Enhancing Photos with Lightroom Clarity

Hey everyone? I'm pro nature photographer, Ian Plant. And one of my favorite digital dark room tools is, the clarity slider that's found in Adobe Lightroom. The clarity slider is designed to enhance contrast but only in the mid-tones of your photos. It doesn't affect the most extreme highlights and shadows but rather it concentrates its effect on everything in between. The effect of the clarity slider is to bring out texture and detail. Raw files often have a muddy look to them and the clarity slider can help cut through this muddiness, giving your images a sharper and crisper look to the eye, and this is gonna give your outdoor photo some extra pop. In light room, you can make changes globally using the clarity slider in the develop module. As you slide the slider to the right, you'll see an immediate effect with the overall look of the photo greatly improving. Texture and detail are better revealed, And you'll also notice that clarity can bring out a lot of the detail in shadow areas, that might not be immediately apparent to the eye in the raw file. The clarity effect is usually best done cautiously. As if you add too much clarity, the image can start to look fake and you might get some halos and other artifacts resulting from too much contrast. Although clarity is usually used by outdoor photographers to enhance detail, you can also slide clarity the other way and soften the look of your photos. This is something that is probably more useful to portrait photographers, used to soften the look of skin and create a soft focus effect. I'll sometimes use a little bit of negative clarity when working with photos taken in fog to more faithfully capture the diffused look of misty scenes. But you don't need to make only global adjustments. You can also make local adjustments to clarity, using the adjustment brush. When photographing streams and waterfalls, I'll often make local clarity adjustments to the water to bring up the texture and detail. And when photographing stormy skies, a local clarity adjustment can really emphasize the drama of the clouds. So there you have it. The clarity slider is a really easy tool and it's very useful to greatly enhance the look of your outdoor photographs. Just don't overdo it. And your photos are going to look so much better using the clarity slider. I'm Ian Plant, and thanks for watching.