You are looking for some basic Lightroom editing tips on how to add that little something to your already awesome photographs? Read on!
Many people believe that using post-editing programs is cheating when it comes to professional photography. The following 3 Basic Lightroom Editing Tips however only include very subtle techniques, yet they can improve the quality of the final photograph significantly.
We use the popular program Adobe Lightroom to post-edit all our photographs and the following Lighroom editing tips have made it into our Top 3.
1. Graduated Filter
Making use of graduated filters especially comes in handy when editing photos with difficult light conditions. The high contrast of brighter and shady areas for example can be challenging when shooting narrow streets or landscape in full daylight or often during sunrise and sunset.
Click on the Graduated Filter symbol on the right side of your screen, then drag your mouse down or up (left or right) from the picture frame. To darken up bright areas of the pictures (like the sky), go down to at least -0.8 on the exposure parameter. Alternatively, you can brighten up shady areas by bringing the exposure and shadows up.
2. Spot Removal
Just when you thought you got the perfect image, you will sometimes notice a tiny dust spot on your lens or a distracting object in the frame. The smallest error can ruin the picture, so it is essential to know how to fix them with Lightroom editing.
The Spot Removal Tool works by cutting out the area you would like to correct and replacing it with a mask from a similar spot within your frame. Lightroom will chose this mask automatically, but you can manually change the size. Even the position of the little circle is adjustable.
3. Copy and Paste Develop Settings
When photography is your profession and you are shooting a minimum of 100 images a day, editing every single one individually can be incredibly tedious and time consuming.
The copy-and-paste develop settings technique in Lightroom allows you to bundle up images with similar light conditions and compositions and only edit the first one.
Once you are happy with the outcome of your first edit, just right-click on the image and follow the develop settings option. Then click copy. Lightroom will ask you to copy all settings or exclude graduate filters and crop etc. Once you’ve copied what you want simply choose an unedited photo, right-click it and apply paste settings.
For a step-by-step guide to using these Lighroom editing tips, check out our Youtube Tutorial. Feel free to let us know how they are working for you. If you think there is an awesome Lightroom editing techniques missing in this list, leave a comment!
Cheers,
Nellie and Greg