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Adobe Lightroom is one of the most powerful pieces of software for editing and enhancing photos. In this video, Stephanie goes through the basics of editing with Lightroom and how to drastically improve your images in an efficient amount of time.
Find more Lightroom tutorials and tips on our blog - https://filtergrade.com/category/photo-editing/lightroom/
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Special thanks to Stephanie for putting this tutorial together. See more of her photography work here: https://www.facebook.com/PhotographyByStephanieBerenson
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0:01
hello everybody my name is Stephanie and
0:04
today we will be discussing the basics
0:06
of editing photos in Adobe Lightroom I
0:09
am currently using Lightroom 4 but there
0:12
are other updated versions that are
0:14
currently available so one of the
0:17
hardest things to do is when you take a
0:19
photo knowing what to do with it and how
0:22
to get started editing it there are a
0:24
lot of things that you can do in
0:25
Lightroom and knowing how to use the
0:28
different tools and where they are
0:30
located can be key in the success of
0:32
making your photo come out the way you
0:35
would like it to I should note that the
0:39
best results for photo editing is to use
0:41
photos that are taken in a RAW format
0:43
are aw this setting can be applied in
0:49
your camera a DSLR camera and it allows
0:54
for more detail to be pulled from the
0:57
photo when you are editing jpeg files
1:00
also work but sometimes it is best to be
1:03
able to pull more details such as when
1:05
something is overexposed and you want to
1:07
be able to get some of those shadows
1:09
back in so I'm going to go over the
1:13
basics of photo editing in Lightroom
1:16
including how to import a photo going
1:20
through the panels that you see over
1:21
here and around here doing some basic
1:25
adjustments including cropping and
1:27
straightening doing some selective
1:29
adjustments showing you some sharpening
1:32
tools using a few of the filters that
1:35
lightroom has built in and then
1:38
exporting your photo so that you can
1:39
have maximum enjoyment of something that
1:42
you have miraculously created so first
1:46
you can import a photo so what you do is
1:49
you do file import photos and video and
1:54
you can select any of these photos that
1:57
you currently have you would select a
1:59
photo you would click it and then you
2:03
can choose where exactly you want to
2:05
save it so you click here other
2:08
destination and then you can choose your
2:11
file and click import this is the
2:13
library panel which shows you all the
2:15
photos that you have here you can change
2:19
the size of the thumbnails consumed in
2:22
things like that the panel that I find
2:26
the most useful is the development panel
2:28
and that's because you can customize the
2:31
edits that you want to make on the photo
2:34
specifically there's some things here
2:36
you can do that are automatic and quick
2:39
editing tools I don't like to spend as
2:41
much time here because I like to be more
2:43
unique in my photo editing now we will
2:48
get into the development tool these
2:50
panels on the right are different things
2:53
that you can use to edit photos so
2:54
there's the basic one where you can or
2:58
you can do the color editing there's the
3:00
tone curve we can do editing based on a
3:02
tone curve rather than levels there's
3:07
the hsl color black and white we can
3:10
change the colors a hughes saturation
3:13
and luminance there's a split toning
3:16
there's the detail where you can sharpen
3:19
i'll show you some more of this later
3:20
noise reduction which is very helpful in
3:23
dark photos lens correction which i will
3:26
explain a little bit some additional
3:28
effects such as a vignette effect and
3:31
then if you need it camera calibration
3:34
the first thing that I always do when I
3:36
take a photo is I make sure the photo is
3:39
straight and cropped how I like it so
3:41
when you click lightly you can actually
3:43
move the photo to crop it so I want to
3:49
make sure that the lines lineup and that
3:51
the photo is straight that looks about
3:53
good and I click done the next thing
3:57
that I do is I usually go and play with
4:01
these sliders on the right so you can
4:05
see also here on the left you can see
4:07
the history of what you've done in
4:10
editing so far
4:25
the next thing that I would do is do
4:27
some selective adjustments so there are
4:30
some different selective adjustments
4:31
that you can make there's the adjustment
4:34
brush right here and here is the
4:38
graduated filter now these can be used
4:41
differently I tend to use the brush the
4:45
most so one thing that school buy
4:49
lightroom is there's this brush and you
4:51
can actually paint basically what spots
4:54
you want to edit there are all these
4:58
pre-sets right here for what the brushes
5:00
um can look like so if you want to do
5:02
some sharpness or you want to do some
5:06
highlights or saturation you can do it
5:10
that way so for example I would like to
5:12
make the sky a little bit more blue
5:16
maybe change the color a little bit so
5:17
i'll click the saturation and you can
5:20
you can leave this on right here which
5:22
shows exactly what you've colored or you
5:25
can leave it off depends what I'm doing
5:27
sometimes I leave ronson pencil it off
5:29
leave it off but you can actually see it
5:32
getting a little bit darker as you go
5:36
you can make the size bigger or smaller
5:39
you can go here or you can use your
5:42
mouse or your trackpad it's important to
5:45
note that these levels right here are
5:47
under the brush tool not the normal
5:49
basic editing tool so when you're
5:52
changing things here you want to make
5:53
sure your dot is selected that you have
5:55
just edited you can see it just
5:56
highlights do select it that way and to
6:01
be very intense you can see exactly what
6:05
I've highlighted something I think is
6:07
cool about Lightroom is when you're
6:09
going through editing you have can
6:10
actually click this button right here
6:11
and you can see by the before-and-after
6:13
view so you can see that this is how I
6:15
started with the photo this is how I'm
6:18
editing it so far so the next thing you
6:21
can do is using this here what you do is
6:26
actually you start at the top you bring
6:29
it down and you can actually make a
6:31
little bit of a graduated filter here oh
6:33
that does is it makes the specific part
6:39
of it darker see how it's changing these
6:43
are good for skies specifically so one
6:45
other thing that we can manually do is
6:48
go down here and go down to sharpening
6:52
when photos are in the camera and you
6:55
shoot in raw they're not automatically
6:56
sharpened so you can sharpen it yourself
6:59
so one thing you can do is sharpen it
7:03
like this you can go extreme see how it
7:06
does it I always go extremely see what
7:09
the effects are that looks pretty cool
7:11
another thing you can do is if you don't
7:12
want to sharpen the entire thing you can
7:14
hold down option masking and you'll see
7:18
what i'm doing here is actually what is
7:21
in white is the only thing being
7:22
sharpened sustaining the month of sky
7:24
sharpened let go of it and you let go of
7:27
option and there you have it that's your
7:29
mask let's say your photo is really
7:35
fuzzy you want to do some noise
7:36
reduction you can play along with that
7:38
if you shoot your photo sometimes very
7:40
wide sometimes there's the store spin in
7:43
the corners so you can enable profile
7:45
Corrections so what that does is
7:47
actually
7:48
elongate your photo makes it so it to
7:51
not so pushed in sometimes the ones can
7:53
distort it this is something I would
7:55
normally do at the beginning also just
7:57
because you can see how it changes the
7:58
colors Lightroom does have a couple of
8:02
presets you can play along with them
8:04
over here you can actually scroll over
8:06
them to see what they would look like if
8:07
you were to implement them I don't have
8:10
a ton of presets actually filter grade
8:13
will be coming out with several
8:15
different great Lightroom presets that
8:16
will be available in 2016 I'm pretty
8:19
happy with with this photo there might
8:22
be some other things that I would play
8:23
around with it come back to it maybe you
8:25
can see all of the history of everything
8:26
that we've done here right so looks like
8:29
i'm done with this photo so what I want
8:32
to do is I want to export it so that I
8:34
can have because right now it's in
8:36
Lightroom so I want to go file export
8:40
change the file folder say desktop click
8:47
Choose or you can save in your photos
8:53
you can save it wherever you really want
8:54
to save it you can change the name you
8:58
want to make sure you're saving it in a
8:59
JPEG format and make sure your quality
9:01
is good if you have a watermark you want
9:05
to add you can simply add one here and
9:07
then you click export let's see it's
9:11
exporting up here when it's done this
9:13
will go away it will say complete right
9:17
there and then just hop on this photo
9:23
but we just added and there it is right
9:27
there all right thank you for watching
9:32
please email for any questions and we
9:35
look forward to the next video