Lightroom editing Archives - Infrared Conversions, IR Modifications & Photography Tutorials

The blue hour is a wonderful time for photography, especially in cities. This is a time when the twinkling lights of a city can bring a photo alive. The great thing about blue hour photography is that it is relatively easy to do. As long as you have a tripod you won’t need much else. It is certainly easier than capturing sunrises and sunsets when the contrast in the light will mean filters are a must. Once you have captured your blue hour images, an important element in making them look as great as they can be is to edit them properly. So here are 6 quick Lightroom tips to help you edit your blue hour photos.

When is the blue hour?

Before going through the editing tips, it is important to know when the blue hour is. Because a common misconception for newbie photographers is that the blue hour is at night.

Firstly, the blue hour does not actually last for an hour. The exact amount of time it lasts will vary depending on the time of year and your location. It is also not at night. There is a big difference between “night” and the “blue hour”.

The blue hour occurs for a period of time before sunrise and after sunset. The difference between the blue hour and night time is that during the blue hour there is a cool bright blue hue in the sky. At night the sky becomes much darker. To know the exact time, it is best to download one of the many apps that shows the exact time and duration of the blue hour for that day, based on your location.

Now that you hopefully have a better understanding of the blue hour, here are some tips on how to edit your photos from it.

White balance

This is always one of the first things that I notice when I look at blue hour shots. If you have your camera set to Auto White balance, it will be more than likely that you will need to tweak your white balance a little when editing. Ideally, you should be aiming for a natural-looking photo which is neither too warm nor too cool (as per the example below). Generally, I would err on the cool side slightly as you will find that any areas which are artificially lit will look very saturated if too warm. The middle photo in the 3 images below is roughly what I like for this particular image.

Highlights, shadows and more

Looking at the histogram of this image, I can see that the histogram is slightly bunched up on the left. When looking at the image it is clear that some areas look a little dark. So, my next step is to tweak the sliders so that I have a better overall contrast in the image. By clicking the two arrows on either side of the histogram I can see on the image that there is some clipping happening.

At this point, I’m not too worried about the highlights clipping (in the bright areas) as I’ll come back to this later. For now, I’m going to add some brightness to the shadows area by using the “shadow” slider as well as some overall brightness.

For this image, I would then move the white slider to the left just to remove some of the clipping in the reflection of the light in the river. I will come back to the clipped areas in the lights later. You can of course play around with the sliders more for different levels of contrast.

Contrast with curves

The tone curve is a really useful way of adjusting the contrast of an image. You can either use the actual graph to tweak the contrast of an image or the sliders below it.

Generally, most photos (not all) will benefit from what is known as an “S Curve”. It is when the line on the graph is curved like the letter “S”. The important thing here is subtlety, so you only want very slight curves. This will mean your “highlights” and “lights” sliders will be further right than the “darks” and “shadows” sliders. Again, you can tweak these as much as you want for the desired result.

Saturation

At this point, I would also just add a small amount of clarity to the image, but again, be incredibly careful using this slider. Too much, and the image will look unrealistic and almost cartoon-like.

The “vibrancy” and “saturation” sliders are useful in all photos including blue hour shots. Keep in mind that you don’t always have to add saturation or vibrancy. Sometimes more muted colours in an image will make it look better.

For this image I have will add a little bit of saturation and vibrancy as I want a bit more colour in the sky and on the cathedral. One of the biggest mistakes I see in blue hour shots is when the photographer has pushed these sliders too far and the image just doesn’t look right. Look at comparisons below. Which do you prefer? The subtle version or the oversaturated version?

Local editing

One of the most powerful attributes of Lightroom is the ability to edit at micro level. In that, you can tweak the smallest areas without affecting the whole image. This is what I will use to remove the clipped areas in the image. You don’t need to worry too much about clipped areas in light sources such as street lamps but if like me you care about the smallest details, then read on.

Press the “K” on your keyboard and the panel on the right will change to the adjustment brush panel. From here you can change the attributes of the brush you are going to use. For this image, I’m looking to remove the clipped areas so I will pull the “whites” slider to the left and then with a small brush paint over the effected clipped areas. You can now see how the highlighted red bits on the image have disappeared.

Straighten and crop

There is of course much more editing that can be done, but as a minimum, these should make your blue hour photo look better. The last part which is equally important is to straighten your image and crop if needed. This is really important in cityscapes or whenever there are buildings as you will usually find that vertical lines are not straight.

It is easy to straighten your image in Lightroom. Simply scroll down to the “transform” section of the editing panel and press “Auto”. For the vast majority of images, this will straighten the image with nothing else needed from you. However, there may be times when you may have to tweak things or even manually straighten the image using the sliders.

Just these simple Lightroom editing steps will make a big difference to your blue hour shots. Don’t skip the editing part of your workflow as this is equally as important for those amazing blue hour photos as actually taking the photo.

There are some people who prefer not to make any dramatic changes to their images and that is fine. On the other hand, some people look at their photos in the same way as an artist paints a piece of art. So, manipulating a photo is something they will want to do. Whatever your personal preference is will be up to you. What is for certain is that editing software gives a whole world of opportunity. So here are 6 ideas for ways to edit your photos to give it completely different looks.

Crop

One of the quickest and easiest ways to transform an image is by simply cropping it differently. The great thing about digital photography is that you can crop as much as you want and always return to the previous version. So, don’t be afraid to give it a try and keep in mind that it doesn’t always have to be in a 4:3 ratio. For example, cropping in a panoramic ratio can make a photo look very different.

If you are using Lightroom, simply press “R” on your keyboard and you’ll be able to start trying out different crops. A useful tip to know is that when you have pressed “R” if you then press “O” you can toggle through different overlays (i.e. rule of thirds, golden ratio etc).

Black & white

Another quick but dramatic change to a photo can be made by switching the photo to monochrome (i.e. black and white). You will need to adjust some of the settings after converting to black and white as the image might look a little flat. Black and white images generally work best if there is some contrast in the shot so you may find boosting these will give a more pleasing result. Keep in mind that some images will work better in black and white than others but there is no harm in simply trying it out. You can always revert back to the previous colour version.

Low saturation

There are lots of different ways in which you can treat a photo. Most photographers tend to boost saturation and vibrancy as RAW files will generally be more muted in colours. So, boosting saturation will often give a pleasing result. But there are times when reducing the saturation for a more muted look will look great. This works well in shots where you have flat colours like landscapes on a cloudy day. Don’t pull the sliders all the way to the left as this will basically make your photo monochrome.

You can also combine (or instead) of this “global” saturation and vibrancy, use the sliders in the “HSL” section in Lightroom to selectively add or remove saturation from specific colours. Play around and see what you can come up with.

Hue

These sliders in editing software basically move a colour tone from one to another. For example, the Blue slider can make blues look purple or aqua at either end of the slider. While this might seem useless as most of the time these extremes make photos look unrealistic, sometimes a little bit of movement can really help an image.

Say for example you have a scene with yellow, dried grass. Moving the yellow slider to the right will make the grass appear greener. But keep in mind that if other parts of your image also have yellows in it, it will also make them green. You can use these sliders to make some subtle (or more dramatic) changes to your images.

An example of how using the Hue sliders can change an image. Here I’ve added more green to the grass areas.

Vignettes

Vignettes are another easy and quick way to add a little something extra to a photo. While the change won’t be dramatic with vignettes, it will still make a photo look different. Vignettes are great for occasions when you want to bring more focus on the subject in the centre of the shot. For example, in portrait photography, vignettes can work really nicely.

The important thing when using vignettes is subtlety. I have often seen examples of really dark vignettes of almost black, which for me seem to take away the focus from the subject. So my advice would be to just add a small amount, but ultimately it will be down to you and your desired effect.

Sky replacement

Replacing skies in photos isn’t something new. Luminar have had the function for a number of years. Now Photoshop has also introduced it to their interface. Obviously changing sky has always been possible in Photoshop, but the new automated function does make things a lot easier. Like any kind of editing, whether you are OK with replacing a sky will come down to your personal preference and the purpose of the photo.

If it’s just for personal use, then there’s no issue about replacing a sky. But for example, if you want to enter the photo into a competition you will find that replacing a sky isn’t allowed. But what the sky replacement technique does give you is a completely new way to show a photo.

There is no harm in trying it out. Make sure you have an image open in Photoshop then click Edit => Sky Replacement. It is self-explanatory from that point onwards.

Editing is an important part of the photography process. While like most photographers I would advocate that you get as much correct when taking a photo, there is nothing wrong with using editing techniques to achieve the desired effect. Photography is after all an art and an expression of your creativity. At the very least you can play around with the techniques above to see what you can come up with.

6 Lightroom Tips For Editing Your Blue Hour Shots