Welcome to the 36th week of Shoot and Edit: Part 2. Click HERE for all the details and upcoming prompts/themes (also including previous editing tutorials). This week’s theme or prompt was to show us one “Night” SOOC shot (this was just a suggestion, you can show us any SOOC shot). Hopefully you linked up with Jill’s blog earlier this week.
Each Thursday, I will take my SOOC shot and provide a simple/basic or advanced Photoshop/Photoshop Elements or Lightroom tutorial. You can then try my tutorial on your own photos and link up here – linky will now open EARLY on Thursdays and be open THROUGH SUNDAY. If you’d prefer, can simply share your own edit and show us what you did to achieve the look.
We want this challenge to be a learning experience, so feel free to teach us something new too! Also, it does not matter what editing program you use. Although I tend to work within Adobe CS5 (Photoshop), Photoshop Elements, Adobe Camera Raw and now Lightroom…it does not mean that you have to use the exact same program. I hope you’ll be able to take the concepts and apply them in the program you feel most comfortable using.
Each Thursday, I will take my SOOC shot and provide a simple/basic or advanced Photoshop/Photoshop Elements or Lightroom tutorial. You can then try my tutorial on your own photos and link up here – linky will now open EARLY on Thursdays and be open THROUGH SUNDAY. If you’d prefer, can simply share your own edit and show us what you did to achieve the look.
We want this challenge to be a learning experience, so feel free to teach us something new too! Also, it does not matter what editing program you use. Although I tend to work within Adobe CS5 (Photoshop), Photoshop Elements, Adobe Camera Raw and now Lightroom…it does not mean that you have to use the exact same program. I hope you’ll be able to take the concepts and apply them in the program you feel most comfortable using.
This week, I thought it might be helpful to review something we covered during Week 3 – Reducing Noise. Here’s my SOOC again:
Typically, if you’re shooting at night or in low light, you’re going to use a higher ISO. The higher your ISO, the more noise you’re likely to see in your image. A lot of times, if I have a noisy image, I’ll simply convert to black and white – it’s just easier that way sometimes. However, we do have options if you’d like to reduce that noise.
In case you missed the first time we discussed noise reduction, click HERE (there’s some good tips on reducing noise if you use Photoshop or Photoshop Elements…and a link for a free stand alone noiseware program).
In case you missed the first time we discussed noise reduction, click HERE (there’s some good tips on reducing noise if you use Photoshop or Photoshop Elements…and a link for a free stand alone noiseware program).
As you know, since I first starting writing for good to WOW (aka Shoot and Edit), I have added Lightroom 3 to my workflow. In addition it’s awesome organization tools, Lightroom 3 is known for it’s noise reduction capabilities.
Pretty cool, huh? It’s important to remember that before reducing your noise, you must first edit your image…the same can be said for converting your images to black and white. The best conversions are those that have gone through clean processing first. Here’s another video for Lightroom via Adobe TV: click HERE.
It’s not necessarily important how I edited my photos this week, but noise reduction was included. Here are my color and black and white edits:
It’s not necessarily important how I edited my photos this week, but noise reduction was included. Here are my color and black and white edits:

So, to recap our lesson, today we reviewed noise reduction. Here’s a final look at my SOOC, Color, and Black and White edits.

For your edit, I would love to see you continuing using the lessons we’ve covered in the past 35 weeks as well as apply today’s lesson or share something you’ve learned recently. I hope you all have a great Thursday and I look forward to seeing your edits. Next week’s theme is “Teen or Adult Portrait” Have a great Thursday!
By the way, don’t forget to add your edited photo to our good to WOW {EDIT} Flickr Group (for those of you that prefer to upload and visit that way). When adding your photos to the group pool, be sure to include the Week #, the Theme and EDIT in the description section. You may upload one photo per week. I also want to point out that we are all here to improve our editing skills. When offering constructive criticism (either on Flickr or within blog comment sections), be sure to point out at least one thing you really like about the edit before offering any advice for improvement.
