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After spending a couple of months in launching the Italian version of this blog, I’m finally coming back to update the English version. Let’s start with some pictures from the Photoshow (the main fair in Italy for photography), in order to show some creative possibilities with Adobe Lightroom 1.4. In particular: black and white conversion, split-toning, selective control on colour and cross processing. For the last one I’m experimenting a preset that you can download in this post.

Black and white conversion

Lightroom allows you to carefully control the way each colour get converted in variations of luminosity, but in this case was enough to start with the preset “Creative Black & White High contrast”. I just tweaked it a bit for exalting the contrast between the face and the hairs. The number involved were: Exposure: +2.5, Blacks: 10, Tone Curve: linear, Saturation: 0, Lens Vignetting: -100, Detail 50 (I wanted to stress the grain).

Split Toning

Split toning allows you to control a colour correction in highlights separately from the one in the shadows. I increased the yellow in highlights (which is not too much intrusive for skin tones) and I gave a Magenta punch in the shadows. Translating it in Lightroom settings: in split toning, Highlights Hue: 50, Highlights Saturation: 50, Balance +67, Shadows Hue 240, Shadows Saturation: 54. Lens Vignetting, Amount: -100, Midpoint: 12. (Ok I’m a vignette addicted…)

Xpro - Cross Processing

In this shot I replicated a cross-processing (or Xpro) effect. I tweaked a lot of settings, probably the most evident were in Camera Calibration. In order to let you replicate the same thing on your shots, I created a preset for Lightroom, that you can download here: gAntico-Xpro-Green.zip.

In the following shot I mixed my preset with the “Creative - Cold Tone”, given by default in Lightroom.

Variations starting from my Xpro-Green preset

{ Updated on April 16 } I experimented some variations on other shots. Dragging the slider Temp towards right (yellow) helped to reduce the green in the eyes, but at the end I prefered to fine tune the eyes in Photoshop instead of going crazy with my Lightroom preset. I also played with slightly different Split toning values. Here you are the results:

So, as any preset even this one should be considered as a possible starting point to be adapted to the peculiarity of the post-produced shot.

Selective color correction

Here I wanted to change the purple of the suit into a blue, without affecting other tones, like the skin ones. To do it, I just moved the Purple slider to -74 (in HSL, from Hue panel). I finished the editing in Photoshop.

Video Report in animoto

In order to summarize the shooting and post-production made at the Samsung’s stand, I finish this post with a video created by animoto.com (in case you wanted an All access pass on animoto, this is my referral code for giving you a little discount: ilvezoxc).

Other video formats: YouTube | Flickr | iPod.