Lightroom 2.0 Will Keep You Up All Night
Wednesday, April 2, 2008 at 11:54PM Uhm, if you're me that is.
Here's a photo I made last year with my Canon 5D:
Here's that same photo with some Develop module work in Lightroom:
Here's that same image with some local corrections in Lightroom 2.0 public beta 1:
Now Lightroom users face the same dilemma that film and video colorists do. You have the tools to do whatever you want to the image. And no one but you will tell you if you've gone too far. Does the last image look better than the middle one? Does it look less natural? Do I care?
There Will Be Blood received an Oscar for cinematography, and did not undergo a DI. But No Country for Old Men did have a DI (Michael Hatzer, colorist) and was, it seemed, neck and neck for the honor. Which do you find more beautiful? More natural? More cinematic?
And which of those three criteria matters the least?
Reader Comments (14)
So Lightroom 2 is > that Aperture 2.1 I take it?
I'm not using either program, but I usually like Apple products and I'm sure both products will continue to get better over the next few months and even few years. Do you think we're all better off backing the image manipulation masters at Adobe or is Apple going to keep throwing resources at Aperture until it's better?
Poor Adobe. I hope they don't get pissed and pull out of the Mac market all together.
Hayden, here are some thoughts for you:
Both applications can be demoed free for 30 days. Photographer software is as subjective and personal a decision as cameras and underpants. Try before you buy. Well, not the underpants. Please.
Lightroom is a passion project at Adobe, a proud, flagship tool. And it was born on a Mac.
Lightroom has done this public beta thing twice now, whereas Apple is very secretive about their software development and releases. There's an active forum at Adobe Labs where regular people like you and me are influencing the development of Lightroom.
Aperture 2 was released two years after 1.0, whereas Lightroom 2.0's public beta comes about a year after Lightroom 1.0's release.
To me, all that matters is: What tools do these applications offer me to make my photos look better? Everything else is secondary.
dude, thats awesome, care to show how you got from image 1 to 3 please?
Does it matter what tool you use? As long as you are helping to build the story.
That would mean #3 is best. You can see the techno-geek-lust in the subjects eyes.
To me, both Aperture and Lightroom still leave alot to be desired. I like the simple, clean layout of Aperture 2 but I prefer how Lightroom processes images. Both products are an absolute nightmare when working with a huge database of photos. I'm getting into photojournalism with my school newspaper and im beginning to generate hundreds of images a week. Lightroom's folder menu just doesn't cut it and Aperture's vault thingy is too limited. I've gone with the excellent and fast Photo Mechanic coupled with ACR/Lightroom. Sometimes its just easier to do it in PS.
But like Stu said, use what makes the best photos.
I am interested in the "There will be blood" comment. There is no DI in this film? I am quite amazed at the photography then as it was very well executed.
gl, I've updated the post with a link to an article about Blood's photochemical finish.
Mark, in answer to your question of "Does it matter what tool you use?", the answer is yes.
Whenever anyone asks a question online about artistic tools, there is always someone who wants to change the subject. "What camera should I buy?" "It doesn't matter, practice your photography skillz foo!"
It's OK to have a conversation about tools. Doing so neither supplants nor invites a discussion of "what really matters." It is wise to consider your options, and consider them well, when selecting tools to help you make your art.
I think it would be great to have these color correcting tools exposed in After Effects or Premiere. (Yes, many of the Lightroom's color coltrols are scattered in there but it would be great to have them all in a single place like Lightroom)
Or even better, Adobe should make something like 'Apple Color' with Lightroom's tools
Lightroom for Video !
As far as which version of the pic is best, I'm of the opinion that #3 is the best, because it pushes reality and has "punch". To me, it looks "cinematic" because the colors are hyper-realistic and the lighting looks like someone actually worked on it (even if they didn't). I especially like how, in pushing the brightness around the button-pushing hand, the hand looks like it's popping out of the frame in 3D... It's a neat effect that makes the viewer pay attention, probably due to some cognitive dissonance or somethin'. But in any case, I'm stoked that there are tools like this that can potentially turn even the crap photos I take into slightly-less-crap!
to me its more impressive for a dp to create the look in orig photography. But colorists are very talented in their own right. Seems to me there should be two different catagories for the oscar, one for cinematography and the other for colorist.
It's interesting that so many people seem to like picture 3, when it looks really kind of wrong to me. As a still photo, picture 2 is definitely superior to my eyes -- pic 3 just looks fake. Honestly, even number 2 looks overworked to me - the warmth of the overhead light in pic 1 was really appealing to me.
To address the second half of your post, I loved the photography in There Will Be Blood and think that the analog post route was completely appropriate. On the other hand, I liked No Country as well, the DI was really well done - the color correction didn't call attention to itself unlike so many films these days. I found Blood to be more beautiful and grander, but I think that has as much to do with the cinematography and story as with whatever finishing was done on the film.
On another (perhaps related) note -- as I've gotten further entrenched in the high-tech digital side of film making, I've been retreating further into the lo-fi analog world of still photography (perhaps in compensation). This definitely informs my esthetic sense in movie-watching as well.
http://www.bustedskull.com/2008/02/13/diana-in-mexico/" REL="nofollow">Example
BTW - will you be at NAB this year?
hey stu, tazer here from the forums, and this has been killing me for a while so i figured i would just ask.
how did you do this color correction?
you also have a similar correction of a (recently i believe) posted picture of an old woman in an oriental setting.
it looks brightened a bit and cooled down, and i dont know how to describe it, but the white seems richer.
simply lowering the reds seemed to kinda gimme the look, but is there anything else? thanks!