Create the Orton Effect in Lightroom with the Clarity Slider

The Orton Effect is named after photographer Michael Orton. This process results in a somewhat surreal image which has a slightly out-of-focus look while retaining lots of edge detail.

You can quickly give an image a faux Orton look using the Clarity slider in Lightroom. All you need to do is drag the Clarity slider to the left close to -100 and then, increase the Blacks in the image to an higher than usual value.

Of course there is a lot more to the Orton effect than this but this gives you a good start and, for many images, may be all you really need.

Helen Bradley