EDIT THE SHOT
1 OPEN UP LIGHTROOM
I do 99% of my editing directly in Lightroom. First
I’ll select the appropriate colour profile. For this edit I’ll be using Fujifilm’s built-in ‘Classic Chrome’. It’s one of my favourites so I often start here.
2 GET THE OVERALL BASE LOOK
Next make adjustments in the ‘Basic’ panel. Start by adding a contrast +10, pulling back highlights -20, and lifting shadows +40. Finally a small clarity boost +10 and reduce vibrance -15.
3 EXPERIMENT WITH THE TONAL CURVE
Every image is different, and so is each personal preference, but here I will experiment by pushing and pulling the RGB and overall levels of the image. You’ll often find a nice ‘S’ works well.
4 MANIPULATING YOUR COLOURS
Again I experiment here with the colours in the scene. This image is mainly made up of red, orange and yellow. So I’ve used these to boost the brightness of those areas further, along with some small Hue tweaks to bring it all together.
5 LOCAL ADJUSTMENTS TO BRING OUT DETAIL
We’ve done a dramatic edit and some areas are a little dark. So now I’m going to use one of the default local adjustment brushes, ‘Shadows’, to rub over these areas. In this case, the adjustment is mainly on Rhiane’s black dungarees to bring back some of the detail hidden in there.
6 SKIN RETOUCHING
And just as in step 5, I’m going to get a new default adjustment brush, ‘Soften Skin’, and work on the face area to smooth everything out. By default the brush is set to Clarity -100 but you may want to pull it back to -50 if this looks unnatural. Press ‘O’ to see where your mask is.