How to use the Radial Filter in Lightroom and Camera Raw
Photo editing is one of the best parts of modern digital photography, in my opinion. You can get so creative and develop your own style to achieve the perfect result of your work. Whether it's the "natural" look you experienced in the field or if you want to express your vision as an artist through your images. There are so many different ways to edit your shots, but don't worry; I'm going to cover one of my favorite and also easiest tools in this article.
I love using Adobe Camera RAW or the Camera RAW filter in Photoshop. It offers so many adjustments possibilities and makes post-processing a lot easier. Sometimes it's tough to find the right techniques which help you to get the results you wanted on your work. That's where the radial filter comes into play. You can use it in a variety of different ways, and I'm going to cover my five most favorite techniques in this blog post.
How to balance the tones
Adding whites to your sky helps to maintain contrast.
One of the easiest ways to get a pleasing and natural look on your photos is to balance the tones throughout the frame. I'm going to fix the bright parts in the sky and darker regions in the foreground or midground. Our modern cameras are still limited sometimes to capture the whole dynamic range in one exposure or let's say to get it perfect without any help in post-processing. Make sure that you don't lose any highlight information and not too much of the shadows in your RAW file because then we have the option to use the radial filter to take care of it. Simply drag the cricle around the area you want to adjust.
In this case, we want to darken the highlights but also maintain the bright look of them, so they're not too flat and dull. Of course, make sure that you ticked the little box "inside," so you make the adjustments inside of the circle. We will use the other option in a later example.
You can also use this simple method to brighten the shadows, so the viewer has a chance to see what's going on in the foreground. Drag a circle around the area you want to adjust and lift the shadows and also the exposure a little bit. I like to use both in combination because of the more natural appearance. If you only raise the shadows or only the brightness, it will mostly look weird and sloppy. Now let's continue with my other ways how I like to use this powerful filter.
It’s no problem when you overlap your adjustment with the sky. In this case it helps to keep a natural look on the horizon line.
How to make Local Contrast adjustments
In my opinion, it's crucial to avoid too many global adjustments on your images because it's easy to mess up the tones when you don't edit them separately. For example, when you have a bright sky with lots of nice contrast and a kind of flat foreground, then it's the best way to add local contrast only to the front and not to the sky. When you add contrast overall, then you will quickly make the sky too punchy, and the foreground will get only a little bit of your adjustment. That's were again the radial filter comes into play. Drag a circle around the foreground element and adjust the contrast or even the clarity (to add more punch and to enhance the details).
If you combine multiple radial filters using this effect, you will get even more advanced results
Pro tip! Adjust the softness of your radial filter to 100 and use only small parts of it. Please take a look at the screenshots to see what I mean by that. If you create a big circle and move it out of the frame, so only the soft end shows up on your photo, then you will have a smooth transition for your adjustments. It helps you to avoid any artifacts or sloppy edges in your photo. So even when you use the radial filter on a big part of the foreground/sky, it will only get adjusted in a detailed and local way because of the soft masking transition.
How to make Local color adjustments
You probably have guessed it already. When you're able to adjust the contrast locally, then, of course, you can do the same with color. I like to enhance the different tones with the white balance and tint sliders. You can see in the following example how powerful it is to further emphasize the warm light reflections on the stones in the foreground. It's also good to add cool tones to your shadows or dark clouds to create some impressive color contrast. Again it's beneficial to do this locally with the radial filter. If you adjust the warmth overall, then you will also get the effect in some areas where you don't want it, like on a waterfall or some foreground elements.
You can also use this technique to decrease the saturation on a specific part of your image
Another Pro tip: Use the color panel inside the radial filter to add colors to a certain part. I love doing this to reflections or to some parts of the sky when you have a lot of the same tones going on. Check the screenshot to get a better feeling of what I'm talking about.
Keep in mind to use a matching color, otherwise it will look weird and fake.
How to Sharpen locally
By now, I already showed you three techniques to adjust your images locally, but there is one more step I like to use. Imagine you have a big prominent rock in the foreground with some smooth waves streaming around it. In this case, I wouldn't want to sharpen the whole image because then you add noise to the water. Soft textures show artifacts quickly when you enhance them too much. That's another reason why the radial filter is so powerful. You can simply draw a circle around the rock and sharpen the heck out of it without touching the water. I generally like to do my sharpening in Photoshop, but this is an effective method to enhance certain parts quickly and easily.
Even when it’s nice to have sharp images, make sure to not overdo it, otherwise you will decrease your pixel quality.
How to Add a Vignette
There are several ways to darken the edges of your image. It's essential to help the eyes of your viewer to look at the part where you want them to. I like to use the radial filter for this effect the most. First of all, I drag it around a big part of my frame, so I have a big circle in the middle. Now you have to make sure to invert the box, which says outside/inside. In this case, we want to work on the outside of the filter. Now you can lower the brightness a little bit depending on your subject and also to your liking. I personally always reduce it by 0.45 stops first and work my way through. Most of the time, I end up using a number close to my first try anyway. Now make sure that you don't darken anything on the edges which you don't want to be dark like some trees or ridgelines of a mountain. If that's the case, simply lift the shadows and the blacks by a small amount to overcome the effect.
Pay close attention to your saturation. You might have to decrease it a bit after darkening the edges.
It’s important to watch your highlights so you don’t blow them out.
Pro Tip: In the second step, I use another radial filter, but this time I want to adjust the inside again. So drag it around the area you wish to enhance and lift the exposure by like 0.35 stops. Now, this creates a subtle effect that helps the viewer to focus on the part you want them to, the center of your image.
Alright, that's it now. I hope you enjoyed reading my five favorite ways to use the radial filter on landscape images. In my opinion, it helps to make processing your shots a lot easier and quicker without decreasing the quality. It took me a while to appreciate the power of this wonderful tool myself, but now I can't live without it. Feel free to watch the video attached to the article to see how I use some of the adjustments on my images.
So what are your favorite ways to use the radial filter? Do you even use it at all? Let me know in the comments down below, and if you have any questions, feel free to contact me, I'm always there to help.
Best regards
Daniel