Well, duh

I don't know about you, but I'm terrible about learning the ins and outs of a piece of software. I take some time playing around and trying a few things here and there, and once I have the basics down that's about as far as I usually go. I've been using Lightroom for years now - I got a copy when it first came out - but it wasn't until recently (as recently as today really) that I've begun to learn to use it effectively. Just a few weeks ago, I figured out that I could (stupidly easily) export shots direct to my site instead of saving them out to my desktop and uploading from there. Duh.

Today I was poking around on Digital Photo Buzz, a fantastic resource for all things digital photography, and discovered some of the tools that have been staring me in the face all along like brushes and the gradient filter. Again I say, duh. These tools make it so much easier to make so many of the adjustments that I've learned to just settle for something "close enough" on. So now here I sit like the geek that I am, spending my Saturday night seeking out images in my catalog that I thought were hopeless throwaways and seeing what I can do to bring them back to life.

Here's a quick example of how I used the gradient filter to correct a shot from one of my favorite series that I'd assumed I'd just never get right. I'd exposed for the amazing sky but lost all of the detail in the land.

Before

After

I applied an exposure gradient to the bottom part of the image and a contrast gradient to the sky, then tweaked the white balance slightly. Still not quite perfect, but for less than 5 minutes of work, it's worlds better than I've been able to get out of this one before. Now I'm just wondering why I didn't take the time to learn a bit more about Lightroom sooner.