Sharpness, Noise, and the Splitting of Tones

Hey there all!

I think the title of this blog post will also be the name of my new rock band!

We continue on with the Basics of Lightroom series (Photo Editing for Absolute Beginners) with episode 6 (or episode VI for any Roman viewers). In this shortish video I go through the process of split toning, or adding contrasting hue adjustments to the highlights and shadows of a digital photograph. I show you how to use split toning for color photographs as well as how you can split tones in B&W images to create sepia, selenium, and cyanotype looks.

After that we dive into to the confusing world of sharpening and noise reduction. I keep it fairly straightforward but still get into each of the sliders to explain their individual functions. You will learn how sharpening causes more noise artifact in an image, and how to correct it using the various noise reduction controls.

It is important to understand how sharpening and noise reduction are intricately linked in your editing workflow. Reducing noise, which is really just adding blur to the noise, to smooth it out, causes softness to creep back into the image. So the real skill is learning to balance sharpening and noise perfectly.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the video and that it all makes sense. Let me know if you have any questions and I will answer them promptly.

See you again soon - next up is the tool bar and all the cool things you can do with it!