Before and After: Knockout in Lightroom

If one wants to knockout a background in a photo, you would go to a photo editing software like Adobe Photoshop. But a few years ago, I read about this trick in knocking g out the background using Adobe Lightroom. Using a photo of a World War II half-track vehicle from a local D-Day event, I thought I give it a try. 

After converting the photo to black and white, in the Basic panel, I adjusted the Blacks slider to +100 and the Whites slider to -100 plus pushed the Contrast slider up to +56 to create a contrast photo to start with. Also I pushed the Shadows slider up to +64. The plan is to try to blow out the whites in the background. To push up the details of the subject, I adjusted the Clarity slider to +45. In the Tone Curve panel, I changed the Lights to -35 to keep blowing out the whites, but increased the Darks slider to +33 and Shadows to -49 to keep the black from being too light or blown out. From this point on, it is using the Adjustment Brush with the Exposure push way up and painting out the background until nothing is there.

So now you do not need to go to a photo edited to knock out the background.

#beforeandafter #photoediting #adobelightroom

Before editing in Adobe Lightroom.

After editing in Adobe Lightroom.