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I use Adobe’s Lightroom for my photo library. For the cost it gives my powerful tools and it also make it possible to maintain a sance view of the growing amount of photos taken over the years.
Instead of list the features and functions of the applications I will instead explain which tools I use and in what order when I return home from a photo session.
Import photos and convert to DNG
Starting in the Library view, import photos and convert to DNG. for more information on DNG, read though my article on the subject!
Initiate backup
As soon as photos are on my harddrive I start to push them to an off site backup location. As long as the backup is running, the photos are kept on the memory cards.
Delete bad photos
To cut down the amount of pictures I start by looking through them all. If I see a bad picture, I press X and flag the photo for deletion.
When all photos have been looked through, from file menu I select Photo -> Delete rejected photos and by doing so remove all photos both from library and from my hard drive.
Balance exposure and color
Looking at the histogram in Develop mode, move sliders under Basic until we see a good amount of light in the picture. While doing this, I activate the highlight clipping (the two triangles in top corners of histogram) to see if I lose any details in light or dark. Shortcut ‘J’.
U
sing the White balance tool, click on a neutral part of the photo (white or grey).
If many photos have been shot in the same environment and light I then sync these photos to as many photos as possible to get a good baseline to work with.
Select multiple photos in the bottom view and then press Sync button to sync the done changes to rest of marked photos.
After these steps the rest is based on that type of photos I have shot. Steps differ alot if it has been a portrait, nature, star sky or something else.
Using Photoshop there is a very quick way of achieving this effect on some photos. Even though it work on lots of different subjects it goes extra well on macro shots where background is blown out, often in a short range on color.
