Before & After - A quick example of what you can do in Lightroom
 

About my image Langley Maltings 4 Nigel said

It was very flat & boring, so I though people might like to see the before & after images - see below - and a brief run down of what I did (the beauty of Lightroom is that it saves all your history)...

Starting with the image on the left below as it was out of the camera
Basic adjustments

1. Exposure -1.80
2. Highlights -100
3. Whites +60
4. Blacks -45
5. Vibrance +10
6. Saturation +5

to give image 2 below

Then...
Adjustment brush on sky - Exposure -0.76, Contrast +57, Highlights -100, Colour H232, S63
Adjustment brush on building - Temp +21, Exposure +0.45
2 x Adjustment brush on bushes to right - Exposure +0.25 &+0.45
to give image 3 below

Finally...
Radial filter on building & reflection - Temp +50, Exposure +0.57
Radial filter acting as vignette - Exposure -0.57
and you have image 4

Simples ;)

wow, how cool is that, great idea to show what can be done

Thanks for that Clive, I use Lightroom a lot, but rarely get down to the local adjustments level. You've inspired me to get stuck in ...a bit further. :-)

Thanks Clive, just got Lightroom and it is good to see what it can do. Lot to learn.

is that only possible with a raw image ? or do you only take raw? I didn't like how big raw files are , takes up so much space on the computer,so stopped using it.

I ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS shoot RAW. It always surprises me when people say they don't shoot RAW because of the file size.

Consider this - you spend £'00 if not £'000 on your camera equipment & lenses, and then compromise your image quality by shooting jpg when you can buy a 2Tb external had drive for about £70!!!

Lets put this into some context with the following example

Camera.......Sensor Size.......RAW File.......Jpg File
Canon 40D......10mp............~9-12Mb.......~5Mb
Canon 7D........18mp............~18-22Mb.....~6-10Mb
Nikon d800......36mp..............~72Mb........~30Mb

So OK RAW files are bigger - typically twice the size of fine jpg files BUT jpgs compromise your image quality.

I created a full resolution jpg file from the original unprocessed RAW file, & then carried out the same processing as above. Ive attached the result & as you can see its just not as good. I've attached a 100% crop comparison & you can see that, when you push an image this far, the jpg is WAY noisier in the sky & there's less fine detail in the stonework.

Final thought - that 2Tb hard drive I mentioned above, depending on your sensor, will store between 27,000 (Nikon) - 180,000 (40D) images which equates to 0.2p/image (Nikon) - less than 0.04p/image (40D).

Are you seriously going to compromise the quality your images when it costs so little to shoot RAW?

thanks for the info and sample Clive,very interesting to see the difference,especially when you crop..... I will have another go at shooting RAW when I get back into shooting again,I do have an external HD so I have no excuses.

Thanks for that Clive, very interesting. I am in the process of swithing to Lightroom from Aperture due to Apple's decision to abandon Aperture in the new OS. It may take some getting use to but it looks very promising and these sort of tips are very encouraging to me... Thanks again.

Been thinking of investing in LR as well as my PS elements, this is the 2nd example in a week (1st was a discussion on processing B&W images processed in LR) which suggests results like this are more obtainable with LR rather than PS.

Never realised LR is this powerful. Thanks for sharing.