I’ve been behind a computer editing images for over 20 years now, and I’ve used many iterations of Photoshop and have adopted Lightroom since its introduction. It’s been interesting to witness the growth of these platforms and how they become more and more capable with each generation. What could be once a lengthy process can now be done by dragging a slider. However, even though some techniques have become more manageable, they do not necessarily mean they are a positive addition to the photo. There are several things I used to do that I no longer do or do so rarely.

Noise Reduction

In my early years of editing and post-processing, I was terrified to shoot over 200 ISO because I feared introducing too much noise into my photos. Partly because my early Canon camera was terrible at handling noise, I also thought any visible noise ruined photos. Noise was the enemy, or so I was led to believe.

Now, don’t get me wrong. There are times when noise does ruin a photo, as I believe there is a point where it’s just too apparent and distracting. A nice, natural grain from noise can add a sense of rawness to a photo, but it can quickly go from adding impact to one that looks like a mistake.

Today, I rarely even care about noise and shoot mostly with an auto ISO setting on my Fujifilm X-H2. When editing, I usually don’t even check what ISO settings a photo was captured with. If it looks good, I’ll proceed.

Although noise reduction techniques have greatly improved over the years, I still don’t think they are quite there to reduce the noise without negatively impacting the photo. If noise reduction is used too much, something is off about the photo. If noise reduction is needed to “save” a picture, you have to crank up the noise reduction effects so much that the image is ruined anyway. It can become muddy and unattractive.

Using Presets

Lightroom has standard presets in colour and black and white, and some can be useful. However, I find most of them somewhat useless, especially the colour ones. I periodically use the black-and-white ones to get an idea of what an image could look like in monochrome before deciding whether to explore it, but I never use any of the default colour ones.

Numerous photographers sell custom presets, which is fine. I’d probably do the same if I had ones that I created and use often. However, I’ve tried numerous presets from various photographers and have never found anything I truly liked. The results could be okay as a starting point, but I never felt the photos were truly mine.

As photographers, we take different approaches and steps in our editing to make it ours, and starting with someone else’s interpretation of what that approach should be never worked for me. As a result, I have not installed a custom preset in Lightroom in many years. However, in terms of using a basis, I copy/paste Develop settings from one of my photos to the next to maintain consistency. I guess you could say that qualified as using a preset, one of my own, but I rarely save them for later use. It’s more about maintaining a similar look through a trip or photoshoot.

Increasing Clarity

The clarity slider can quickly become the worst slider to experiment with in Lightroom. Clarity affects the mid-tone contrasts of an image and can increase details. However, it’s a sensitive slider that can quickly ruin a photo with even the slightest increase. I don’t know why increasing clarity looked good to me in the past, but it did. Trust me; it doesn’t. It used to be one of the first things I experimented with in Lightroom, and I realize now that was a mistake. I use it slightly more with my automotive photography than with my travel or street, but even with automotive, it’s now only an increase of 2-3. In fact, with travel photography, I sometimes find that reducing the clarity from its default can back off a little of the in-your-face sharpness.

I like sharp photos but don’t like them to be artificially sharp and contrasty. Even a slight reduction can significantly improve an image.

Conclusion

Lightroom is a great tool; just as tastes change with photography, so do our editing choices. I know my editing workflow is more efficient than it used to be. After years of using Lightroom, I think I’ve adapted to a quicker process that I’m comfortable with, allowing me to get better results in my final images.

I’m sure things will evolve, and there will be things I do now that years from now that later I will not. But that’s what is great about photography; it’s personal and reflects us as individuals. It should be about who we are, and no matter how we get to that final image, we should be happy that it’s our creation and our representation of the world.