Monday, January 26, 2015

CoffeeShop Tutorial: How to Get the "Matte Effect" in Lightroom!


For some crazy reason completely out of the blue I decided that I was tired of my laundry room being such an eye sore and decided to actually do something about it.  It is a tiny room and I figured I could paint and organize it in a day or two.  Yep, I really believed that to be true.

That darn little room is just like a tiny clown car, but instead of being stuffed with clowns it was stuffed with junk.  Once I pulled everything out of the room so I could paint, my entire kitchen was a disastrous junk pile. I think I almost gave my husband a stroke when he walked in the door and tripped over the mess.

After several trips to Lowe's and one trip to Hobby Lobby and three days of patching, taping, and painting, the walls are done.  They are painted in "Universal Khaki" which is as exciting as you can imagine.  But they are nice and clean.

So the painting is done and my husband has hung up all of my key and coat racks, but my kitchen still looks like it was hit by a bomb.  I have a small kitchen and no closets downstairs (the house was built with plans from a house that was turn-of-the-century 1900's) and no place to store all of the junk I have accumulated.  So I am going to have to purge and organize both the laundry room AND kitchen.

Yes, I just gave myself at least another week of work...  At the minimum...

Finally I was able to get on the computer tonight and I wanted to post this little tutorial on how I edit using the "Matte Effect" in LR.  This type of flat, low-contrast editing that resembles a matte print is all the rage right now, yet so simple to achieve on your own.  You will find many sample of images editing with this type of method at Unsplash.  It looks beautiful on landscapes and still life images, but it can also be very beautiful on portraits.

CoffeeShop Lightroom Tutorial:  "Matte Effect"


A few months ago I went to Hamilton's Pool Preserve twice with my family and I was able to take some really pretty fall pictures.  After I edited this image I decided I wanted to add a "matte effect".

To do this, go down to your Tone Curve in LR. This is like Curves in Photoshop and so easy to use.  If your Tone Curve looks different than the one in my screenshot above, just click on the bottom right corner to switch.


All you have to do is grab that bottom left point and drag it up and out until you are happy with your image.  The further right you drag it, the darks get darker and the higher you drag it you add more haze.  So play around with that one point until you are happy with the image.

In this case I liked the result except for the black shadowy area under the rocks.  It was too dark and I was losing some of the greenery.


Instead of playing around with the Tone Curve I just went up to the Basic Pane and upped my Highlights, Shadows, and Blacks until I was satisfied with the edit.


Here is an image from Enchanted Rock.  I added the "matte effect" as well as some split-toning.


Here is one of my images from Palo Duro Canyon  (the second biggest canyon in the US). We went there last spring and I am in awe.  I was able to capture this photo on my iPhone using an HDR app. I opened it in LR and applied the "matte effect" using the Tone Curve method.

I hope you enjoy this little tutorial!  I will have some LR presets and also a tutorial/action set for Photoshop/PSE coming out later this week.  Anything to get out of purging and organizing.  ;-)

Do you want to download my favorite CoffeeShop PSE/Photoshop Actions and Lightroom Presets or Design Elements in one convenient zipped file AND help support this blog? Just click here for my action pack or here for a download of some of my most popular design elements, storyboards, and textures.

For complete info on installing all of my actions, click here.

1 comment:

  1. Love this matte look on photos! I don't use Lightroom, but this tutorial is still helpful. Thank you!

    ReplyDelete

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Rita