Lightroom: The Negative

In the “good old days”, before the advent of digital, many professionals and a few “more serious” amateurs used slide films, but the vast majority of people, including most portrait and wedding photographers, used negatives to take their photos. Today, it's rare to see a negative.

There is no need to use Photoshop, it's very easy and simple to create negatives in Lightroom:

  1. Select a photo, it should be of a simple design
  2. Create a virtual copy
  3. In the Tone Curve section of the Develop module, switch to Linear
  4. Move the bottom left point of the curve to the top left of the curve by dragging it up
  5. Move the top right point of the curve to the bottom right of the curve by dragging it down
  6. Done
LR4: Inverting the tone curve LR4: Inverting the tone curve to create a negativelr4-point-curve-linear.jpg — ©2012 Syv Ritch -- foto-biz.com: http://www.foto-biz.com/usageterms LR4: Inverting the tone curve LR4: Inverting the tone curve to create a negativelr4-point-curve-inverted.jpg — ©2012 Syv Ritch -- foto-biz.com: http://www.foto-biz.com/usageterms

and the result is:

Negative of the dog jumping at an agility competition

Negative of a dog jumping during an agility competition

Here is the original. The original photo is only interesting and good for the owner of the dog.

The original photo is only interesting and good for the owner of the dog

The original photo is only interesting and good for the owner of the dog

It's also quick and easy to change the negative colors with the HSL and the luminance to making it into something else. Everybody will look twice before going to the next photo, then they will realize that it's a dog jumping. It looks different from what people are used to see and it could even become a style.