Hey guys, Ryan here at Signature Edits and today I'm going to show you how to
edit your travel photos in Lightroom for Instagram, without using any presets.
We're gonna take this image from here to here. Are you ready? Let's do it!
Alright let's edit this image together. First things first this photo was taken
by the incredible Zack Sorrenson he is a photographer here in LA good friend of
mine. He said "Ryan you can edit this photo!" and I said "you are the best!" so make sure
to check out his Instagram here. Okay next we are going to start our edit
process I'm going to start with this guy because I want to see if there's detail
left in this guy before I spend a bunch of time on it so I'm going to grab my
exposure and pull it down and that's going to show me exactly what I'm
working with so you can see that there's lots of color left and the Blues up here
we've got some nice oranges and the mountains in the background but this
area on the side of said guy's hand is looking all white even if I pull the
exposure way down we can see there's a little bit of color but not a whole lot
and right here in the very corner that's all white so that was clipped in camera
there's not gonna be anything I can do to get it back so I'm just going to have
to edit around that so I'm gonna get my sky kind of where I'd like it to be in
an ideal situation let's see a little bit contrast highlights take those down
maybe around there perfect a little bit of saturation maybe lower the white paws
just a little that'll add some blues to the sky that's kind of our best-case
scenario okay great we're looking pretty good so the next thing that I'm going to
do is grab my adjustment brush and we're gonna mask out the sky I'm gonna show
you how to do that really quickly you're gonna zoom out here to the 1/16
view I'm gonna make my brush nice and big so that the entire brush is covering
the image then I'm going to take my father down and I'm going to turn on
auto mask make sure your flow is set all the way to 100 and press o so you can
see what you're doing and click once on this guy anywhere perfect so you can see
that lightroom has gone through and it's found similar areas in the image that it
believes matches with the perfect place that I just clicked you can actually
move that point around and Lightroom will adjust from there depending on
which version of Lightroom you have some older versions won't do that
all you have to do to add more to that mask is just click again somewhere else
in the image so I'm gonna keep clicking on the sky here until everything is
masked out nicely perfect I mean even I'm gonna click on the oranges here in
the sky just like that our sky is masked out so that took I don't know three four
seconds to do total and it got these complicated lines here around his
arms and hands and feet and just saved us a bunch of time now all we have to do
to adjust our exposure in the sky is go here and ring my exposure down the
reason I'm doing this is I'm gonna brighten the whole image now and we have
a closer balance of sky and said person so probably around there you can see
that things are looking a little weird around here if we zoom in
I'm sure that's because Lightroom's automatic feature hasn't perfectly
captured all the Bands within this color so all I'm gonna do just to make sure
that the mask is good I'm going to grab my brush again turn off auto mask and
just paint on those areas really quickly you can see I over painted here on to
the land scape so I'm just gonna make that brush smaller and just go over
these spots that Lightroom missed a little bit I can turn my flow down a
little just what's more subtle and I don't have
to worry so much about being exactly perfect and tur my feather up and
that'll also save me alright so we're just gonna paint in here good I'm just
gonna look for any other areas that might have been missed this guy you can
see that Lightroom didn't quite extend all the way to the land here so I'm just
gonna paint on there just feather it and blend it in the auto mask is awesome but
it doesn't always get everything so you just go over really quick another easy
simple way to do that up here I'm just going to paint like that okay now so
again to get rid of that and we're looking a lot more natural great okay so
continuing on I am going to move down here to my tone curve and add just a
little bit of contrast so to do that I'm going to click once on the highlights
click once in the mid-tones click once in the shadows so the way the tone curve
works it's very confusing when you're first learning this represents the
blacks the shadows in your image this point represents the whites the
highlights in your image and this point is your mid-tones so all I have to do is
click once in the highlights once in the mid-tones once in the
and I can drag this little point up in the middle you can see it's made kind of
an S and that's going to add contrast to our image so I'm not going to do it that
much but just a little bit and you can see how the image pops ever so slightly
from before perfect so that's the easiest way to use the tone curve next
I'm gonna go into my HSL and if I want to I can mess around with the colors a
little more now another way I could have masked out the sky and darken thing is
just bun go into my luminance and grabbing the Blues dragging that down
that would have taken all the Blues in the image down and then I could have
saved a little bit more detail maybe add some saturation to the blues that sort
of thing and if I want to tweak the colors I can take that down towards my
kind of aqua rather than Navy or magenta and you can just mess around here as you
like it another way to adjust things really quickly is with this little point
I can click any area of my image and drag it up or down Lightroom will
automatically adjust the hue since I'm in the hue menu of that particular color
so I can turn these oranges into reds or greens whatever I want let's sit him
around there and saturation luminance that same thing applies so let's say
that I wanted to brighten up the sand click and drag BAM but the problem is
it's also going to affect the sand or sorry the sand the reds and oranges in
the sky as well so that's why we mashed up the sky manually rather than try and
do it with the HSL because I don't want to mess with every single instance of
blue in the whole image just the parts in the sky so I'm going to dial that
blue back so it looks pretty weird around there and let's keep going split
toning I could add this it just depends what you're feeling an easy way to do
that is hold down the Alt key and drag your hue and that will automatically
just show you exactly where you're affecting so let's say I want to add
some blues to that beautiful sky I can do that and then I can dial in my
saturation to where I like it let's say around there and shadows what do I want
for shadows I'll hold alt drag the hue until I find something I like so I'm
thinking something warmer in the shadows would be nice probably around there and
drag that up so split toning this is before and here's after before after so
that's up to you if you want to you can I'm thinking I actually liked a little
bit cooler we'll take that shadow down perfect
moving on detail sharpening you can add that as necessary again holding the Alt
key will let you on toggle and see exactly the amounts that you're
adjusting really easily so let's say I just want to adjust around my person
here and sharpen them I'm gonna turn my radius way up great lens Corrections
make sure these are on because we've got some vignetting happening in the corners
of our image press enable perfect and effects I normally add a little bit of
grain to my images just cuz I like it some people don't feel free to do what
is good to you perfect and calibration you can again adjust the colors blues
BAM just like that you can get that ever-so-popular
teal magenta look or you can adjust your shadows make them a little bit more
green or a little warmer depending on how you're feeling what emotion you want
to give to the image and the very last thing I'm going to do after I've gone
through that please go up to my adjustment brush and paint a few little
things in here I'm gonna go down to my add texture brush and this is included
in any signature at its preset pack you can make your own though if you don't
have that just add some clarity some saturation a little bit of sharpness and
then I'm going to paint just in the images that the images the areas of the
image that I want to pop a little bit more so these footprints this sand
texture here of his feet I'm going to just make those pop by painting on them
just a little bit perfect so here is let's grab before and here's after you
can see how it really brings out the detail especially in the sand I'm going
to even emphasize that a little bit the easiest way to add more of an effect is
you can toggle on your adjustment brush with this little triangle here and that
will actually give you an overall slider to adjust the amount of effect that's
slowing up showing up so I'm going to grab this and I'm going to drag it up
that should make it more intense or less intense depending which direction I want
to take it so I'm gonna take it probably around there great and the last thing
I'm going to do is fix the buttons that are popping out here I just think
they're a little distracting in this image so I'm gonna use my spot removal
tool make sure that my opacity is set to 100 I've got my 8
around 50 that doesn't matter super much and the size you can just adjust
depending on how big the spot is I'm gonna click on those and I Lightroom
will automatically replace them with there is the image that it thinks works
if you need to change that for whatever reason you just drag it to another area
the image and it'll sample from there instead and a little bit of a stomach
poking out will do the same thing perfect and last but not least we are
going to export this for Instagram I'm going to do that by going up to the 4 by
5 setting and I'm going to just crop my image here the way that I like it just
like that and then I'm going to hit shift command e to export we're going to
hit our Instagram preset which is included with every signature edits pack
but if you don't have it all you have to do is grab it give it a custom names
we'll call it Zach Sorensen shot and the best settings
for Instagram we found is quality right around 70 resize to fit 1080 pixels on
your short edge and sharpen for screen that seems to be the best compression
settings to your images look as good as possible in Instagram so just like that
we have gone from our raw file all the way to here alright so I hope this
tutorial was helpful for teaching you how to edit your photos for Instagram
your travel photos inside of Lightroom and if you have any questions please let
me know in the comments make sure to hit that like button if this was helpful and
smash that subscribe I will see you in the next video and if you want a free
sample of any of these preset packs you can head to the links below all right
talk soon
you