GoAskErin’s Erin Quigley is a certified teaching professional for Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop, and an award-winning underwater photographer. She has developed specific workflows for the underwater photographer to tackle the most common problems we encounter in our images. Send your question and your problematic underwater image to GoAskErin; she just might use it for her next tutorial!
Q:
This picture was taken with my old camera gear, but I’ve never captured as good a pose. How can I perfect this shot? Color? Sharpening?
A:
Color and Selective Sharpening will help, but you can create focus and punch with the help of a Vignette.
The human eye is drawn to contrast before color, and to light areas before dark ones. Adding a vignette that darkens the edges of the frame can help to create focus and draw the viewer’s eye right smack to the subject. Besides the basic Post-Crop Vignette slider, Lightroom provides us with a bunch of bitchin tools with which to build custom vignettes.
Don’t get carried away though – I’ve seen plenty of otherwise lovely images ruined by heavy-handed vignetting. The effect should manifest at a nearly subconscious level, or it will create distraction instead of focus. Topics covered include: Custom vignettes using the graduated filter and new radial filter.
View Before and After of the Image (click image to enlarge)
Click the tutorial button below to view the full step by step video:
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