Hi! This is Sabina and welcome to another Pangolin Photo tutorial.
Today I am going to be sharing my five favourite Lightroom hacks with you. Some tips and tricks that
really helped my edit workflow, and I a'm sure you are going to love them too.
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Alright! Let's get started. Lightroom Classic is the version that I am going to
be referring to in this tutorial...and it is an application with tons of great
features that lots of people simply don't know about. So, in this tutorial,
I am going to show you my favourite features that I tend to use all the time.
Most people like to make use of Lightroom's powerful lens correction tool,
that automatically fixes lens problems, such as distortion,
chromatic aberration, and vignetting. However, I found it a bit tedious to continuously
having to scroll down to my lens correction step, and then check the two
boxes, for each and every image. If you, like me, and you like to save yourself some time,
here is s a little trick. You can actually create yourself a preset,
that will apply the lens correction, to each and every image on import, into Lightroom.
So, you never have to worry about the lens correction step again. Now, to create
a preset, select any raw file in your library that is not edited yet, and go to
the develop mode. Go to the lens corrections tab, and tick the boxes.
Remove chromatic aberration and enable profile correction. Now, head over to the
left, where you find a preset tab, and click on the + icon to create a new preset.
Let's name it lens correction, and make sure in the dialog box, that you
check none, beside the Lens Corrections features. Click create, and the preset is
now saved under your user presets. Now, next time you import images into
Lightroom, all you need to do is apply the lens correction preset, that you find
under 'apply during import user presets', and all your images are being corrected automatically.
Lightroom lets you schedule regular back-ups when you exit the software.
These back-ups only contain your Lightroom catalog, but with time they take up
a considerable amount of hard drive space. Although, it's good to have back-ups,
you do not need to keep all of them. So, here is what I do on a regular basis, to
create more space, on my hard drive. First, you need to locate where your Lightroom folder is.
Open the catalog settings, found within the Lightroom Classic menu....
or, in some other versions of Lightroom, you might find it under the Edit menu.
Under the general tab, you will find a file path with the location of
the Lightroom catalog folder. Open it up by clicking the show button.
here you will find a folder named back-ups, and if it is your first time deleting back-up files,
you will probably have a much longer list of back-ups than I have. Probably reaching all the way
back to when you first installed Lightroom. Now you can delete all the
back-up files you don't need anymore, and only keep the latest few.
That should clear up a significant amount of space...and don't forget to repeat the process in a few weeks again.
One of the most powerful, but not so obvious features in Lightroom, is holding
the Alt or Option key, while dragging on a slider in the develop mode. This gives
you a visual feedback, of how and where, the adjustments you make is affecting
your image. Let me show you. When you click the crop overlay icon, grab a
corner and drag the mouse. The crop overlay remains anchored to the opposite
corner. But what if he wanted to crop the image to the center? You would have to
crop first, and then move the selection around, to get your subject in the middle.
Here is the fix. Hold the Alt or Option key down. When you grab a corner and drag the mouse.
Lightroom now keeps the crop overlay centered. The next really useful
feature, and one that I use all the time. Holding the Alt or Option key lies
within the adjustment brush. If you hold it, while using the brush,
Lightroom automatically switches to the eraser. You can now quickly erase parts of the mask.
As soon as you let go of the Alt key again, the brush turns back into a
+ symbol, which means that you now back to your current brush settings, and
you can continue painting. Here is another really great function of holding the Alt
or Option key within the adjustment brush, as well as the radial filter or
graduated filter. Hold it down, while clicking in the circle icon of the filter,
and drag your mouse left or right to intensify or lessen the effects apllied.
If you have changed multiple sliders, all of them will be increased or decreased
at the same time. Within the spot removal tool, holding the Alt or
Option key, will convert the spot removal icon into a little scissor, and you can
now easily erase any spot removals gone wrong. Auto on the Exposure, Highlights,
Shadows, Whites and Black sliders, will show areas where the whites or black are
clipped, as a result of the adjustment. When you adjust the shadows in the blacks,
the white areas of the images are not clipped. While in exposure highlights and
whites the black areas are not clipped. Alt or Option in
a masking slider in the detail panel, shows a black and white mask over the image.
The areas which are black are not sharpened, and those which are white will be sharpened.
A really great tool for only selecting your main subject for sharpening.
The alt or option key is also super useful in the split toning tool.
Holding it down, while dragging the Hue slider, under either highlights or shadows,
to reveal the effect with saturation set to 100. A great way to see
which colour you have selected, to add to your highlights and shadows, Here you can
see the black and white image, without the split toning, and here it is with the
colour tones applied, to the highlights and shadows, for a sepia effect.
Do you know that Lightroom has a very powerful masking feature, that helps you
target your adjustments? The auto Mask feature is located at the bottom of the
brush tool panel. Once enabled, the brush will automatically select and mask,
specific areas based on a precise point (or points) of where we click on the image.
Let's say I want to make some adjustments to the sky in this image,
without affecting the trees, grass or the zebra. I am selecting a new adjustment brush.
Make sure the auto mask feature is checked, and start brushing on the blue sky.
Although the auto mask is doing a great job selecting the sky, it is still
quite a job to be painting all over. Here is a much easier way...head over to
your navigator panel on the left, and select the preview size to 1:16. Now head
back to the brush, and increase the brush size, to cover the entire image.
Also lower the feather to roughly only 5...and click once again on the blue sky in the image -
multiple times if needed - to select the entire sky. You can see now, with only
a few clicks, the sky has been masked, and I can now do whatever adjustments I like.
I can take my exposure way down, or all the way up. Adjust saturation, or whatever I
feel like doing. Let's try and select a background, once again,
using the same method. See how the lioness is being selected as wel.
Now why is that? Well, because the area I have clicked on in the background - to sample the colour -
is simply too similar to the colours of the lioness itself.
Not to worry. There is an easy fix. As you have learnt before, holding down the Alt key,
while in the adjustment brush, you now switch automatically to the erase..
and can simply brush out the lioness, so that only the background is being selected.
Now I can darken the grass around the lioness, to make her pop a bit more.
...and there you go, before and after.
The targeted adjustment tool, found in the tone curve and edges of the colour and black
and white panel, makes adjustments to colour, contrast, and exposure, with
precision and ease. Here is how? In the top left of the tone curve window,
you will notice a little dot. When you click it, you have activated the targeted adjustment tool.
Now simply click on the tone you want to edit in your image, and drag the
mouse up or down, to brighten or darken. You can now see the curve adjusting up
or down, depending on how you drag the mouse. Let's say, instead of modifying the
tone curve, you want to modify the colours. Adjusting the saturation to make them
look more vibrant. Click on the HSL colour panel, and select the hue, saturation and
luminance tab. Once you select your targeted adjustment tool, click and drag
on the colour in your image that you want to be more or less saturated.
Modify other colour values, by clicking different headings in the HSL menu.
Hue, for instance, will allow you to click and drag a colour, to change how that colour appears...
making it more yellow or red, for example. Luminance will adjust the
brightness of a tone. But instead of making the selection based on the highlight shadow,
or mid-tone values, the targeted adjustment tool will select based on colour,
and make all yellows in the scene (for instance) brighter or darker.
The targeted adjustment tool is also immensely useful for black and white images.
Under the black and white panel, activate the targeted adjustment tool,
and you can now adjust the black and white mix. Altering, for instance, whether
red tones - from the original image - are translated into highlights, mid-tones or shadows.
Creating a unique black and white look.
There you have it. That is my 5 favourite Lightroom hacks.
I hope yours too now.
If you do have any other tips or tricks,
I would love it if you could please share them in the comments below.
Thank you so much for watching, and see you in the next episode.
Bye, bye!