HOW TO ADD A LITTLE INTERIOR GLOW

This blog shows how to add some very soft directed lighting using Lightroom (or ACRs) Adjustment Brush, and how to get rid of the noise caused by the high ISO settings usually associated with interior images. I am not particularly an interior photographer, but there are times when touring old homes or museums I have taken some pretty boring images. I decided to try a technique learned from watching Serge Ramelli’s The One Trick That Got Me the Most Jobs on Interior Design Photography video to pop these image a little – if using LR (or ACR) a lot, check Serge out even if you do not like his total style, he always has some of the best ideas on how to use LR creatively. The image above was taken at the Flagler Museum in Palm Beach, Florida and was quite forgettable. Two major things changed this image dramatically: Serge’s LR adjustment brush settings and in the use of the new Topaz (for website link click sidebar at my Tidbits Blog) DeNoise AI filter in PS.

Serge’s Lightroom (ACR) Adjustment Brush Settings

The RAW photo is shown below. After watching Serge’s video, the soft lighting effect was painted in on a JPG (gasp!!!) created when trying out the DeNoise AI filter. These are the Basic settings used: Exposure -0.44 (want it darker here for this technique), Highlights -91, Shadows +85, Whites +72, and Blacks -54 – pretty standard sliders to use when beginning the image processing. Next click on the Adjustment Brush set up a brush with these setting from Serge: Set the basic brush to Flow and Density around 70, Feather 100 and no Auto Mask (in LR only, I set my Brush B to these settings). In the Panel set the Exposure to +0.84 and Clarity to -48 (he says for a glow effect). At this point I created a preset of the brush called SRamalli Interior Lights. Then just started brushing with a fairly large brush in places where the light would go or have a pleasing effect on. Paint on the ceiling and carpet also. The trick is to go back and forth between the Basic Panel and the Adjustment Brush Panel settings to get exactly the right settings for the look needed. I would encourage you to watch Serge’s video to get the total feel of how he does this. To finish up this image, the Transform Panel’s Upright was set to Full since the image was very crooked (caused a few lights on the walls to disappear but this is not an image that I be publishing – just one to remember how nice the Museum was.)

Topaz DeNoise AI

Normally I would have finished up in LR by going into the Details tab and adding sharpening and removing noise, but this time I decided to let Topaz DeNoise AI filter do the heavy lifting in Photoshop. (Note that you can actually access DeNoise AI from Lightroom if you add it on as an External Editing program from your Preferences panel.) This image was originally selected to try out the new AI fiter and it really created a great result (set Noise Level to 0.50 and Enhance Sharpness to 0.50). Most of my images are not that noisy so this was the kind of shot needed to try it out. A Color Lookup Adjustment Layer was added called Vintage Chrome by On1 (they recently gave out to software owners a whole bunch of great LUT’s for both their On1 (for website link click sidebar at my Tidbits Blog) Photo Raw 2019 software and PS.) It was set to 57% layer opacity and the lace in the curtains were darkened in window using a layer set to Overlay blend mode and a low opacity black brush painted over them.

This image below was an taken in one of the historic rooms at Flagler College (was the old Ponce de Leon Hotel built in 1888) in St. Augustine (not to be confused with the above Flagler Museum image taken where Flagler used to live in Palm Beach). Same steps in Lightroom and then in PS, used the Topaz DeNoise AI filter (set to Noise Level 0.50 and Enhance Sharpness 0.50). But also Topaz Sharpen AI filter was applied (set to Processing Mode Stabilize, Remove Blur 0.50 and Suppress Noise 0.50) – needed a little more sharpness since the image was taken hand-held at a high ISO and Stabilize mode will fix this. Last step involved adding a Levels Adjustment Layer to even out the midtone contrast. That was it.

The original RAW image is below – pretty unbelievable that you can even get an image from it. It is nice to have a nice shot of the beautiful chandelier in the room.

Hope you enjoyed these couple little tricks – it is pretty easy to do and I plan on trying this technique out on a few old cathedral images taken in Europe. It does add some nice of emotion and color to an image which in normal circumstances would be pretty uninteresting. And do download DeNoise AI, especially if you have AI Clear or DeNoise6 – it is really good! Until next time…..Digital Lady Syd

Digital Lady Syd Related Blogs:
Showing Some of Serge Ramelli’s Effects
Topaz DeNoise AI – And Yes, Free Upgrade When You Own DeNoise6 or AI Clear