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I'm on a 5S. This might sound like melodramatic consumerist envy, but I've been struck over the last year by how many emotionally stirring pictures I've seen a

I'm on a 5S. This might sound like melodramatic consumerist envy, but I've been struck over the last year by how many emotionally stirring pictures I've seen amateurs take with the iPhone 6. My phone can take a pretty sharp photo of a baby/puppy/landscape, but there's something about the 6 generation that almost triggers that sense of "presence" people bring up in regard to VR. I think you can see this pretty vividly in the jump from 5S to 6 in the author's self portrait - I can call the improvements incremental on a lot of levels, but somehow she's "there" looking me in the eyes on the 6.

jakobegger 11y ago
It seems to me like the 6/6s does something to the skin tones. Less details, but warmer.
exhilaration 11y ago
Are you sure it's not just postprocessing? Many of my friends and I all have DSLRs but my photos are always the best because I know how to use Lightroom.
- eecks 11y ago
  As a very amateur photographer, do you use lightroom on every photo? What sort of photo enhancements do you do?
  - micampe 11y ago
    Very often you just need to adjust levels and white balance to see a significant improvement on many photos. You don’t even need Lightroom for that, even more basic photo editors like OS X Photos work fine.
  - matwood 11y ago
    On my DSLR taken photos I white balance/color correct, level, and crop all photos I'm going to keep. Photos that have particularly good subjects, I may get artistic and play with other settings until I see something I like.
  - username223 11y ago
    Mostly boosting shadows. When your shoot outdoors, it's usually best to properly expose the bright regions, then fix up the dark ones afterwards.
- saturdaysaint 11y ago
  I'm talking about off the cuff pictures taken by my sisters, who have no knowledge of Photoshop.
- avn2109 11y ago
  Out of curiosity, how does one learn to use lightroom?
  - onedev 11y ago
    The same way you learn anything, YouTube and Google Searches!
  - roymurdock 11y ago
    There are some great tutorials on Lynda. You can try it free for 10 days, which is more than enough time to get up and running with Lightroom. You shouldn't need more than 3 hours of watching videos and few more hours uploading, editing, and looping through photos to have basic proficiency. The most useful parts of the tutorial in my opinion are best practices on how and where to save photos. A lot of the development stuff can be picked up easily by playing around with the sliders and watching other online tutorials. http://www.lynda.com/Lightroom-training-tutorials/450-0.html http://www.lynda.com/Lightroom-training-tutorials/450-0.html
  - matwood 11y ago
    Not to be a smartass, but usage. Take a bunch of photos and go figure out how to manage and improve them in LR. Google and youtube are awesome ways to find out specific things, but nothing beats playing around.
  - slig 11y ago
    I learned by watching Antony Morganti's tutorials [1]. They're freely available on youtube and they cover everything you need to know. Watch the first 3 videos I linked, play with Lightroom, and then come back and watch again. You'll learn more now that you're familiar with the tool. [1] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLllFqBuTM0WI0fC_PujkGoLMyXWXd3yF7 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLllFqBuTM0WI0fC_PujkG...
    - nogridbag 11y ago
      Thanks, I've never seen lightroom before, but I've used photoshop extensively. I have a Sony A6000 and shoot jpeg as I'm a novice and probably won't bother modifying all of my vacation photos (the A6000 applies corrections for things like barrel distortion for the attached lens automatically when set in jpeg mode). I watched the first three videos and it actually turned me off to lightroom a bit or at least the workflow that was demonstrated. For example, when the author used the clone stamp tool it was painful to me that he just left those duplicated clouds in the final image without attempting to merge them in more gracefully. The final post-processed images look really amateur to me - overly artificial but not in a tasteful way. But all the youtube comments seem to be very positive so take my comments with a grain of salt. I always assumed lightroom was used primarily to correct mistakes made by the photographer in exposure settings but it's use here seemed more artistic in nature... more like a fancier version of Adobe Elements. For example, one of the final steps in the author's workflow is to select a Camera Calibration which essentially applies some filter to the entire image like "Vivid" - which I thought negated all the effort to manually adjust all the individual colors, contrast, saturation, etc.
micampe 11y ago
I think the largest difference in that portrait is the warmer white balance.
saturdaysaint 11y ago
Downvotes without any explanation are weird.

jakobegger 11y ago

It seems to me like the 6/6s does something to the skin tones. Less details, but warmer.

exhilaration 11y ago

Are you sure it's not just postprocessing? Many of my friends and I all have DSLRs but my photos are always the best because I know how to use Lightroom.

eecks 11y ago
As a very amateur photographer, do you use lightroom on every photo? What sort of photo enhancements do you do?
- micampe 11y ago
  Very often you just need to adjust levels and white balance to see a significant improvement on many photos. You don’t even need Lightroom for that, even more basic photo editors like OS X Photos work fine.
- matwood 11y ago
  On my DSLR taken photos I white balance/color correct, level, and crop all photos I'm going to keep. Photos that have particularly good subjects, I may get artistic and play with other settings until I see something I like.
- username223 11y ago
  Mostly boosting shadows. When your shoot outdoors, it's usually best to properly expose the bright regions, then fix up the dark ones afterwards.
saturdaysaint 11y ago
I'm talking about off the cuff pictures taken by my sisters, who have no knowledge of Photoshop.
avn2109 11y ago
Out of curiosity, how does one learn to use lightroom?
- onedev 11y ago
  The same way you learn anything, YouTube and Google Searches!
- roymurdock 11y ago
  There are some great tutorials on Lynda. You can try it free for 10 days, which is more than enough time to get up and running with Lightroom. You shouldn't need more than 3 hours of watching videos and few more hours uploading, editing, and looping through photos to have basic proficiency. The most useful parts of the tutorial in my opinion are best practices on how and where to save photos. A lot of the development stuff can be picked up easily by playing around with the sliders and watching other online tutorials. http://www.lynda.com/Lightroom-training-tutorials/450-0.html http://www.lynda.com/Lightroom-training-tutorials/450-0.html
- matwood 11y ago
  Not to be a smartass, but usage. Take a bunch of photos and go figure out how to manage and improve them in LR. Google and youtube are awesome ways to find out specific things, but nothing beats playing around.
- slig 11y ago
  I learned by watching Antony Morganti's tutorials [1]. They're freely available on youtube and they cover everything you need to know. Watch the first 3 videos I linked, play with Lightroom, and then come back and watch again. You'll learn more now that you're familiar with the tool. [1] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLllFqBuTM0WI0fC_PujkGoLMyXWXd3yF7 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLllFqBuTM0WI0fC_PujkG...
  - nogridbag 11y ago
    Thanks, I've never seen lightroom before, but I've used photoshop extensively. I have a Sony A6000 and shoot jpeg as I'm a novice and probably won't bother modifying all of my vacation photos (the A6000 applies corrections for things like barrel distortion for the attached lens automatically when set in jpeg mode). I watched the first three videos and it actually turned me off to lightroom a bit or at least the workflow that was demonstrated. For example, when the author used the clone stamp tool it was painful to me that he just left those duplicated clouds in the final image without attempting to merge them in more gracefully. The final post-processed images look really amateur to me - overly artificial but not in a tasteful way. But all the youtube comments seem to be very positive so take my comments with a grain of salt. I always assumed lightroom was used primarily to correct mistakes made by the photographer in exposure settings but it's use here seemed more artistic in nature... more like a fancier version of Adobe Elements. For example, one of the final steps in the author's workflow is to select a Camera Calibration which essentially applies some filter to the entire image like "Vivid" - which I thought negated all the effort to manually adjust all the individual colors, contrast, saturation, etc.

micampe 11y ago

I think the largest difference in that portrait is the warmer white balance.

saturdaysaint 11y ago

Downvotes without any explanation are weird.