Five Ways That Lightroom’s New Update Eases the Processing of Night Photos
As has been true since the beginning of photography, field work is equally important as what comes after: post-production. Consequently, we always monitor the advancement of both in-field and on-desk tools, and this week there was some good news in the latter category.
On Tuesday, Adobe released an update to Lightroom that contained several interesting changes, including five that will make life easier for night photographers. So below we explore each new feature and setting, looking specifically at how it applies to working with night images.
(Note that these points pertain to Lightroom Classic, which is the version we use—and recommend using—for serious photo editing.)
1. Large-File Support
If you’re into blending exposures, stitching complex panoramas or stacking images—whether for stars, lighthouse beams, light painting or whatever else—then you’ve probably had to deal with the 2 GB size limitation for a PSD, Photoshop’s default file format (Figure 1).
Figure 1. Until now, Photoshop files over 2 GB posed a problem for Lightroom users.
If your image exceeded that limit, you were faced with five primary options, all of which had downsides:
Downsize the resolution (which meant throwing away pixels).
Flatten the layers (thereby limiting the ability to edit the image in the future).
Save as a TIFF (which has a 4 GB limit).
Save as a large-format PSB file (which Lightroom couldn’t see, edit or catalog).
Convert the layers to a Smart Object and save them as a new linked file, then save the whole thing as a TIFF (which is an inelegant, unintuitive process).
Now, with this update, these options are obsolete and the downsides are no longer obstacles. Lightroom now recognizes PSBs, allowing you to import, catalog and edit these files of theoretically unlimited size. (“Theoretically” because there are limitations, but ones that most photographers will never encounter—i.e., 65,000 pixels wide or tall, or 512 total megapixels.)
2. Simpler Visual Matching
Last winter Tim Cooper wrote a blog post titled “How to Make Your Lightroom Rendering Look Like Your Camera Preview.” One of the key points was ensuring that the profile you use in Lightroom’s Develop module matches the profile you use in your camera (i.e., the “Picture Controls” setting for Nikon, “Picture Styles” for Canon, “Picture Profile” for Sony, “Film Simulation” for Fuji, etc.)
For example, I always set my Nikon D5 (or any other Nikon camera I might be using) to “Standard,” so I want to use “Camera Standard” as my Lightroom profile. That used to be a manual step (or semi-manual, depending on how presets were used), but now Lightroom can do it for me by default.
To automate that process, select Edit > Preferences on a PC or Lightroom Classic > Preferences on a Mac, then select the Presets tab, and you’ll find the option at the top under Raw Defaults. Click on the Master drop down to reveal its options (Figure 2):
“Adobe Default,” which is the behavior you’re accustomed to—Lightroom just applying its own Adobe Color profile to the RAW conversion
“Camera Settings,” which uses the same profile/style you indicated in-camera
“Preset,” which uses any Adobe- or user-created Develop preset, which you select in the fly-out menu
Figure 2. Lightroom’s new Raw Defaults let you specify which demosaicing profile is automatically applied when importing images.
For the purpose mentioned above, you want the second option, “Camera Settings” (and be sure to check “Use defaults specific to camera model” for the most precise results). You don’t even need to tell Lightroom which profile to use—it reads the camera setting from the metadata and chooses the appropriate profile for you.
Consistent Black and White Workflow
This feature also comes into play when shooting in black and white with a digital camera, which is an effective strategy for dealing with night scenes that contain too many variations of color temperatures to reign them all in to one exposure (e.g, LED and sodium vapor lights in the same scene)—or for if you just like to work in monochrome.
When using a digital camera to shoot black and white images, we always recommend changing your camera’s picture style to a monochrome setting. This provides an LCD preview in black and white, which helps you visualize how the final image will look more effectively than if you were looking at a color preview.
The problem with this strategy was that Lightroom would still import the RAW file as a color image. You would then need to remember which files you intended to be black-and-white photographs and then change the settings accordingly.
However, now with this new Raw Defaults management, if you set the preference to “Camera Settings,” then images you shoot with an in-camera monochrome picture style will appear as monochrome in Lightroom (Figure 3).
Figure 3. By setting the new Raw Defaults option to “Camera Settings,” images shot in-camera as black and white will now automatically have the corresponding monochrome profile applied on import.
3. Overriding Manufacturer Adjustments
This isn’t new functionality so much as a new interface. It’s also really the second part of the previous feature, but we have a completely separate use for it, so it gets its own heading.
In that same Presets tab in Preferences, below the Master setting, you’ll find the option to apply a specific profile based on which camera you’re importing image files from. Most photographers who use this feature do so because they have specific adjustments they like to make to files from specific types of cameras—for instance, always applying a little extra Vibrance to images from an old backup digital body.
But there’s another, similar use: Overriding the built-in processing adjustments that some manufacturers apply to files from some cameras.
For example: We love the Nikon Z 6, but one challenge is that the files come packaged with baked-in noise reduction settings for Lightroom that we find to be way too aggressive. (Figure 4. You can read more about this in our blog post “The Z 6 is the Best Camera for Night Photography.”)
Figure 4. The aggressive default noise reduction settings packaged in the metadata of Nikon Z 6 files..
The good news is that Lightroom now allows you to more easily take control of this on import, by indicating a specific profile or preset from the same Preferences tab (Figure 5). Simply select the camera model, then select from the same options listed above. Now that profile/preset will be applied to any imported files originating from that type of camera. (You can also apply this setting to specific cameras by serial number, if you need to. For the record, most photographers don’t need to.)
Figure 5. By applying a custom preset in this new interface, we can fix perceived problems with baked-in adjustments from camera manufacturers.
So, using this feature, we can tell Lightroom not to use Nikon’s baked-in noise reduction settings for Z 6 files, but rather to apply a custom preset with the noise reduction approach we deem more appropriate. Gabe likes his Z 6 noise reduction set between 10 and 30 for luminance and color noise, so he could perhaps create a preset for 10 each, apply that to all Z 6 images on import, then tweak each of those settings manually in the Detail panel of the Develop module.
4. Camera Support
Nearly every Lightroom update includes support for new cameras and lenses, and this month’s is no different. One notable addition has us pretty excited.
Figure 6. The Nikon D780.
A few weeks ago we got our hands on a brand new Nikon D780 so we could test it for night photography. (Thank you to B&H Photo! See our review in the coming weeks.) Lance was working with the camera before and during our workshop in Death Valley National Park, but he couldn’t open the files in Lightroom. That was a big obstacle to testing, not to mention that it was an unfortunate fact for any early adopter of the camera.
Now? No problem. The new version of Lightroom (as well as Camera Raw) will open D780 files. (For the record, other companies make cameras too, and Lightroom does support them. Also new to Lightroom are the Canon EOS-1Dx Mark III and the Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark III, among others.)
5. Auto Sync is Less Dangerous
The Auto Sync feature is very powerful, as it was the easiest way to sync adjustments to multiple photos—such as when applying Dehaze to a few dozen starry-sky images before stacking them. But Auto Sync is also dangerous, because it’s easy to create havoc with. Why? Because it was easy to leave on by accident, leaving you unaware that you could be applying a series of changes to dozens, hundreds or thousands of images—or even, as I did once, to the whole catalog. The danger of this was so palpable that I’ve always hesitated to teach the feature on workshops.
Now Adobe has mitigated the risk with three simple tweaks to Lightroom’s interface:
When you activateAuto Sync, the button now changes appearance to a bright light gray that’s easy to see at the bottom of the Develop module.
When you hover the pointer over the Auto Sync button, a tool tip warns what will happen if you click it.
When you make an auto-synced adjustment, Lightroom now advises that you did so with a message such as “Contrast updated for 190,817 images.” (That’s not a joke. See Figure 7.)
Figure 7. Auto Sync can be dangerous, but powerful. New features mitigate the former.
The software also gives you the ability to disable these new warnings in Preferences. Don’t disable them. Ever.
Wrapping Up
There you have it—five ways to work easier when post-processing night photos, courtesy of Adobe.
Which of these features are you most happy to see implemented? And what features and improvements do you hope to see next? Tell us what you think in the comments section below or on our Facebook page.
Note: Do you want to learn more about post-processing? Sign up for the waitlist for our Post-Processing Intensive workshop in San Francisco, or check out our tutoring services!