Before ISO 800 f/3.5 1/25 18mm
The Before and After forum is organised by Stacy Fischer, it is a place where amateurs as well as seasoned photographers explain the wow and how about their photo and editing decision.You can read more here about how to take part.
In the last two “Before and After Friday” posts (Sun House, Elegant Lamp) I have been sharing how I edit HDR images in Photoshop and Lightroom. I edited those images mainly in Photoshop because they needed something to be added or taken away, but not all my images are edited in Photoshop and not all have to be HDRs. In the last 6 months I have been using Lightroom as my main editor, since I was editing most of my images in Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) and opening Photoshop just to save the files.
In lightroom the first thing I do is click all the lens correcting boxes and apply some capture sharpening and noise reduction.
My next step is to make adjustments to the toning of the image. I start with the black and white points and move the sliders while pressing alt to see where the tones are being clipped allowing me to more accurately set a black and white point. I then adjust the exposure as well as adjusting the shadows, highlights and clarity.
Next I make some curves adjustments. To the overall contrast as well as each colour channel.
I then make some local adjustments using the adjustment brush if needed. For this image I made adjustments; in the window to bring back some detail from the outside, the highlight spots on the chemise and window on the right and brightening the shadows on the walls.
Sometimes I need to made adjustments to the perspective and straighten the image
I then make some final tweaks to the noise, as the adjustments may have added some, as well as adjust the sharpening. Further sharpening is applied during the output stage.
This is an image that some would think would need to be a HDR to balance the scene, but there was already a wide dynaic range in the image and some more contrast would have taken away from it. The curves adjustment has given it a slight film feel and the detail brought back in the window adds a lot instead of having a massive highlight hot spot.
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Aperture64 
Nicely done, thanks for the detailed explanation. A big improvement from the original. Looks like a professional interior design shot.
Thanks Robin, I am glad you liked the post.
Great explanation, thank you.
Ben, enjoyed reading about your process in Lightroom. Thanks for pointing out the use of the alt key while moving the black and white sliders. I tend to forget that that is available. Also, I’m interested in how you specifically adjust the color curves. I have never used those, relying more on the targeted adjustment tool in either the luminance or saturation panel. Do the curves provide for different/more targeted adjustments?
Great example of before and after. Lovely room and lovely final photo! Thanks, as always, for participating in ABFriday!
On the curves panel there is a drop down which is set to RGB, if you click this you can cycle through the three colour channels separately.
I like adjusting both the curves and the HSL adjustments as you can shift the overall tones in curves and make refined adjustments with HSL.
It is fun taking part in the before and after forum.
How do you decide when to use Photoshop and when Lightroom?
Thanks in advance. 😉
That is a really interesting question. I would say that lightroom is a place where I catalog and process my raw files. I can do most of my editing there. I then use photoshop for more in depth editing, for example if I want multiple effects or if I need to combine elements from a few exposures.
I think this is something I actually could write more on.
Thanks for the comment it has really got me thinking.