- If there's anything that you take away from today,
take this.
Editing is more about feeling than technique.
Get comfortable.
Kick back and allow your mind to explore.
Through music, passion and emotion,
your edits will drastically improve.
Remember, you are a creative practitioner,
not a robot.
So take your time and invest in your passion
then you will reap what you sow.
Let's get into today's video.
Now I think eight of these tips,
maybe seven of the nine tips that I want to share with you
in Lightroom Mobile,
are free, and come bundled into the free software.
So if you're new, if you're a beginner
and you're looking for some skills,
you're looking for some tools to better equip you
in editing your travel photos
and editing any photo, to be honest,
but specific to travel,
because these are the types of photos
that I absolutely love creating,
and this is the area of photography
that I'm really passionate about,
I encourage you to be comfortable
whilst you're doing these edits, sit on the couch.
If you're cruising on the bus,
like this is a tutorial for those of you
that actually want to take the time to learn.
The way that we feel has a huge,
and the amount of energy that we put into it,
has a real big impact on the photo,
has a really big impact on the art,
on the work that you are trying to create.
So be expressive.
Let's start with a thing called dynamic range.
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By definition, dynamic range,
describes the ratio between maximum
and minimum light intensities.
Much like audio when you have a spectrum of sound,
you have dynamic range in audio,
the highest frequencies and not in, but in tone,
like tones that only dogs can hear,
to the lowest like frequencies that you feel,
frequencies that when you hear a kick drum
or a really low frequency from a big speaker,
it hits you.
It's like, bam.
It's the same thing.
It's like these really dark frequencies
with these really, really bright white tones.
So today we're going to address how we can see them visually
in color.
And you can do this simply in Adobe Lightroom.
Tap or click on the, on the Light section.
You can scroll up and at the very bottom,
under Exposure, Contrast, Highlights and Shadows,
you have White and Black.
This is how we're going to set out dynamic range.
This is how are we going to be able to explore the photo
and see how much range we can work with.
'Cause at the moment,
there's these really bright white sections
where the sun's coming in under the water.
And there's these really dark sections
where I've captured right down below,
along that sort of coral bank.
So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna tap on the slider
and then I'm gonna tap on the image,
and that's gonna show me,
okay, Wow.
If I'm in the white section where the photo was exposed
when I first took it with my camera,
you can see that the whites are blown out.
So if I bring the whites down, those pixels start to reduce
and it starts to show me
how much range I've got to work with in my whites.
Minus 100, there's still blown out pixels.
That part of the image still sucks.
That's fine.
At least I've created a little bit more range
within the other part of the photo.
Let's do the same with the blacks.
So I tap on the slider.
I tap on the photo,
and you can see.
Over on the left there,
I've got all that area crushed out.
If I bring it down,
I start to crush my dynamic range.
If I bring it up,
I start to see that yes, I've got pixels blown out,
but I've just created a little bit more range in my photo.
There's a little bit more room to breathe.
If I tap to show you the before,
before,
after.
Now, this is just showing you
what your photo is capable of doing,
showing you how much of that darkest dark and lightest light
is capable of moving.
Feel free to crush it.
Feel free to make it darker.
Feel free to reduce these pixels.
This is your style.
This is where your creative license is like,
"Bro, I understand the science.
"I understand what's going on
"with all these pixels floating around.
"I'm disregarding that.
"I'm just going to edit with how I feel."
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The next tip we're going to look at is a vignette.
Super simple, pretty much available in every editing suite,
but the reasons why you would use a vignette
are to just direct an eye,
or to maybe address the specific stylistic use of a photo.
And let's say you're using a really wide angle lens,
an action camera,
you want to kind of push your viewer's eye
back into the middle.
I'm using a drone photo here.
It's not the best photo.
It's a raw HDR drone photo.
But anyway, let's pop a vignette on it.
So we go to our Effects at the bottom,
and we slide up and we have these three sliders,
which I think are really powerful
when it comes to vignetting.
Obviously first is the Vignette itself.
So where we can either make it super white
by increasing the vignette frequency,
or bringing it down.
Now, in this particular instance,
I'm directing the viewer's eye to look in the middle.
But at minus 100, it's just a little bit harsh.
So what I want to do is I want to change the midpoint.
I can bring that midpoint right in,
so it's almost like a spotlight is on the middle,
and then I can go into the Feather,
and I can Feather it out,
so it starts to create this gradient,
or I can just push the midpoint out a bit.
So I'm just sort of clipping the edges of the image.
So I highly recommend using a vignette
just to help guide your viewers attention.
So if I show you this before and after.
We've gone from here,
from here to here.
There's more focus on the center of the image
by using a very simple vignette.
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The next tool that I'm gonna run you through
is the Gradient tool.
And unfortunately this tool
is only available in the paid version.
However, let's check it out
because it is very powerful for creating really unique
and again, another tool that will equip you with your edit.
So having a look at this photo here,
it's a drone photo from Chile.
On the very, very left of the image
I have this ability to select, to create selective edits.
If I tap that Selective tool down on the left
and if I tap up in the right,
I have these three options.
I have a paintbrush, a circle and a gradient,
like a square.
I'm going to use the square
but let me just run you through what they do.
On the left,
you can paint in with the paintbrush,
an area of the image that you specifically want to address.
If I tap that blue bit, I'm moving that around.
That's just gonna show me,
what part of the image I want to edit.
I don't want to have that.
So I can then go to the circle.
The circle is if I tap and hold, like tapping and holding.
I'm able to create these radial selective edits
as well as being able to create the radial centered edit.
If I tap this little inverse icon,
I can then edit the outside of it.
So just a cool little feature there.
I don't want to create a radial edit.
I want to create a gradient edit to use the water here.
So, Selective,
tap to the top,
go to the gradient,
tap and hold.
And you'll see.
Now I can split my photo in two.
- [Lady] I'd like to unleash the harness.
- Unleash, rip it off, rip the harness off (laughs).
And once you've created that pink area
or the red area of the photo,
we can address it.
We can specifically edit it.
What I like to do is to go in either to the color
or the light, and change it.
So if I increase the contrast,
you'll notice that the water is starting to get darker.
We're creating...
We're crushing the dynamic range.
We're creating a little bit more of a drastic edit.
And then if I bring the exposure down of the water,
you can again see how much that has done
by just changing two tools and creating a gradient.
Tap to show you before,
tap to show you after.
So, then I can move that gradient around.
If I don't like the gradient,
and if I keep editing the photo I can delete it.
But it's just a way to create like more of a focus
on that waterfall.
Now I've got an image where it's like
where the water is hitting the land it pops
because I'm creating that...
I'm just creating some magic (chuckles).
I'm creating some Lightroom magic.
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- Now, so let's say we go into our Light
and we start to change our exposure.
All right, we're raising that exposure,
cool.
It's starting to look overexposed.
Increasing our contrast.
We're really starting to mess up our image.
Now, if we're not 100% happy,
and you want to like bring that value back down to zero,
rather than like bringing it with your finger
and using the haptics of the phone,
you can just double tap.
And what do I mean by haptics?
I think it's haptics.
It's just like the way that the phone,
like kind of clicks,
you feel like a small little vibration in the mobile
when you get to the middle.
Just double tap on any of the values,
either on the circle itself or on the numeric value.
So really punch that contrast in.
Not sure if I like it.
I want to just give it another go
rather than trying to like tap back.
Double tap on the 33 goes back to zero.
Super simple, very effective for workflow.
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Sticking with this same photo,
I want to address a philosophy
or an approach that you can take with your photo.
Before you even start playing with all these sliders
and really like tinkering and tweaking
and almost losing yourself in the edit,
think about this.
What if you took away just one color,
and then worked with the rest of the image?
This is what we call muting tones.
And it's a way to essentially let your photo breathe.
Some people or some people...
Like some creators use this
as a way to also generate their identity, their aesthetic,
their particular brand.
So what I'm gonna do with this
is I'm gonna address the blues
and I'm gonna mute the blues.
So to do so in this image,
all I have to do is I go to my Color,
I go up to my Mix,
and I have this ability to edit the reds,
the oranges, the yellows, the greens.
You can just tap on there
and so what I want to do is I want to address the sky.
I want to get rid of the sky.
I don't want to make this
more of a muted de-saturated field.
So I'm gonna go with the rich blue,
like the royal blue, the vibrant blues,
because I feel like there's more of them than
the aquas or the cyans.
So, I'm gonna just pull them out.
I'm gonna de-saturate them.
I tap on that blue icon,
in the middle I've got this blue slider and I pull it away.
Now you notice that as I pull it away
you'll notice that there's noise that starts to bring in.
And what I mean by the noise is like,
when I take away those blues
and I zoom into the...
Oops, it's getting noisy.
Don't worry so much about that.
But just worry,
what you can do is you can find the point where you like it
or, moving onto the next tip.
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So down in the Details tab,
you can click on that
and as you scroll up, you'll see Noise Reduction.
If I increase the noise reduction
you'll notice those grainy little pixelated.
It's hard to see with just like just staring at the image,
but as I zoom in, you'll see,
these sort of pixelated parts of the image.
What it is, it's like,
it's just the fact that I shot it on a camera
that doesn't have that many pixels in it.
So, what noise reduction does,
is it starts to blend and starts to like,
just clean up all those little pixels
that kind of pixelated part of the image.
And if I go into the detail,
I can either increase the amount of detail
or really wash it out.
Make it really nice and watercolory.
Think about the stylistic approach
because if you do reduce all the detail,
you'll notice just how much it affects
too much of the image.
It's like, it almost becomes like a watercolor thing.
But again, break the rules
if that's how you want your image to feel
and you want it to be soft, do that.
Reduce all the detail.
But yeah, just showing you how you can address
these little parts of the photo.
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So whenever you make an edit in Lightroom Mobile,
let's say you increase the exposure or whatever,
any kind of edit, any tweak to the photo,
you can just tap and hold on the image
and it's gonna show you the before.
Look at the top of the screen it says before, after.
Not happy with that, I'm going to double-tap,
we're back to our beginning.
So that's just something,
just a little something.
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When you're in the Light tab,
you'll see at the very top of the Light tab,
like that's Color, that's Light, there's this Curve section.
I tap on that curve and I have access to reds, greens, blues
and all three colors.
Now, when we address all three colors,
you've probably seen creators create a little S curve.
To do this you can create simple key frames.
Top for your highlights,
middle for your mid tones and bottom for your shadows.
If you bump up the top key frame
and bring down the bottom key frame,
that's how you create this S.
And you're essentially raising your highlights
and bringing down your shadows.
Now you can tap down the bottom into the different colors
and create the same key frames for each color line.
For an image like this, which has a lot of red hues,
I can specifically address the red mid tones
and increase or decrease color variables.
So my advice with the tone curve is to go easy on it.
You'll notice that
the more that you really hack into the tone curve,
the more drastic these edits become.
You should be very gentle with it.
If you don't want to dress the whole group of reds
like in the dark tones,
you can also just go into the Color,
and edit that specific color saturation and hue.
So yeah, tone curve is something interesting.
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If you like this simple edit,
what we've done here,
clicking showing you before and after,
might be a little desert series that you're creating.
Top right-hand corner,
I recommend, I really urge you and encourage you
to create a preset.
I'm going to call this like desert vibes.
I never know if there's two S's, I think there's one.
It's definitely not a food photo.
So hopefully this is the Sahara.
And there you go.
And that way the next time we go to edit a photo,
let's say it's this photo here.
I can simply start with presets.
I can go scroll down to the bottom,
tap on that Preset section.
Now these around.
I'll just call it Folk presets.
But I should be able to scroll up.
And I've got these user presets
and where's desert vibes?
Should be in here somewhere.
Waterfall, Marine, gopro art, fire, desert vibes.
There it is.
Bump.
Bumped it straight on, before, after,
really easy way to just equip you
with like a starting point.
The hardest thing about,
getting into this process and this flow
is just like seeing tones and colors straight away.
In the description, I've got a couple of links.
We've got some free presets there for you guys to check out
and add to your Lightroom Mobile straight away.
So you've got a starting point.
So after this video, jump into Lightroom,
save those DNG files onto your phone,
and upload them
so you can start editing some of your travel photos.
If you want to ask more questions directly to us,
I encourage you to join our workshop email list.
That will just let you know when we're hosting
our free workshops and you can come along
and you can just join those Zoom sessions and ask questions.
But if you have enjoyed today's video,
punch a thumbs up button.
if you're new around here
and you enjoy this content, consider subscribing,
and I'll see you guys in the next upload (mumbles).
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