Lighting-Retouching Video Commentary

I receive emails with questions from time to time and sometimes I make it a Q/A session that I share here. I have been toying around with the idea of making these Q/A posts more educational by recording them as blog videos posts and leveraging the power of imagery to enhance what I'm trying to say.

Here's the additional email that went with this video response:

Of course I also didn't specifically answer your question in the video because the response was more philosophical in nature and about workflow. Here's what we would cover additionally in the retouching workshop.

- Different filters/presets in Lightroom (and where to find them)
- RAW processing in Lr and how to leverage RAW "overhead"
- LUCIMA-specific B&W and color retouching "directions"
- Specific techniques including but not limited to:
- curves
- levels
- B&W layers
- blend modes
- gradient maps
- gradient tools
- exposure tricks
- masking

I think you will benefit the most from the retouching "directions". When I shoot a certain lighting "style" I know how I might retouch them. For example if you look on my photo blog you will see consistency across many of the color images. You will also see consistency in many of the B&W images. And within B&W and/or color images you'll find consistency across the backlit images versus the front-lit images. You can break that down further by looking at front lit images that use hard light versus soft light. Or front lit images that use flat light versus angular/steep lighting.

I will give you a few formulas for what direction might help your post-processing with certain types of lighting. However the thing to remember is that there is no right answer. Just plenty of different answers! The important thing is that I will you several directions to try to get you out of feeling stuck.