This is the complete basic tutorial for LRTimelapse. Additionally to the internal editing and processing in LRTimelapse it also includes editing and exporting via Lightroom Classic.
If you are a new user and want to start it a bit slower or you don’t work with Lightroom, check out first: The Simplified Basic Tutorial (without Lightroom)
In this video you will learn how to
- keyframe your images
- edit them with the internal editor in LRTimelapse
- do finer adjustments to your edits with Lightroom Classic
- animate Gradients with Lightroom and LRT
- calculate auto transitions,
- deflicker, export and render your timelapse in LRTimelapse.
- alternatively export via Lightroom
Feel free to test the free version of LRTimelapse with your sequences up to 400 images. If you like it, you can find different licenses in the shop.
I also recommend my EBook Timelapse Photography – 480 pages that will teach you how to get the best results – from shooting to perfect editing!
- Download LRTimelapse 7 beta
- Information about the beta and all new features
- LRTimelapse Newsletter
- LRTimelapse on Instagram
- LRTimelapse Forum
You will find direct links to the video chapters in the YouTube description of the video.
Transcript
Hi guys, welcome to the basic tutorial for LRTimelapse. In this tutorial you will learn the complete workflow for editing a timelapse, from the image sequence to the perfect video clip.
You can do this workflow with or without Lightroom Classic. In this video I will show you both variants.
If you want to start a bit slower, check out my “Short Basic Tutorial – without Lightroom”. Later you can still come back here to learn how to add Lightroom to your workflow.
In this tutorial you will learn how to define and edit keyframes in LRTimelapse and Lightroom Classic, apply “holy grail” compensations if needed, automatically calculate all transitions and deflicker your timelapses.
The result will be a super-smooth video from your timelapse image sequence. Enjoy!
Getting Started with LRTimelapse
First of all, each time-lapse sequence must be stored in a specific folder. A folder with a time-lapse sequence should not have any further subfolders.
In the settings, on the “Folder” tab, you can configure the folders to be displayed in the tree. It is advisable to store the parent folders under which your time lapses are located here. This increases performance and makes things more organized.
Select a folder in the tree to load the sequence into LRTimelapse.
Time-lapse sequences can consist of raw, dng or jpg files. The working method is the same for all these file types. However, the quality of the result and the processing speed is highest with raw files, so you should use these whenever possible. Conversion from Raw to Dng is not necessary and is usually counterproductive.
You can play your time-lapse directly after loading using the preview in the top right-hand corner. This is of course still unedited.
Metadata
On the right there is a table with so-called metadata. Metadata is information about the images, such as exposure time, aperture and interval.
The editing steps are also displayed as metadata in the table, here for example the exposure correction “Exposure”.
The highlight of working with LRTimelapse is that all edits are first calculated virtually and only applied to the images in a single development process at the very end, when the video is output.
This lossless processing is one of the great advantages of LRTimelapse – it makes it possible to create time-lapses in unique quality.
Analyzing the brightness
When we play back the sequence, we can see that the light changes during the recording. The blue curve shows this brightness progression.
Workflow Buttons
The workflow buttons are located at the top of the screen. These buttons simplify working with LRTimelapse. Normally, you simply go through them from left to right, so you always know exactly what to do next. If you hover over a button with the mouse, you will see an explanation.
Let’s start with the Keyframes Wizard.
Keyframes Wizard
Keyframes are the images that we are going to edit later. If you click on the Keyframes Wizard, you will get a suggestion for the number of keyframes, but this is only a rough guideline. You can easily change this number by moving the slider.
To determine how many keyframes you need, simply look at the sequence and identify where you see significant changes. In this case, I think we will need one keyframe at the beginning, one in the middle and one at the end. So in this example we’re going to have three keyframes created.
If you need more, you can either use the slider or create keyframes manually by activating the keyframe icon on the left of the table. Another option is to press the “1” key when an image is selected.
Holy Grail Wizard
Next comes the so-called “Holy Grail” wizard. This is intended for sequences that you have recorded using the “Holy Grail” method.
This method has proven to be useful for recording day-to-night or night-to-day transitions. The time-lapse is recorded as normal in the camera’s M mode, and the exposure time and ISO are then adjusted as required when it gets dark. This can be done manually or with the help of an app such as qDslrDashboard. There is a separate video from me on this.
Adjusting the camera exposure in this way during recording inevitably leads to a jump in the brightness curve. Multiple readjustments lead to a zig-zag curve. The Holy Grail Wizard automatically compensates for this and makes appropriate corrections to smooth the sequence.
The Holy Grail Wizard cannot be activated for sequences that were recorded without manual readjustment of the camera, as it is not required in this case.
Saving Metadata
Now save the editing steps you have carried out as metadata.
The images are not yet finally developed, but all processing steps are written to so-called XMP files. LRTimelapse communicates with the raw converter or Lightroom via these files.
Visual previews for keyframes
While the undeveloped camera previews are displayed in blue, the developed visual previews are displayed in pink. This applies to the icon in the workflow bar as well as to the luminance curve in the preview. You can switch between the camera previews and the visual previews using the “Visual previews” button.
The pre-development of the keyframes allows you, on the one hand, to roughly see the later brightness curve of the developed sequence and adjust it if necessary. On the other hand, if you don’t want to use Lightroom, you can now edit the keyframes directly with the internal tools of LRTimelapse.
The Internal Editor
The internal editor in LRTimelapse uses the same tools as Lightroom and Adobe Camera Raw. For simple edits or corrections you can therefore save yourself the detour via Lightroom, the results are the same.
Finer adjustments to the edits can be made using the +/- buttons.
Once you have finished editing a keyframe, you should transfer the settings of the edited keyframe to the next keyframe as a starting point so that you only have to make modifications there.
If you are already happy with your internal editing, you can simply continue with the “Auto transition”.
Alternatively, I will now show you how to edit in Lightroom.
Importing to Lightroom
Even if you can access the most important development tools in the LRTimelapse editor: Lightroom is still the first choice for more complex editing of keyframes. It offers a larger and faster preview, significantly more and more complex tools, such as masks and extended export options.
The good thing is: You don’t have to choose LRTimelapse or Lightroom exclusively when editing. You can also combine the two, as we are doing here.
Please make sure that you have already opened Lightroom Classic and that the library module is selected, otherwise the following import will not work.
Also, the folder with the sequence should not already be in the Lightroom catalog. If this is the case, please remove the sequence from Lightroom first.
To import your sequence now, simply drag the Lightroom icon from LRTimelapse into the Lightroom library (drag and drop).
Lightroom can sometimes be a bit tricky here. On the Mac, for example, the most reliable way is to drop it onto the Lightroom dock icon. On Windows, you can hover over the Lightroom button in the taskbar and wait until Lightroom comes to the foreground and then simply release it over the Lightroom window.
Usually, the import dialog with the sequence from LRTimelapse will now open. If not, you can also select the folder to import manually.
Now it is very important that “Add” is selected at the top of the import dialog so that you actually add the selected folder and Lightroom does not create a copy of the images.
Now click on Import to transfer the sequence with the edits you have made so far to Lightroom.
Keyframe editing in Lightroom
Now you can set a filter to display only the keyframes.
You will find special LRTimelapse filters in the toolbar and the filter bar. These filters were set up automatically when LRTimelapse was installed.
Now select “LRT Keyframes” here to display only the keyframes.
All LRTimelapse keyframes have 4 stars in Lightroom.
In Lightroom, you can now edit the keyframes from left to right in a similar way to the internal editor.
Frequently used tools are the exposure and contrast adjustments in the basic settings and, of course, the white balance, the animation of which plays a major role in time-lapse photography, e.g. to realistically realize day-night transitions.
But of course you can also set the crop and straighten a skewed horizon.
You can set the aspect ratio of the images to 16:9, which is commonly used for videos, but you can also do this later when rendering in LRTimelapse.
Tools such as clarity and haze removal, which work depending on the content of the images, should be used with caution, as they can lead to unsightly shifts in contrast and color in timelapses due to their dependence on the image content.
Working with masks
For the use and animation of masks, i.e. linear and radial gradient filters, LRTimelapse has already created a series of masks that you can and should use.
There are 4 linear gradients and 2 radial gradients. You can animate these, and only these, with the help of the keyframes. You can animate the processing of the masks as well as their position and shape.
Please do not add any new masks or delete any of the pre-initialized masks. You should also not change the three masks that are intended for internal use by LRTimelapse.
Transferring the settings to the following keyframes
After you have finished editing the first keyframe, hold down the Control key (Windows) or the CMD key (Mac) and click on the second keyframe so that both are selected.
Now use the special script “LRT Sync Keyframes” to transfer the settings from the first to the second keyframe. You can find the script in the “Scripts” menu. On the Mac, this is a small scroll in the menu bar.
This script copies all edits without overwriting certain adjustments that LRTimelapse has made in the background.
Now you can make changes to the second keyframe and work your way through the keyframes from left to right by applying the sync script after each edit.
Saving Metadata
Now switch back to the grid view of the library. You can do this simply by pressing the “G” key (grid view).
Select all keyframes by either selecting the first keyframe and then the last one while holding down the Shift key, or simply by pressing Ctrl-A (CMD-A on the Mac).
When all keyframes are selected, go to the “Metadata” menu and select “Save metadata to files”.
It is important to always save and load metadata with the grid view enabled, as saving from the development module would only take the current file into account, even if all are selected. This is a known problem in Lightroom. Therefore, get into the habit of always pressing the “G” key to switch to the library when you want to save or load metadata.
The 2nd workflow row in LRTimelapse
Regardless of whether you used the internal editor, Lightroom or a combination of both: after keyframe editing, we move on to the 2nd workflow row.
LRTimelapse has already developed the freshly edited keyframes so that you can get a first impression.
You can use the arrow buttons below the histogram to jump from one keyframe to the next, alternatively with Ctrl Arrow Up / Down (Mac: CMD Arrow Up / Down).
The new pink curve now shows the brightness progression of the already developed images, the so-called “visual previews”.
The yellow curve shows the values of the “Exposure” tool – both previously only on the keyframes.
At this point, I check the brightness curve of the keyframes using the pink luminance curve, for example. If necessary, I can now make changes to the brightness by adjusting the exposure. Here you can see the brightness curve much better than in Lightroom.
Auto transition
The next step is to calculate automatic transitions for all images between the keyframes. To do this, click on “Auto transition”. LRTimelapse now calculates the developments for all images between the keyframes and briefly displays the resulting curves.
If you want to see the curves again, you can display them using the “ALL” button. The colors of the curves correspond to the headings of the table columns. Only curves and columns for actually animated tools are displayed.
Visual previews
LRTimelapse now automatically creates visual previews for the entire sequence. Unlike camera previews, these visual previews have now been developed with your edits. When you play back the sequence, you can judge whether it is already perfect or whether additional changes are required.
If you play the sequence after creating the visual previews, you can judge whether it is already perfect or whether additional changes are required.
Deflicker
The sequence is often not completely smooth, but shows a so-called “flicker”. You can see this during playback, but also on the pink curve, which is not completely smooth.
LRTimelapse can completely remove this flicker.
To remove the flicker perfectly, it is advisable to set a reference range for the calculation of the luminance curve. This reference area should cover a part of the image that is not affected by natural, desired changes in brightness, but instead shows the flicker as isolated as possible. This is often an area of the sky. If there are clouds passing through quickly, then alternatively an area where less “desirable” changes occur.
The aim is to see the flicker as isolated as possible in the luminance curve.
You can set the reference area by clicking and dragging on the preview. You can delete the area again by double-clicking. After releasing the mouse button, LRTimelapse recalculates the luminance curve.
Apply the visual deflicker
Now activate the visual deflicker.
Use the smoothing slider to set how much the luminance gradient should be smoothed.
If this slider is set to zero, the target curve will follow all unevenness and there will be no deflicker. The higher the slider is set, the smoother the curve becomes.
The aim is to find a setting that smoothes out short-term flicker effects but maintains medium and long-term changes to the luminance.
You can either choose a single deflicker pass or a multi-pass deflicker that makes two or more passes to gradually remove the flicker. In this case, we will perform a double multi-pass deflicker and then click “Apply”.
LRTimelapse will now calculate the deflicker for images that deviate from the green curve; perfectly aligned images will not be recalculated.
With multi-pass deflicker, several passes are made, with the pink curve getting closer and closer to the ideal green line. Fewer images need to be recalculated with each pass.
Lossless
All these calculations are lossless, which means that you can perform as many deflicker passes as you like without affecting the quality.
This is because all adjustments are initially only calculated as metadata. They are only applied once when the video is finally exported and rendered. This gives you a video of the highest possible quality.
Workflow indicators in the tree
On the left-hand side of the tree you can see so-called “workflow indicators”, which show you which steps you have already carried out on a sequence. Here you can see, from left to right, the symbols for keyframes, the Holy Grail Wizard (if applicable), the auto transition, the deflicker with the number of passes and whether a sequence is already finished and has videos assigned to it. You can access these videos later via the right mouse button / Show rendered videos.
Final check
Now you can play your time-lapse again to make sure that everything looks perfect.
You can detach the preview window for a larger view to better assess the preview.
Export and Render
Exporting and rendering are two processes in LRTimelapse:
When exporting, the images are finally developed and all processing steps are applied to the full-size image files.
The result of the export is a so-called intermediate sequence with developed image files (JPG or TIFF).
This intermediate sequence is then rendered, i.e. converted into a video.
The reason for this split is that the time-consuming export process only has to be run through once. However, various video files can then be created from the intermediate sequence in different resolutions and with different post-processing.
There are again two options for exporting: either via Lightroom or directly from LRTimelapse.
Internal export
To use the internal export, just click on “internal export and render”. Now you will get asked for an export and render folder which should always be separated from the folder that you used to store your original time-lapse files.
Now that we are using a restricted folder tree, we are kind of limited in selecting another folder. So let’s globally add the folder “Timelapse-Done” to our restricted tree to make it available.
It’s a folder where all the exported and rendered timelapses will get stored.
Now that I added it here you also can see it in the main tree.
Now select this time-lapse done folder and click on “export and render”.
The export dialog comes up in the orange mode “export and render current sequence”. And before I explain all the settings in this dialog, let’s just do the little detour via Lightroom and I’ll show you as a second alternative how to do your export from Lightroom instead.
I will explain the options in a moment, they are the same as for the Lightroom export.
Export via Lightroom
The advantages of exporting via Lightroom are
- Higher quality of the intermediate sequences
- Tiff / 16 bit intermediates possible (LRT Pro)
- HDR export possible (LRT Pro)
Loading metadata
Before you can export the sequence from Lightroom, you must first load the metadata of all images once so that the images between the keyframes also receive their edits and the deflicker is applied.
To do this, go to “Filter” and select the complete sequence.
Mark the entire sequence with Ctrl-A (Windows) or CMD-A (Mac).
Now select Metadata / READ metadata from files.
This will update the images in the Lightroom catalog from the external changes.
Export
The next step is to export the images using the LRT Export plugin.
If you still have the “Current import” collection activated, please right-click on an image and then click on “Show folder in library” so that Lightroom jumps to the actual folder.
Make sure that all images are selected in the grid view (G, Ctrl/CMD-A) and now click on “Export”.
In the render dialog on the left, select one of the presets, e.g. “JPG (4k)”, to create intermediate sequences in JPG and 4K size. LRTimelapse Pro users can also use the corresponding presets to create lossless TIFF and HDR intermediate sequences.
Now define an output folder that is separate from the original files, similar to LRTimelapse.
Now go to “Export”.
Lightroom automatically opens the render dialog in LRTimelapse after the export. Compared to the internal export and render, however, the option “Render pre-exported intermediate sequence” is now selected, as there is no longer any need to export.
Render dialog in LRTimelapse
The sequence exported via Lightroom has been selected automatically.
Now you can make the settings according to which your video should be rendered.
LRTimelapse offers some presets at the top left. These are also useful if you are not yet familiar with the video settings in detail. You can of course adjust these presets if necessary or add your own.
For example, you can use the first preset to output a standard Full HD video at 29.97 frames per second. This preset uses the common H.264 compression algorithm. Videos that you create with this preset have maximum compatibility with any output device.
Render options
Basic settings such as the video encoder, dynamic range, output size and quality as well as the frame rate are made on the left.
In the top center you can see the folder in which the intermediate sequence is located and the automatically generated file name. This is updated according to the settings you have made.
On the right there are some settings for post-processing.
For example, you can set a crop in a freely selectable aspect ratio here. You can use the slider to move the crop and you will see a corresponding rectangle in the preview.
Another very useful edit is “LRT Motion Blur” to add motion blur and smooth the sequences once again. Neighboring images are blended. A setting of 5, for example, means that 5 images are blended. This produces a beautifully smooth result and also reduces noise.
You should always adjust the motion blur settings to the content of the time-lapse. With fast-moving timelapses or pans, settings that are too high can lead to ghost images – in this case, you can simply render the video again with a different setting.
Higher motion blur settings, the addition of watermarks and timestamps are reserved for the Pro license.
Click on “Render” to output the final video. The rendering process is displayed in the batch processing list at the bottom left of LRTimelapse and runs in the background.
Once the rendering process is complete, the video file is displayed in Explorer or Finder.
Re-rendering an intermediate sequence
You can use the “Select” button to return to previously exported cutscenes at any time in order to render them again and try out different motion blur settings, for example. Of course, this also works with intermediate sequences that were created via the internal export.
Exported intermediate sequences always start with the prefix “LRT_” and are displayed in blue in LRTimelapse.
If you hold down the Shift key when clicking on “Render”, the render dialog will not be closed and you can immediately start the next render process.
The exported video files automatically contain information about the render settings in the file name so that you always know which settings you have used and files with different settings are not overwritten.
Final Words
Although it may seem complex at first, the workflow is logical and efficient after a few passes. The combination of Lightroom and LRTimelapse allows you to take advantage of all the benefits of Lightroom, including support for all camera raw formats.
And even though I highly recommend Lightroom: if you don’t have a Lightroom license and don’t want to buy it, you can also use the LRTimelapse workflow without Lightroom.
Either way, you just edit the keyframes with tools that you are used to from photo editing. LRTimelapse then calculates all intermediate frames and smoothes the output.
The powerful render module delivers videos in extremely high quality, which can be further processed without loss in editing programs such as DaVinci Resolve and others.
The results are time lapses of incomparable quality.
I hope this video helps you to get started with LRTimelapse. I would appreciate a “Like” if it has helped you!
You can find more videos on my YouTube channel. It’s best to subscribe to it, because new videos are always being added with lots of tips to help you get better and better at working with LRTimelapse.
If you have any questions, visit the LRTimelapse forum. Many other users write and read there and I am there every day to answer your questions.
