge, which he calls “Dark Mode”. It allows you to quickly and easily draw a distinction between the lit areas you want to highlight, and the shadowy areas, without sending them to pure black.

It’s an approach I’d not seen before. It essentially involves bringing the exposure way down, the blacks way up to bring back the shadow detail and then controlling your contrast with the highlights. Some thought needs to be put into the shooting technique for this to work, but it looks to be quite effective if this is the final look you’re going for.

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Is it post-processed?

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Yes, it’s post processed.

I get this question all the time, like every other photographer on the planet, and it often sparks heated debates that challenge the notion of objective reality and the meaning of photography.

My claim is: all photographs are post-processed.

In one way or the other.

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Phase One has announced Capture One 20 with an array of new editing and workflow features

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Phase One has today announced the launch of the latest version of their photo editing software, Capture One 20. They say that the latest release was driven based on feedback from the Capture One community to deliver the features and workflow that people actually need.

It comes with improvements to the existing toolset, along with an array of new features, too, including the Basic Colour Editor, High Dynamic Range, Noise Reduction, a new Crop Tool and an improved user interface. It also brings with it, support for some of the most recent camera releases including the Canon EOS 90D and Nikon Z50.

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To edit or not? How far should you take your post processing?

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How much we edit our photos, or whether we should even do it at all, is a conversation that I see some up almost daily on social media. I say conversation, it often turns into quite the heated debate.

In this video, Sean Tucker shares some of his thoughts on the history of editing and post-processing in photography. It’s been going on since the dawn of photography, and Sean mentions many historically great photographers, like Elliot Erwitt, DFan Ho, Ansel Adams and others as examples of photographers who, pre-digital, were doing a lot of post-work.

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Triple processing of a single RAW file

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Please note that this tutorial is meant for advanced users of Photoshop who are well familiar with layers, masks and luminosity masks.

Occasionally when examining a raw file I get a reasonably clear idea on how I would like the end result to be. In this instance I had an inner picture of trees glowing from the sun, rather dark shadows and a sky with nice color contrast.

In order to achieve this I opted to create two virtual copies in Lightroom from the original raw file. I could alternatively have achieved what I was looking for using Smart Objects, but envisioned that Virtual Copies would be the better option for the image I had in mind.

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How to use frequency separation to remove chromatic aberration and colour fringing

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Frequency separation is typically seen as a technique for retouching skin – albeit often quite badly these days. But that’s not its only use. Separating colour from detail offers a lot of other potential benefits for working on your images.

In this particular example, from travel & landscape photographer Michael Breitung, it’s chromatic aberration and colour fringing that get the frequency separation treatment.

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VSCO Film Presets for Desktop are being discontinued in March 2019

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VSCO has announced that the much loved VSCO Film Presets for Desktop are coming to an end. The company says they’re moving completely away from the desktop to focus solely on their mobile app.

The Presets for Desktop have been rather popular over the years, although that’ll all come to an end on March 1st, 2019. VSCO hasn’t really said why they’re killing them off, except to say that they are “always moving forward” and focusing on mobile.

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5 reasons to get it right in-camera and not fix it in post

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It’s something we’ve been hearing in the worlds of both photography and video for years. Ever since digital became a thing, so did “Oh, we’ll fix it in post”. But most of the things that we often choose to fix in post can more easily be fixed in-camera on the day. Sure, it might take an extra 5 or 10 minutes of your time, but it could shave hours off your post production.

In this video from the guys at Aputure, we see five reasons why you should definitely fix things in-camera, and not rely on post for.

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Skylum’s Aurora HDR 2018 now comes with Loupedeck support

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Skylum has today announced a major performance update to its Aurora HDR 2018 software. As well as adding in some new tools and improving performance and stability for both Windows and Mac, it also adds support for the new Loupedeck+ console.

With the new version, users will see a boost in performance on MacOS computers of up to 180% while Windows users see a speed improvement of up to 500%. Skylum also says that Aurora HDR now makes better use of memory with intelligent management and improved stability. But what’s really cool is that it now has Loupedeck support.

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Wacom’s entry-level Intuos tablets just got a huge new upgrade

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A graphics tablet is one of the most essential pieces of kit one can own as a photographer or retoucher. Sure, you can edit with a mouse, but a tablet makes life so much easier, and faster, and more accurate. While you’re often good with pretty much anything that has the Wacom name stamped on it, the really good ones have traditionally been rather expensive.

The Intuos is the low budget entry into the world of Wacom tablets, but they’re quite basic. And small. Now, though, with the new 2018 range of Intuos tablets, they’ve seen some pretty significant upgrades in size, sensitivity and capability.

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