Your process with images in Lightroom classic?
I'm interested in soliciting feedback from users of Lightroom on their initial process for getting their shots to a 95% state of readiness/satisfaction.
To start off, I am fairly new to using photo editing software. I have a decent amount of photographic experience having owned and used a Minolta 9000 SLR from 1985 to early 2000's, then having a long break and getting back into photography last year when I bought a Nikon D500 DSLR. This marked the advent of me delving into the realm photo editing software, and over the past year have accumulated a reasonable amount of experience working with Nikon Capture NX-D and Adobe Lightroom. During this time my workflow has been constantly evolving. For majority of this time I performed all initial edits in capture NX-D where I "believed" I was dependent on retaining the "authenticity" of Nikon's own profiles in my images, then exporting them as TIFF's for final adjustments in Lightroom. This became a rather long-winded process especially if I was working on a large batch of images, and I was at it for weeks
. Then just couple of weeks ago, I decided to have a go at going "mobile" and installed Lightroom CC on my iPad and upgraded to Lightroom Classic CC on my desktop. This way I don't have to wait until I get home to start working on my images on the desktop and I don't need to buy an expensive MacBook Pro or anything. In fact I am appreciating the comfort/convenience of uploading from camera to iPad and performing inititial edits on the iPad so much that I can foresee that this will be initial part of my process going forward, regardless of whether I am on the go or at home. Key difference here is that I have now abandoned the step with Nikon Capture NX-D and ability to faithfully retain Nikon's intended camera profiles as a starting point in the development process.
So, anyway, that's the background, but my question is about the process other's are using to get that shot to a state of near readiness, specifically related to using lightoom cc and/or lightroom classic cc software. Given that I have now abandoned the initial Capture NX-D step, I am now uploading newly captured RAW's directly from my camera to Lightroom CC on the iPAD, and/or syncing older RAW files on the desktop to Lightroom CC on the iPAD via classic CC. After that, and now directly addressing my question, my process for initial image adjustments of the RAW image with Lightroom CC on the iPad is roughly as follows:
1. Hit the AUTO button (knowing that Adobe Color is the default profile applied at import)
2. If I don't like the result I change profile (Adobe landscape, portrait, and even check a variety of the "camera matching" profiles). Then after selecting a new profile I hit the AUTO button again...
3. I may repeat this process several times and in the process I may alter white balance and tint until I find something I like the most.
4. Once I am happy with the general scene in the shot, I may apply some effects (clarity, dehaze). These look good in many cases, but alter exposure and contrast and coloration of the scene, so this is often when I have to make some specific modifications to exposure, contrast, shadow detail, saturation, etc.
5. If any skin tones and clothing belonging to human subjects are off, I adjust these using local adjustments. I normally use radial filters for this purpose. For example in a landscape scene with human subjects, I have gravitated to using Adobe Landscape profile in most cases, and then the local adjustments I apply to human subjects are usally a degree of contrast and saturation reduction as well as local removal of any effects such as dehazing.
6. Final step is removal of unwanted objects, primarily unwanted humans or birds that have ventured into the scene
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So, kind of a long post just to ask about process, but being relatively new to this I am open to any insights or tips that other's find useful. I have a lingering feeling that I am taking a rather simplistic approach to developing my photos, and maybe there are other tricks I could add to my arsenal to improve results? One area I find myself struggeling with a bit is white balance and tint, especially for scenes with strong backlighting. I often have a hard time getting results that look natural/appealing to me. Using the greypoint sampling tool gives hit or miss results I find. My D500 has a tendency to output rather cool images when set to any of the Auto white balance modes.
