5 Lightroom tips you need to know
I have been using Lightroom for a couple of years now and it is a very powerful program, especially if you are a wedding photographer and you have a large amount of photos slaughter and modify. Not only is it great for organizing your photos, but it is very good for editing. It is more advantageous when used to edit RAW images because, as we know, RAW images stored as keep every bit of information the picture was taken. This does not mean it is not good for editing.jpg, but you will not release the true power of Lightroom until you start to edit your RAW files.
I will share with you 5 tips about Lightroom that I think you need to know to improve your image workflow and also your editing capabilities. These are tips that I have accumulated over the past two years I've used Lightroom and they help me a lot. So, without further ado, let's get to it!
A. Use Brightness Instead exposure
Ok, ok ... if the header of this tip is a little misleading. I am in no way saying to use brightness on the exposure of all time. But, there are times when you will have more control over your image using the brightness, contrast exposure. The difference between the brightness and exposure is that exposure takes priority over the transfer of beach highlight the image. Say you take a picture of the landscape and everything is a little underexposed, except for the sky. If you bump the exposure by using the exposure slider, then you will potentially blow out the highlights and this is because when the cursor exposure, it increases the highlight more it does the rest of the tonal range of the image. Now, if you use the brightness slider, you can change the tonal range evenly. This has the same effect when darkening and image or lowering exposure. You will notice that the cursor exhibition priority strengths and lowers more than the rest of the tonal range. Do not believe me? Give it a shot and see what I mean. Take two of the same images, load them into Lightroom and look at the difference between brightness vs. exposure. Moreover, 50 is equivalent to a stop light on the brightness slider 100 is two stops of light, and so on and so forth.
2. Check your use of the Lightness slider
Cursor clarity can really make the details of an image stand out and also help with the inherent vagueness of the camera. What is the clarity slider does is look for contrast in the middle of the tonal range and boost the contrast. Images with many details that can really make a huge difference. I usually set mine to 30 to start and then gauge from there. Now, there are times when you do not want to raise the slider clarity because it can against-productive. If you edit a portrait, you will more than likely not want to bump the clarity slider up. As we know, each person has pores and pores are found to be in the upper mid-range tone, which affects the brightness slider. When you try to get nice smooth skin, you should try to move the cursor to the clarity and see what it does to the skin. I usually start with -15 and make changes from there. The good thing is that you do not lose all the detail in the image, unless you make a dramatic adjustment, but you will start to see the smooth skin quite well. With a little more settings, you'll have a really smooth skin that looks very nice. This brings us to our next tip ...
3. Use the Adjustment Brush smoothing skin
This is a feature of Lightroom which I think is much better than anything Photoshop can do, and it is much faster too. Trying to smooth the skin a beautiful portrait, just take the brush setting by pressing K, then click the small arrows (one up and one down) to the right of "Effect" and click on "soften skin". This will change the settings of the brush to reduce the clarity and also decrease the sharpness. I paint on the subject's face, being careful not to paint on the eyes, eyebrows, lips or hair. Do not worry, if you paint on one of these functions, you can hold down the "alt" key on PC, "option" on a Mac, to clear your brush strokes. Another trick is to press "o", overlay, see where you are painting. This will show the red mask areas that are painted. Once you paint where you want, turn the overlay mask by pressing "o" again, then set your clarity and sharpness sliders for your brush to get the overall outcome. Remember, do not overdo it. You do not want your subject to look fake.
4. HSL works magic for skin tones
As a wedding photographer, my goal is to always give my subjects pleasing skin tones. If I happen to have to adjust the exposure of an image, chances are that my skin tone will need to be adjusted further than just white balance. Of course, we all want to make a perfect exposure every shot we take, but unfortunately it does not, or at least not for me. So when I have to adjust skin tones, I head to the HSL panel for the rescue. With an underexposed image, I begin by de-saturating skin tones a bit. Not too much or you will look about you that they have gray skin and we do not want that and I'm sure the subject is. The best way to do this is to enter the target selection tool, which looks like a target and is located in the upper left corner of the HSL panel. Take the skin of subjects and slide down. This target only colors that you take with the target selector. Once you have reduced the saturation a bit and he got decent research, I propose to my luminance and brighten things up a bit. This will really make your skin glow topics. (And it will shine a lot if you're not careful.) It takes a little practice, but you'll get the hang of it by trial and error. This is probably the most complicated board and takes some time getting used to, but it will really help your workflow once you get the hang of it.
5. Post-crop vignetting
I love Lightrooms tool post-crop vignetting. I think it applies more natural-looking vignettes of any method I've tried and I've tried a few. There is something good pass allowing to make and the complete picture. It takes the eyes and pushes the central area of the image and prevents them from going out of the picture. This is another feature that I think is better than anything Photoshop has to offer, because it seems so big and you can add in about 5 seconds. I'll give you a recipe that I use often. Once you have finished editing your photo, scroll panel "Effects" and there use the settings of your thumbnail. Amount = -52, Medium = 67, Smoothness = 20, 50 = Feather, Highlights = 0. This should darken the corners just slightly without interfering with the rest of the image.
These are my 5 tips for Lightroom that I believe every photographer should know, especially wedding photographers. Please email me and let me know what you think. I'd like to hear your comments and I would be more than happy to answer any questions you may have. Until next time, happy shooting!