The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honours the servant and has forgotten the gift. Albert Einstein
I was struck by how different the processing tools in Lightroom are from those of just a few years ago. This got me curious so I went back in my archive to 2017 and picked a photograph that I had process at that time only using Lightroom. I then, as you can see ran the same image through a 2024 version of Lightroom. As you can see with the added enhancements in Lightroom I can now create a better image in Lightroom with out having to resort to Photoshop.
The parameter I set for processing the 2024 version was to use only Lightroom’s basic adjustments, such as sky mask or auto-transform. Just for fun, I further processed the image in NIK, sticking to basic plug-in presets. In this process, I learned that a novice Lightroom user is likely to make significantly better photographs in Lightroom in 2024 than in 2017. I would also suggest that most expert photographs might also have the same outcome and better images.
The first image is out of the camera and processed using Lightroom in 2017.
This second image shows the image process using Lightroom 2024, which contains more tools than the older version. One key difference is the masking function that has been added to Lightroom, although in 2017, many tools that have since been added to Lightroom are also found in Photoshop.
The following image has been moved through several NIK applications and back into Lightroom.
A Second Image from the Same Day
Lightroom Adjustments
Then, it was processed in Photoshop layers with NIK Viveza
Sean Tucker never uses auto-white balance. Instead, he sets it to daylight at 5500 Kelvin and leaves it there. The video below explains his reasoning for making sure his starting point illustrates a more accurate representation of the colour of the light at the time the image was taken.
On a recent trip to New York, I did a lot of street photography, some done in the evening. As much of the subject matter was moving, the camera was handheld, so a very high ISO was used during the evening. I could have placed the camera on a tripod and approached the following example quite differently, but making images late at night handheld, I was not carrying a tripod. Also, setting up a tripod at night in the street is awkward and perhaps draws too much attention to one’s equipment. However, this led me to a very interesting way to process such images. (If you are interested in night photography techniques, both on and off the tripod, you could refer to my article titled Low Light Challenge.)
After spending some time in post-processing trying to decide how to work with the noise created by such high ISOs, I discovered a fairly straightforward way to create very painterly-looking images. Examples of these images are in the following gallery: Streets of New York. The first twenty or so images will give you a good idea of the end product of this process; the image below is included in this gallery. What follows is a step-by-step illustration of the process
I used the following eight images to create a panorama image. This was necessary as I was using a 35mm equivalent lens and did not have the ability to change to a wide-angle lens. I would also argue that often, in these situations, a panorama image is less distorted than having to use an ultrawide lens. If you are interested in the process of creating panoramic photographs, I cover this topic in another article: click here to go to that article.
RAW Images as they appear after downloading
The images were then all selected and run through Lightroom noise reduction AI software, which DNG files. In order to see the difference between the original RAW image and the AI noise reduction I have enlarged the centre of the image and increased the exposure by 3.5 stops. This shows a dramatic difference.
The image on the left is the DNG file produced by the AI noise reduction feature in Lightroom. The one on the right is the original RAW image.
I then selected the Lightroom tool Merge to Panorama, chose the Spherical option, and used the auto-toning button in Lightroom so I could see the building a bit better.
You can see that the Auto button made the following adjustments to the image. There is a significant, almost two-stop increase in exposure, a significant reduction to the highlights, a smaller adjustment to the shadows, and minor adjustments to the Whites and Blacks, but quite a bit of Clarity. The remaining adjustments were quite slight
I then decided to crop the image and make some further adjustments. Rather than try and increase the exposure I chose to use the Shadow and White tone sliders to increase the light on the building. At this point you can see the impact of the AI noise reduction by comparing the image below and the following one.
The following images are from panorama merge without using the AI noise reduction program. The second image has similar adjustments made to those used in the image above. Again you will want to click the images above and below to see the difference in the detail.
At this point, the blacks in the sky were problematic, so I used the masking feature to select the sky and made the adjustments illustrated below. These adjustments were only made to the area above the building, and there was a diffusion adjustment where the sky meets the building.
I then inverted the mask and made the following adjustments to the building while not altering the sky.
At this point, I used Lightroom to move the image into Photoshop, the Nik Collection plug is integrated into my Photoshop program. I then selected the Nik 7 Viveza program, a colour and toning tool. Using this program, I made some minor adjustments to the image.
Once the adjustments were made, I applied the changes, and the adjusted image came back to Photoshop as a new layer. I then selected the Nik 7 Colour Efex program to process the image further. In the tool I used the Detail Extractor, Tonal Contrast, and Midnight to modify the image. The intent is to move toward a more painterly look to the image and tone down the intensity of the colours and light.
At this point, the image is then saved in Photoshop, which automatically returns the new version of the image into Lightroom as a TIF; as I did not flatten this image, it retained the various layers that were created in Photoshop using the Nik programs. This means if I am not happy with some of the adjustments, I can use opacity settings or other adjustments to tweak the image.
Equipment Used
The following images were created on an X100 VI in April of 2024 at 10 pm. They are hand-held images at 1/125 and f4 at 12,800 ISO. For those unfamiliar with the camera it is a fixed lens camera with 23mm (APSC) lens, so in 35 mm terms this is a 35mm lens. The resolution of the camera is 40 megapixels. If you are interested in more information about this camera; click here to go to the article.
For some time, Capture One has had very subtle and comprehensive masking and a style system that allows you to memorize various adjustments that can be compounded. To catch up, Adobe has rushed to update Lightroom with more masking options and the introduction of intersecting masks. Although accessing this feature is somewhat convoluted, the power of intersecting masks is a significant upgrade. The following collection of videos outlines how these work and why you might be using this feature on every photograph you process.
Nigel Danson illustrates how intersecting masks can solve processing issues that previously were very complex to achieve.
Preparing an image for a book is not quite the same as printing your image. With a book, the viewing distance is set to a standard; therefore, there is a more rigorous standard around resolution. If you are working with a book designer, you likely will be guided by their advice, and this article may only provide insight into why certain things are required.
Often, requests to provide an image for a publication will fail to specify the format and will ask for a specific size and resolution but not provide you with directions on how to create a file to that specification. If you are asked to provide images for a publication and are given these instructions, then the following may interest you. Hopefully, they will help you put your best foot forward.
If They Don’t Specify a Size
Modern smartphones that create 12mp images produce a high-quality image, and the original jpg file can be in a book where the print area does not exceed 16 inches. So, in most cases, sending your smartphone’s original uncropped JPG photograph to an online book publishing site should be sufficient. This should also hold for almost all modern cameras, as most modern cameras produce files double the size of an iPhone. In these cases, the publishing site will adjust the image as the see fit for their publication.
What if you are asked for a specific size
Sometimes, websites ask you for a specific length and pixels per inch PPI or dots per inch DPI. DPI refers to the number of dots per inch that appear on paper when the image is printed. PPI refers to the number of screen pixels per inch when viewed on a monitor. Often, they will ask for a specific width and height in pixels
Adjusting Resolution and then size in Apple’s free Preview program
If someone is laying out a book for you, a RAW file may be more desirable, so it is good to check. Keep in mind RAW here is being used as a generic term; each camera will have a different RAW format: ARW (Sony), NEF (Nikon), CRW (Canon), RAF (Fujifilm), ORF (Olympus), RAW (Leica), etc. RAW files have the advantage of containing significantly more information than a JPG file; this allows a book designer to correct camera errors and bring more uniformity to the publication.
If you export the image from a processing program, you may have the following options: JPG, TIFF, PNG, DNG and PSD.
File Type
Compression
Pros
Cons
Use for
JPEG
Lossy
Widely supported small size
Loss of quality after multiple saves
high quality pictures, and web images
GIF
Lossless
Small size
Limited colour support
Primarily used for web images
PNG
Lossless
Small size
larger file size, not widely supported
Icons, logos transparent images, web images
TIFF
Lossless
Large File, high quality
Can quickly become a very large file
Used widely in printing
PSD
Lossless
Large file
Large files may need to be converted for some uses
Used by graphic designers
Lossy Compression can be problematic if the file has been saved multiple times, as each time it is saved it degrades in quality.
Camera errors can include mixed lighting problems, discolouring walls that should be white, objects that should be out of frame in a frame and angular distortions. Most of these are more easily corrected using a RAW file, and some of these are very difficult and sometimes impossible to correct using a JPG file. Focus issues due to the focus point not being set on the subject or setting your speed so slow the camera registers you hand movement, which both result in blurred image can not be fixed.
Resolution Coming from a Camera
The camera you use to create the image will determine the image resolution; for example, a 24mp camera will usually be 6000 X 4000 pixels, keeping in mind the file size, which may be 30MB or 48MB, does not tell you the resolution. The RAW image might be 30MB but converted to a TIFF; it could be 137MB or, as a JPG, 14MB, and all three could have the same resolution.
Two key elements that determine the resolution are DPI (dots per inch) or pixels per inch. In the image below, you can see a typical 24MP image from a camera. It produces a photo with a resolution of 240 pixels per inch and 25 inches on its longest side. Any resolution between 240dpi and 300dpi provides good print quality.
Typically, for book publishing, one would want to make sure the resolution was between 240 and 300 dpi and perhaps one or two inches more than the widest dimension of the book. This may not be technically necessary, but a little “fudge” room is always good. So, if the longest side of the book is ten by ten, I would not want the image to be less than 10 inches and not less than 240 dpi.
This shows a typical image in PixelsThis is the same image with the same pixels shown in inches.
Why Printing and Image for Wall Display is Different
Printing images for display on a wall involves taking into account the “circle of confusion,” which calculates the ability of an image to appear sharp, given the distance from which the viewer sees the image. I have left some links below if you want to read up on this, but I will not go into it in this article, only to say lower resolution images can appear sharp when enlarged and viewed from a distance. After all, the view distance of a work on a gallery wall often varies from that of a book. In today’s world of printing large images, individuals often step forward to look at the details of a print, so in these cases, the circle of confusion is misleading. I am not convinced that applying this theory to art photography is in the artist’s best interest. It likely works best when printing eight by ten images.
Resolution Coming from a Cell Phone
Typically, cell phones these days are 12MP. If you spend more money, the resolution can be much higher. The first image below is the size of a 12MP image from a typical smartphone. You will notice that although the image seems to be 42 inches on the longest side, the resolution is only 72 pixels per inch. Seventy-two pixels per inch is excellent for viewing on a computer screen but not for a book, as the resolution needs 300 dpi to appear sharp. Converting this file to 300 dpi means its size shrinks from 42 inches to 13.44 inches on the longest edge. This seems to be a good resolution for most books.
Resizing and Cropping
Resizing and cropping both affect the quality of the image. Cropping reduces the size of an image, so if you have cropped your image to get rid of unwanted material, you have reduced the resolution. If this is the case or you are using a cell phone image, you might consider increasing the image size by resizing. This process basically uses an algorithm to produce more pixels based on pixels in the original image. Generally speaking, although the image’s resolution has been increased, the quality is not necessarily better. In many cases, it has just become fuzzier. Sometimes this method is necessary as a last resort, but an expert best does it to minimize the loss of quality. I have included references on the processing of resizing below.
Colour Space, Computer Screens and Paper
Colour space will often come up if you are working with a book designer; in this case, they will guide you through this issue. Printing uses CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black) colour space, but the internet and cameras use RGB (Red, Green and Blue), to create the colours in your image. I don’t recommend that those unfamiliar with this issue attempt to convert files for printing, and conversion is unnecessary for more informal image requests. The takeaway here is the conversion process could change, to some degree, the colour and tone of your image. Also, a backlit computer screen will display colours and tones very differently from a sheet of paper. So, colour and tone must be adjusted to fit the medium through which it is presented.
The following image was adjusted using Lightroom masking tools to isolate various areas of the image separately and then make adjustments specific to those layers.
Original RAW File
Isolating the sky using sky masking and then adjusting
Separating the sea and mountains by creating a mask using a colour selection, then Tone and Colour adjustments.
The previous mask is duplicated, then inverted and the sky is removed from the mask. Adjustments to Tone, Colour, Detail and Effects
Isolation of the rocks and bare trees using a colour mask selection. Adjustments were made to Tone, Colour, Effects and Detail.
A brushed layer was added to the show-capped volcano, and the Detail was adjusted. Then, two Liner lays were added diagonally to the upper portion of the sky. Adjustments were made to Tone.
Bob Carnie, whose brick-and-mortar studio and gallery are located at the centre of the art district of Toronto, also mentors those interested produce prints. He provides expertise which includes photo printing, framing, and archiving negatives.
The attached gallery is a non-representational gallery that displays the work of artists he has enjoyed and supported. His particular interest is gum over palladium prints. These prints are hand coated onto artist-quality rag paper, and the image sits within the fibre of the paper, giving them an inner glow that is not obvious in other printing methods. Then a gum layer is added to the print, increasing contrast, depth and colour. He suggests it is a similar process to what Edward Steichen used when printing his photograph The Pond – Moonlight (1904).
As you can see on his website, he uses several other printing methods, including jet ink pigment prints and silver gelatin.
Ken Miner, whose studio is located in Victoria, BC, works with handmade wet collodion photographs and Tintypes & Ambrotypes. He does conduct individual workshops in the wet plate process, and film developing & printing on request and frequently does group wet plate workshops.
Christina Z. Anderson
Christina Z Anderson is another experimental photographer who has produced gum, salt, cyanotype, and other alternative photographic processes. She is a professor at Montana State University and does workshops all over the United States and Europe.
Photopolymer Photogravure – Silvi Glattauer
Silvi uses a photopolymer to create a photographic print from a plate or a photo intaglio print. The photopolymer plate is created using an Epson jet ink printer, bypassing the need for etching acids and complex resists on a metal plate. It goes directly from the printer to a UV lamp, and it is then developed in water before being inked and run through a press.
I have been working on ideas for merging experimental digital images into more experimental photographic processes. To that end, I have looked at Chemigrams, image transfers, and cyanotypes. What follows is the experimental exploration process. All images were exposed outside on the grass or on a table.
Cyanotype, Hanemüble Platinum Rag Paper
In this process, I used dried cyanotype on Hahnemüle Platinum, where I placed botanicals, spices, and other items and then placed the paper on wet grass. Additional moisture was introduced into the composition by running water from a hose under the paper and into the grass. The paper was left out on a bright sunny day for six hours before being taken in a processed
Due to the amount of water introduced in the image, an unexpected print occurred on the opposite side of the paper.
Wet Cyanotype on Rag Paper
The following experiment was to understand what might occur with similar materials on rag paper using a cyanotype medium painted on just before a composition was placed on it. Then this is placed onto wet grass as well. However, in this process, no water, other than the moisture present in the grass, was introduced into the paper.
Once the image was dried and pressed, flat watercolours were introduced into the paper.
Chemigram on RC Photo Paper
I started with RC paper and worked between fix, developer and water to create a chemigram. Then I put some of these images through a wet cyanotype process. The resulting image was then toned with washing soda.
Chemigram, Photopaper, Wet Cyanotype, and Double Exposure
The following is the experimentation with Chemigrams on warm-tone fibre photography paper, using an internegative to create an image. Then the same paper is processed using a wet cyanotype process. The wet cyanotype on the glossy surface of the photo paper had difficulty spreading on the paper and created an exciting result. I found this spreading issue could be partially controlled but tended to obscure the underlying image. I then digitized the image and used another image to create a double expose.
In addition, I tried some more chemigrams on the fibre paper to experiment with controlling the process on this surface. I then placed it through a dry cyanotype process with an internegative. Then toned and washed the paper after it had been dried.
Image Transfer
Thinking I might want to consider placing an image transfer on either of these experiments, I began experimenting with image transfers. Initially, I started with a high-quality pigment ink print on rag paper, but this process proved difficult, and the transfer did not occur. I then ran several experiments on different paper types, from a high-quality and cheap pigment ink print for a household multi printer. In the end, very cheap paper and the household printer did allow for an exciting image transfer. The image transfer was done by loading the paper with water and then using a rubber brayer to press the image onto the new surface.
“The real voyage of discovery consists, not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” Marcel Proust
The Flash of Perception, then the Framing Dance
Photography is a performance art. You are dancing with your viewfinder within a scene to find a composition. Unlike painters, writers and poets, a photographer seeks to find the compositional elements within the viewfinder, you are an editor of the world that surrounds you. As you practice your walking practice you will find Zen-like and abstract images presenting themselves in your camera’s frame. This exercise is about focusing on those images.
Abstraction is about focusing on ideas rather than events, and in the world of art, it is about being free from the representational qualities of art. There is a subtle difference between representational images and things that are purely abstract. I would suggest that these sorts of images could be considered abstractions but I am inclined to call them zen-like images. The Sanskrit root meaning of zen is “thought,” “absorption,” or “meditation” images verging on being abstract have a Zen-like quality. These sorts of images, which have a minimal or simple representational quality, increase the intensity of the form they capture and have a meditative quality. So this exercise is about focusing on Zen-like images or abstract images, or both.
So it is about the relationship between form and space using space to increase the intensity of the form. Do not use the sky as the space by isolating telephone poles, planes or chimneys against the sky; instead, use things like walls or other colour fields to increase the intensity of the form. Think of how a Japanese garden often places objects against simple backgrounds. Use the techniques from the colour and pattern exercise and walking practice to get in touch with your intuition and flashes of perception.
Examples of Zen-like Images
Floor LightsJust a Minute I have to Throw the StickInputSheltered PauseTriad
Mariah Robertson was born in 1975 in Indianapolis, Indiana, grew up in Sacramento, California, and lives and works in New York. A photographer often working without a camera, Robertson creates images through ceaseless darkroom experimentation.
