Lightroom 2 - ND grads!

[petebarnes]

Just thought I'd put this one up, not especially for communal praise or condemnation but to show the new ND tool in lightroom, I've only used it for a few minutes but I can see it being very useful indeed. There is a bit of slow down when you mess with the local adjustments tool but there was in the last version when you used big healing adjustments, not too annoying at the moment. Still quicker than editing in CS3!
And yes, I know it's got an orange sky

 

[erding]

Like the PP work, the orange sky works well

 

[adamadam]

Wow! THat's super cool!

 

[discodavor]

ND should produce no colour cast?

 

[HuntingMartians]

Maybe he meant a grad filter and looks to be a tobacco to me

 

[discodavor]

yeah i imagine he meant something akin to the gradient tool in PS

dave

 

[aberal]

I've only used it for a few minutes but I can see it being very useful indeed. There is a bit of slow down when you mess with the local adjustments tool but there was in the last version when you used big healing adjustments, not too annoying at the moment.

What do you reckon though? Is it worth the 85 quid to upgrade? I played around with the beta version and it didn't seem to offer a huge amount more.

 

[petebarnes]

The tool can be used as an ND grad to just change your exposure, it is the same as the grad tool in CS3 but you can use it straight on your raw file, and obviously you can tint it as I've done here.

As to weather it is worth it is up to the individual, hence the trial. For me it is, things like portraits in the studio can be edited a lot quicker with the local adjustment tool, plus you don't have a huge PSD file for a quick editing job. It's the slow down I don't like, I'm going to try it on my quicker laptop today.

 

[devitt]

May download the trial version and have a play. ND grads can be a pain to sort out when the shot needs to be taken in a hurry.

 

[R8JimBob88]

Works well, think i might download the trial

 

[natjag]

I've got the trial version, as I'm considering moving away from Aperture. I found the grad tool very useful. You can change it to saturate (and sharpen and add contrast) areas more as well. Very useful. not sure if it will better in the long term for me. But that tool is very useful as it's using the RAW information, not adjusting a tiff or jpg, which mean better quality end result.
I have found LR.2 slow, which used to be apertures problem.