29. STACKING EFFECTS

IN THE BASIC panel, you’ll notice that the sliders have a limit to which they can be pulled. That does not mean you need to stop there, however. The technique I’m sharing here is a little bit of a hack, but I tend to use it when I want to get a little extra out of the file, or when I want to create a really cool look (Figure 29.1).

For example, let’s look at the image of my friend Ilyn (Figure 29.2). The picture is pretty cool, but I want to add a little bit of grit to it, so I’m going to grab the Clarity slider and drag it out to 100. This added a little bit of grit, but not as much as I wanted. I’m limited to a Clarity of 100, but I need more cowbell—what do I do?

This is where I would use the Graduated Filter to increase the effect. When you use the Graduated Filter, anything that sits above the top line is going to get whatever effect you select in the Graduated Filter sliders, and that effect will taper down to the bottom line. So what prevents us from grabbing the Graduated Filter and dragging it all the way to the bottom of the picture so that the entire picture gets the effect?

Figure 29.1 Stacking effects in Lightroom lets you go past the basic treatment of a image to make it special. A portrait of my friend Mashael at the Coffee Museum. #Love

Figure 29.2 The original picture of my friend Ilyn.

Figure 29.3 I took the Clarity slider to it’s maximum, which added some grit, but I want more.

Click on the vertical rectangle icon below the histogram to select the Graduated Filter. Hold down the Shift key, place your cursor under the picture, and click and drag down just slightly. You’ll see a straight line appear beneath the picture (Figure 29.4). Anything above that line—in this case, the entire picture—will get the effect. Let’s go ahead and grab the Clarity slider and drag it over to the right to +100.

Now hit the New button (Figure 29.5) and create another Graduated Filter immediately to the left of the first one. Hold down the Shift key and drag your cursor down ever so slightly, and you’ll see a line appear (Figure 29.6). Again, everything above it will get the effect you select with the Graduated Filter sliders. At this point, we can grab the Clarity slider and drag it all the way over to +100 again. Now we have a Clarity of +200.

Now the image is blowing out a little bit (Figure 29.7), so I’m going to do the exact same thing to recover some highlights. I’ll create two more Graduated Filters here, and I’ll pull the Highlights slider to the left to -100 for each one (Figure 29.8). This will bring the Highlights to -200.

Figure 29.4 Notice the Graduated Filter handle and line below the picture.

Figure 29.5 Adding a new gradient in Lightroom.

Figure 29.6 Now you can see two Graduated Filter lines below the picture.

Figure 29.7 Some of the highlights are blown out after stacking the Clarity effect.

I’m doing all of this to create a cool black-and-white effect, so once I’ve adjusted the highlights, I’m going to click on the B & W option in the Develop module (Figure 29.9).

Now I can finish up by adjusting the Contrast and Whites sliders in the Basic panel. I’ll also adjust the Post Crop Vignetting Amount slider (in the Effects panel) to burn the edges of the image a little bit from the corners (Figure 29.10).

I can even add some realistic photographic grain by grabbing the Grain slider in the Effects panel and dragging it to the right. So now we’ve bypassed what the Basic panel can do by using Graduated Filters to create an even cooler effect.

Share Your Favorite Unique Effects!

Once you’ve created a unique image by stacking multiple effects, share it with the Enthusiast’s Guide community! Follow @EnthusiastsGuides and post your image to Instagram with the hashtag #EGStackedEffects. Don’t forget that you can also search that same hashtag to view all the posts and be inspired by what others are shooting.

Figure 29.8 We can recover some highlights by stacking effects.

Figure 29.9 Click the B & W option to convert the image to black and white.

Figure 29.10 Adding a post-crop vignette and photographic grain.

Figure 29.11 The final image.