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Adjusting Images: The Optics Panel

Lesson 16 from: Editing and Organizing your Photography in Lightroom

Jared Platt

Adjusting Images: The Optics Panel

Lesson 16 from: Editing and Organizing your Photography in Lightroom

Jared Platt

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Lesson Info

16. Adjusting Images: The Optics Panel

<b>In this lesson you will learn everything you need to know about the Optics panel and how those tools will help you in the process of adjusting your images.&#160; This is a comprehensive lesson on this panel.</b>

Lesson Info

Adjusting Images: The Optics Panel

1 Now in order to show you the next panel, 2 which is the optics panel, 3 I kind of needed to get away from the portrait session 4 and go into some other situation 5 where there was a lot of light and dark. 6 So when we come across what we call chromatic aberration, 7 that happens at the edge of dark and light, 8 that's really where it mostly occurs. 9 In a portrait, if you're shooting a person 10 with a dark suit on a white background, 11 you'll see it right at the edges of their suit. 12 If you're shooting buildings and things like that, 13 you'll sometimes see it right at the edge 14 of the sky and the building. 15 In this case, we're gonna see it at the edge of the cactus 16 and the highlights of the fog behind the cactus. 17 So I'm gonna zoom in here to this cactus. 18 And right now the chromatic aberration is on, 19 or the removal, the chromatic aberration removal is on. 20 And so I'm going to kind of zoom in here so you can see. 21 And then I'm going to turn this off. 22 So wa...

tch what happens when I turn off 23 the remove chromatic aberration. 24 Do you see that red line there? 25 And the green line there? 26 That is chromatic aberration. 27 And that's simply a result of the pixels, 28 which are red, green, blue, RGB. 29 And the pixels are, they're not in a line with each other 30 like red, green, blue. 31 They're not, you know, deep like this. 32 They're actually side by side. 33 So you have a red one, a green one, 34 a blue one, and another green one. 35 So you have two greens and a red and a blue. 36 And because they're sitting side by side, 37 depending on the way the light is spilling around the object 38 and the way it's coming into the actual camera 39 and hitting the sensor, 40 because it's coming at this angle rather than this angle, 41 you end up with pixels that don't know 42 where they're supposed to be, basically. 43 And that's an over simplification, 44 but basically the computer doesn't know how to describe 45 where the red is supposed to be 46 and where the green is supposed to be, 47 and so, because the angle. 48 And if you have a digital camera 49 and you have new digital lenses, 50 they try and straighten the light a little bit better 51 so it hits the sensor more directly, and that helps a lot. 52 So older lenses will have a lot more chromatic aberration 53 than newer lenses 54 because they just straighten the light a little bit better. 55 But, you're gonna see it mostly 56 in these types of areas where you have really bright 57 and then really dark things right next to each other. 58 And then you're gonna see that happen, 59 especially when you've got a colorful thing, 60 blue suit, green cactus, something like that 61 in front of a light background, 62 you're gonna see this kind of shift. 63 And what chromatic aberration does is it senses those edges 64 and it tries to correct 'em and pull the green in 65 or pull the red in. 66 So you can click on that and gone. 67 Now, if that doesn't work, 68 you have the option of doing a defringe that is manual. 69 And the manual defringe allows you to actually choose 70 the specific color. 71 So I can take the green and I can just choose green and say, 72 I wanna, you know, the amount I want to do of that, 73 that defringing on the green. 74 But then you have to choose the right color of that. 75 And so you can grab this little color dropper, 76 and then you can go in and just choose the exact green, 77 which that's not green, that's more of a cyan-ish, 78 or maybe like a, I don't know, it's like a sea green. 79 So I'm gonna click on that. 80 And by doing that, see how it just disappeared? 81 That's because it chose that kind of sea green area 82 on the green hue here and then it chose at a proper amount. 83 And then I can increase or decrease the amount. 84 So zero versus 100%. 85 And somewhere in between there is the right amount, 86 like that's the right amount. 87 And then I can go to the other side, 88 which is gonna be the red side. 89 So remember RGB, you've got red and green. 90 The red and green is where you usually see it. 91 And so we're gonna click on this, 92 the magenta side or the reddish side, 93 and I'm gonna do the same thing. 94 Click on my little dropper tool. 95 Oops. 96 Click on the dropper tool 97 and then go in there and find that magenta, 98 click on it, and see how it disappeared? 99 And now I can just kind of amount up and down 100 until that disappears. 101 So, that's how you use the manual defringing option 102 if for some reason this auto chromatic aberration removal 103 doesn't work. 104 And so it's either click this 105 and it's a one time, it just does it, 106 or it is go down to the manual version and do it yourself. 107 Either way is fine, one is just faster than the other. 108 And, quite frankly, if you turn this on on every photograph 109 so that you always include remove chromatic aberration, 110 there's almost no downside to it. 111 So basically I just leave it on. 112 And then if there's something where I think 113 something's weird about this image, 114 I can always go turn that off and see if that fixes it. 115 But there's pretty much no downside to removing 116 chromatic aberration on pretty much every photograph. 117 But, usually you'll only see it in situations like this. 118 And by the way, now that you have this tool open 119 with the little color dropper, 120 just hit the escape key and that will disappear 121 and you'll be back to normal. 122 Now, let's zoom out on this photograph 123 and let's go to a different photograph. 124 So I'm gonna, I'm gonna go out here, 125 and we're gonna go to a completely different photograph. 126 So now we're just looking at some street photography. 127 I'm traveling and I find this building really interesting 128 and so I'm photographing it. 129 And one of the things that I notice on an image like this, 130 especially when you're talking about 131 a little bit of a blue sky, 132 is notice how it gets darker over here 133 on the left-hand side, 134 and it's lighter right in the middle here, 135 and then it's light here, but the wall here is a bit dark. 136 And that's because there's a natural vignette to my lens. 137 And so there's also this Enable Lens Corrections option 138 right here on the right-hand side, 139 second option below Optics. 140 And if I click on that option, 141 it's going to remove the natural lens vignette 142 that is on every photograph that shot with this lens. 143 So I'm just going to click on it. 144 And you can see that all of the edges brightened up. 145 So it basically just removed the natural lens vignette 146 so that I can work on the image 147 and it's very consistent across the board. 148 And if you're using a known camera 149 and a known lens combination, 150 it does a really good job at mapping out 151 what that specific lens on that specific camera 152 at that specific millimeter and at that specific aperture, 153 what is the general vignette that happens, 154 and it applies a fix for it. 155 It also fixes the natural bowing of that lens as well. 156 So there's kind of a distortion that happens. 157 When I apply it, you'll notice 158 that a little Chevron appears here. 159 And I can click on that little triangle 160 and there we've got the actual camera and the lens, 161 so you can see that I've got my camera 162 and lens combination there, 163 and then I've got the distortion and the lens vignetting. 164 And I can choose which of those I want to keep. 165 So if I like the natural vignetting, 166 but I don't like the bowing of it, 167 I don't want things to kind of warp at the edges, 168 I can take the lens vignetting back down. 169 So, see that? 170 This is at 100% effective, 171 so it's trying to remove all of it, 172 and I can take it down to zero. 173 And see how everything got dark again on the edges? 174 If I like that natural, or let's say I like it 175 at a maybe 50% of what it normally does. 176 So let's just go down to about 50%. 177 That kind of keeps the vignette of the lens a little bit, 178 but kind of, you know, negates it some, 179 but I don't want the distortion. 180 Now watch what happens when I grab the distortion 181 and bring it down. 182 See that? 183 So as I go up and down, you can see 184 that there's a little bit of distortion 185 that happens in this lens. 186 And mostly you see it up here in this, 187 this tall spire here. 188 You see it in these straight lines here. 189 They kind of start bowing 190 and they get like a curvature to them. 191 So, I want to, 192 I want to fix all of that bowing on the lens. 193 I don't want any kind of natural bowing on the lens. 194 I don't want that distortion. 195 But I don't really care 196 to have the vignetting completely removed, 197 so we'll keep that at 50%. 198 And that's a really good way to work with an image. 199 But that is the optic area inside of Lightroom. 200 You have your chromatic aberration, 201 both an auto and a manual option, 202 and then you have the enable lens corrections, 203 which give you two options, 204 one for vignetting 205 and one for the distortion of that particular lens.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials

Adaptive_JP_LR_Presets.zip
Jared_Platt_-_Editing_and_Organizing_Photography_in_Lightroom_Photo_Examples.zip

Ratings and Reviews

Tim Byrne
 

Great job, Jared! You have delivered a master class for anyone beginning a journey into Lightroom, presented in absolutely clear and relaxed style. And for those with more experience with the program, every old dog can learn a few more new tricks. Teaching software is tough. Jared does it by breaking down each function and including not only the what, but the how and why as well. And each step is amplified by crystal clear photos which are manipulated with the function at hand. Bring a pad of paper, some snacks, and a cup (or two) of coffee. He is relentless in his presentation. You might watch this course as a freebie, but buy it to be able to refer to it for specific steps and processes. I've been using Adobe products since the mid 1990s and this is the best instructional presentation I've taken. ABSOLUTE WINNER1 Thanks, Jared

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