After watching the movie '300' 2 weeks ago, I posed a challenge for myself - achieve the same effects in my photos WITHOUT using Photoshop! My primary objective was to achieve it just by editing the photo in Lightroom. Of course, you can still argue that Lightroom is technically 'Photoshop Lightroom', but since this is my challenge for myself, you can't do anything about it! :) hahaha!
So, after playing around with the Settings in the Develop Module of Lightroom, here's what I came out with. It's not quite there yet, but I hope it's a good start. Give me your feedback please.
As usual, click on the photos to view the larger version.
Here's the original version of the last photo without the effects applied.
After I complete my tweaks, I'll come up with a Lightroom Preset to apply this. I tried to do this last night but the shadows and blacks were too much!For people wanting to play with the effects, here's what you can do in Lightroom:
- play with Split Toning to achieve a 'gold color cast'; Sepia Presets are a good way to start with this
- Adjust the following sliders in the develop module:
- Blacks and Contrast: Increase
- Recovery and Fill Light: Increase a bit depending on how you increased the blacks.
- Saturation and Vibrance: Decrease
- Exposure: Increase a bit
- Tone Curve: Medium or Strong Contrast generally works well
- Finally, Add a bit of Lens Vignetting to add more drama to the photo
