Believe it or not, editing your photos in Lightroom doesn't have to be a long, drawn-out, or overwhelming process.
It might not seem like it if you're just starting out as a beginner photographer, though.
All you need are some basic lightroom editing tricks to help you find your way.
In the video above Sorelle Amore walks us through her Lightroom editing workflow, which, if you ask me, is pretty ideal for beginners.
Have a look at what Sorelle has to say, and for an outline of a few of the tips she offers for editing photos in Lightroom, have a look below.
Editor's Tip: The gear you use can have a significant impact on the quality of the photos you take. Learn why having a prime lens in your bag is hugely beneficial.
Editing With Lightroom Begins When You Shoot
There are a few things to note when you take photos that will help you in the editing process later on.
As Sorelle notes, these include:
- Shooting in RAW, that way you have all the image information captured by the sensor to work with in post-processing.
- Shoot in a flat profile, which dials down the color, saturation, contrast, and so forth, which in turn gives you maximum control over those features in post-processing.
- Shoot under the best lighting conditions possible, such as sunrise and sunset, that way you don't have to deal with editing photos with harsh highlights and shadows.
Of course, you also need to work on things like composition because it's difficult to correct compositional mistakes in post.
Learn More:
The Basics of Editing Photos in Lightroom
The first tasks you face when editing photos in Lightroom are basic adjustments like cropping and lens correction.
To crop, simply use the crop tool, which you can find in the Crop and Straighten Panel.
To enable lens corrections, go to Lens Corrections and click Enable Profile Corrections. Then select your lens from the dropdown menu.
Next, use the tools in the Camera Calibration Panel to adjust the shadows and red, green, and blue tones in the shot, as shown above.
Lastly, visit the Basics Panel to adjust things like highlights, tint, temperature, exposure, and so forth. It's in this panel that you'll do a lot of fine-tuning to get the image to a place where it begins to reflect your personal tastes and style.
As Sorelle mentions in the video, her personal style is to create images that are on the dark side.
As you can see in the screenshot above, she's brought the highlights way down and the shadows way up. Though this might not be everyone's vibe, it works for her, and she developed that style by playing around with the settings in the Basics Panel.
Editor's Tip: How you accessorize for portrait photography can make all the difference in the world. See how the right accessories can totally change your images.
Lightroom Editing - Manipulating the Colors
Next in Sorelle's workflow is manipulating the colors of the image using the Hue, Saturation, and Brightness sliders.
Because there are so many changes you can make (especially with regard to saturation levels of individual colors), you can really alter how the image looks and feel to a great degree.
Using the Split Toning controls gives you an additional method by which you can perfect the colors in your image.
Again, experimentation with these color controls is necessary. Get wild and crazy simply to see what each slider does to your image, and then once you're comfortable in understanding how each manipulation changes your photo, you can start to dial things back to perfect how your image looks.
As you can see in the screenshot above, after just a few moments of changing these settings, Sorelle has made a huge impact on how this photo looks.
Learn More:
- Make the Most of Editing in Lightroom With These Must-Have Tips
- 21 Awesome YouTube Channels Photographers Love