So this lesson will be very interesting for you. Sometimes your Warfighter just looking boring for example, if you turn return from the photograph trip, the weather wasn't good and there was no much color information in the raw files. And the raw files just don't look interesting. You can still rescue them by follow these simple tricks. And then your your images will turn out in a complete new look. And you can still print them and share them on your social media accounts.

So let's start. So I've already imported the raw file. I can show you the EXIF data so it was six seconds exposure time, aperture of 11 and ISO 100. shot with the a 6000 and the kit lens at 16 millimeters. So at this day it was the other weather wasn't good. So I am with a friend I am meant to Woods book city and I tried to Get some nice photographs of the city to make a stunning wallpaper at the river. But unfortunately, there were no there just was no really nice sunset.

It was really boring. So I was a bit desperate after returning home and saw the raw files on the computer, but I still could rescue them and could make a wonderful looking image out of this raw file. So how did I do this? So for this, you can again use my standard workflow. So first, we will take a look at the white balance. It's now as shot with the camera.

So I think the white balance is quite okay, so we don't have to change this for now. So let's take a look on the exposure. Maybe it's a bit too dark and recombine it up just a bit. Maybe something like This Okay, and we add a bit of contrast. Now as I do it every time, I bring down the highlights completely, and I open up the shadows to around 70 or 80, something like that. I'll set my white point by holding the old key show that nothing is going out.

Okay, I set my black point until I see some blacks. Maybe something like that, okay, not so much less wonderful to be brought back the contrast. And of course, we will reduce the clarity to minus 20 sorry, minus 20. That's the basic return retouching that I do every time so Of course, you can buy our brands then to bring back some color information. But you see, there's nothing in the sky We have no sunset. It's just a bit blue.

So it was the blue hour but I am missing a bit of the red tones in the sky, but we take care of this in a few seconds. So let's first add a bit of saturation to okay. Wonderful. And now we can go to I think the orange here in the fortress is too strong. So we can fix this by going to the HSL color section in Lightroom and reduce the saturation of the orange tones just a bit. Something like that.

And we can still boost the saturation of the blue tones Okay, one So to bring back some color, we have different options as in the lessons before already shown. So we first go to the Split Toning as I do it every time. And let's see if we can select nice color, which adds a bit more orange tone. Yeah, something like that. Okay, and saturation. Okay.

In the shadows. Hmm, I think we don't have to select a tone for the shadows right now because the shadows are already very blue. Otherwise, I would select blue, but in this case in this image, it's blue in us. So let's take care of the sky with some local adjustments. So for this, we can of course use Radial Filter Radio through to hear. So make sure that in what the mask is enabled, that feather is around 100 and exposure set to zero, everything's to zero.

Now we can add some, some magenta and some orange to the sky. bit, maybe a bit of exposure, of course, more magenta, and a bit saturation. Maybe something like that. Wonderful. And now I think we have recovered some details in the sky. So the orange is still too much for me so we can reduce this a bit more.

Okay, so now I think there's a special trick to get more dynamics into any one image. So if the sky is really boring, like on this image and also here, the foreground is really boring. We can crop the photo and make it more panoramic. This adds a lot of dynamics to the image. So, um, first, let's go to transform and make ultra bright. Okay, wonderful.

So the photo is no straight, the horizon is correctly leveled up here in this image. So this always does a good job in natural not not at every picture, but 90% of the pictures, or upright does a great job. So I really recommend you to use this function of Lightroom. And now we go to our cropping tool and make the whole image a bit more panoramic. So the image of the sky is not interesting so we can cut the sky and maybe take care of The rule of thirds, maybe something like that. And of course here at the bottom we can also crop it.

And here on the left hand side is also not very interesting with these trees. So we can crop them out just like this. Something like that. Okay? And now we get much more into the photo. Okay, wonderful and it's completely different.

So you see it gets a complete new message the whole image So ask yourself always the measured message what want it to express what want it to get, what is the message I want to get across and he it's a bit more panoramic to show, really, the river to show the evening situation here with the lights were mirroring in the river, which I'm hearing in the river and I think was This cropping we add a lot of dynamics to the image and it looks much better than before. Okay, so now we took care of the color. So we have brought back the colors by adding vibrance saturation by adding more saturation to the blue tones. And then we took care of the colors in the sky of the warm tones by using the Split Toning and the local adjustments with the Radial Filter so radius which is always good to flag a sunset or to add the colors like a sunset would add them, maybe we can make it a bit smaller here, but I like also that it reflects here in the river so it doesn't look fake.

It looks very natural, I think. And we have much more detail than in the original image. So I show you the before and after for now. So as we open up the shadows, wrote down the highlights you have much more information or image and then We brought back the contrast and added the color. And I think it looks much better and more interesting than our original RAW file already. So now we have also to close up the photo, and we do this by an gradiated filter.

So holding shift that it gets dread using the exposure here. Maybe something like that. Wonderful. And I think it's still a bit too broad at the top here. So let's add a little Radial Filter here. And just make it a bit darker.

Wonderful. Okay, and then click Done. So now we've closed up the photo at the top, we also have to close it up in the editor. bottom. So again a Radial Filter, minus exposure. And even if it does look weird for you at the first glance, the people don't know that you have used gradients here, they won't recognize it, but it will lead the few directly into the photo.

So I really recommend you to use these gradients to close up the photo, it will add a lot more depth to your photo. So now we have closed up the photo, if closed up the photo, and let's complexify the light. So let's add the magic or what I also called complexify the light so we use a local adjustment brush. And now let's ask ourselves again the question What is the important part of this image? So I think they're really important and part of this image is the reflection in the river and the river lights here and also maybe hear a bit in the middle bridge. So let's break these parts up.

So we can use a brush for this is the exposure a bit. And I'll just brush over the river here over the lights over the important parts of the image, even if it does look weird for you at the first glance. So you see what happens we really brought up these parts of the imagery, which we want the viewer to look at, and adds lots more dynamic to the image. Just brush over it. Whether the lights on maybe boosted a bit more, something like that. Okay, looks fine.

And I think we can make the image a bit brighter here in the middle. Here at the bridge so we can edit in, radio photo, make Sure that feathers around 100. Okay, maybe like that. And boost a bit, the exposure, saturation and a bit of contrast just a tiny bit. It's much more interesting. Okay, if you think we've brush is too visible, the brush strokes are too visible, just lower the exposure a bit, maybe something like that.

And of course, it's very important that you look at others things that you maybe go outside for a walk and then come back to your image. And then you see if it looks weird or not. So if you're just looking at the image all the time, you can say, is it unnatural or not? So it's very important to look at other things and then come back to your image and make the final editing. Okay, so I like this Wonderful maybe let's take a look if we can add a little vignette just a little vignette Oh make sure that remove chromatic aberration is switched on name the profile corrections Of course. So, didn't post crop vignetting maybe like that.

Okay, if you think the gradient here at the bottom is too strong, just make it a bit brighter that it does look natural. Wonderful. Okay so I'm quite happy with the result we already got. So let's zoom in and look if we have some noise here because we have only one exposure this time and we have opened up the shadows to around 80 and it is okay for Sony as exam though and You can do this with the raw files of this camera. It is not much more noise here, but a little bit of noise and we can of course remove it with Lightroom. So let's take a look at the sharpening and detail section here in Lightroom and do some noise reduction.

So I always do noise reduction of 10 if I do noise reduction, to not do too much noise reduction because it would also affect the sharpening and we would lose a lot of details. What you can always actuate is the color noise reduction. So the color cast, it works very well and it doesn't affect the sharpness it also even if you would drag it to 100% it doesn't ruin your image and it doesn't ruin your details. So I found that out. That is really cool. I always go to around 50 and the color cast here and Now, if we zoom in, we see the noise cut less, so wonderful.

But now we've also lost some details a bit. So we can sharpen it a bit in Lightroom. So I do sharpening this image around 70 radius, I stick with the standard radios and also the standard value at the details switch. But make sure that you activate the masking because if you now sharpen the image at the high value than 70 also the sky and the water get shot but there are no borders, there are not things which should be sharpened, it just adds noise to these parts of the image. And we want to don't have noise there. So we act with the masking and if you click and hold the Alt key and drag this switch here, you can see where our sharpening actually affects the image.

Everything which is wide will get sharpened everything which Just black won't get sharpened. So just make sure that the river doesn't get sharpened and the sky only the borders of the of the houses and of the functions of the bridge and so on. The tree gets sharpened now and so I think we can stick with this value of 47 something like 50 here. And it sharpens only the borders of the buildings and not of the smooth River and the sky. It is a really good image. And of course you can print this image because we have a high quality and maybe we can try something because here we have little clouds in the sky.

Maybe we can boost them a bit. So we can take an Radial Filter again and drag it over to these little clouds here. Reset the exposure and Maybe a bit of clarity here, just a bit, make sure that feather is at 100 that it doesn't look unnatural. Maybe also a bit of contrast here. Just a tiny bit. Okay, wonderful.

So if we take a closer look at the before and after you see boom. With these easy steps, you can bring back the color, you can bring a darker looking Rothfuss back to life, you can still make something great out of them. So this picture I already got many likes on Instagram. The people really liked this image of their hometown, so it's also my hometown. So I have many followers and living in Woodstock. They liked the image, they loved it.

And if I posted this profile here on the left, I think nobody would have left this image. And here we have brought back the Colombian drug. back the details we added the dynamics by using local adjustments but complexified the lights, but really make something special out of this boring looking Rafa. And the quality is just awesome. So and I give you all these raw files for free that you can try it on your own, maybe you find a complete special, different look. So maybe you think we should change the color here in the sky, we don't add so much magenta, we make it more orange to make it more what, what you want, so there's no right or wrong, just up to you.

And you can practice, practice, practice. And you'll see no RAW file is lost even if you don't have much color information lateral is so powerful and with these simple steps with these methods, you can bring your thoughts and your images back to life and it's just amazing.