Cold, Warm and Grey Balanced - Adobe Lightroom

Open your chosen photo in develop (by selecting it and then clicking on the develop tab) which should bring up a screen that looks like this:

 

This is the original image straight from the camera. I think that this image is a little warm, so first i will demonstrate how to 'grey balance' a photo in Lightroom.

Select the white balance selector tool (quick key - W), if you hover this around the image you will see a box come up that says 'pick a target neutral', you will also see the white balance of the preview image change (under the navigator)

I have highlighted the preview image and where the white balance selector tool is situated in red. I decided to use a colour sample from the background, i feel these are the most neutral colours and if you look at the preview image to the left you can see the white balance in the image looks less warm.

After using the white balance selector tool i adjusted the sliders slightly and now i have my 'grey balanced' or colour corrected version of the image.

Now that i have a corrected version of the image it should make it easier to make a cold and warm image using the temperature slider.

By dragging the temperature slider slightly to the left (to the blue side) you end up with a colder image.

 

And by dragging the slider slightly to the right you should end up with a warmer image.

Here are the images:

Original

 

 Color corrected/Grey Balanced

Cold

Warm

Importing and Organising in Adobe Lightroom

Importing + Organising

First go to File > Import Photos From Disc/Import Photos From Device. Click import from disc to import pictures already on your computer... import from device to import directly from a device i.e your camera.

That should bring up a screen that will look something like this:

I choose to 'copy photos to a new location and add to catalouge' this will create a new folder with the pictures in my pictures folder, and also add them to my lightroom catalouge. I organise them by date, i feel this makes it easier to find things. I dont usually apply any presets when i'm first importing, although you can do this by clicking on 'develop settings' and it will apply the chosen preset to all the imported photos. The one preset i always use when importing is one under 'metadata' i created a copyright preset so that when chosen all my imported photos have a copyright notice embedded in the metadata.

Now everything is imported and you can see the newly made folder on the left side under folders > 2009.

I'm going to create a new collection and add them to it now. First go to the collections section and click the '+' button then 'Create Collection'

Which should bring up this box:

In the name area type in what you want to call the collection - i called mine 'Uni work - Lighting Techniques' and i will put all my newly imported photos into this collection, as well as any more lighting technique pictures i do in the future. After you've done that click 'create' and you should have a new collection!

Next select all the photos you want to add to the collection - in my case it's all the ones i just imported, so i select the first one and hold down the shift key and click on the end photo, that should select all photos. All you need to do now is drag and drop them to into your new collection - on the left hand side!

Writing a caption:

First, go to the library section and select the image you want to write a caption for.

 

Next, scroll down on the bar at the right untill you get to 'Caption' under 'Metadata' and type in your caption.. and thats how you write a caption, in this section you can also embed your copyright notices into the metadata aswell as lots of other details.

You can also write a caption for more than one image at the same time, by selecting all the images you want to write a caption for (using either the shift or ctrl key) and doing the same steps you normally would.