Lightroom Architectural Photography

In order to enhance detail in an architectural photography, you first need to consider that Lightroom can't add data that doesn't exist within the image without adding noise through the very same process. Therefore, we need to be careful with the sliders we are going to use on the following steps.

The Clarity slider can bring detail to the image as well as improve the lighting conditions, but this adjustment requires a keen eye to know just how much of you are going to apply to the image. Values over +60 are meant for HDR images, as tints won't look realistic otherwise. However, there are times when you apply this adjustment when you will probably notice when the slider goes over +30, it will produce a white halo around the edges of the image you are editing.

The Sharpening slider on the Detail panel will sharpen the edges by increasing their hue values into stronger tints or by creating new pixel data where it doesn't exist, but remember that since these pixels are going to be added artificially and not by using data stored by the lenses, this will translate into adding noise to the image, even if it is a lot less than the noise produced by the Clarity slider.

These kinds of adjustments really show how skilled you are at using Lightroom. First of all, we are going to focus our efforts on what remains to be fixed in this image. For instance, the sky looks a bit dull – let's fix it with the HSL panel.

Sample with the small button at the area, where you want to select the hue and start correcting the image.

Change the mode to Color and adjust the blue hues. The idea is to bring more life to the flat tints embedded in it. The sky will pop, making the composition look much more inviting.

You can work with either presets or brushes, if you happen to have quality products that will due justice to the work you have already done at this point. They will not only save you time, but also improve the original conditions of the image without sacrificing detail.

Let's finish up the adjustments by giving this image a nice looking vignette effect that is always a great feature in the final composition. We can access this effect by clicking on the Effects panel and moving towards negative values if we want a black vignette or towards positive values if we want to create a white vignette. This will depend mostly on the composition you want to create.

Let's do a quick Before/After image to compare how much the original file has improved compared to the original file.

The result speaks for itself, especially in the sky and in the tint that was added to the walls because of the White Balance corrections. Now we don't have any annoying Highlight effect that will distract the viewer, drawing the focus from the house to somewhere else - The main feature in this scene is the house itself and this image went from being a casual photo to being a really nice real estate advertisement image.

As you can see, Lightroom doesn't have any kind of hidden features – Every single tool is placed right in front of you, so it can serve its purpose. Only time and practice can determine how good you will actually become at getting the most out of Architectural Photography with Lightroom.

About The Author

Jane manages Sleeklens.com which specializes in presets and brushes for Lightroom. You can connect with them on their Facebook, Twitter or Youtube. When she is not busy managing Sleeklens, you can find her traveling around the world or enjoying long walks in nature.