Last week, I sat down to do four portrait retouching courses from Chris Orwig. This enormous bundle of informative and accessible tutorials is packed with easily digested information. My confidence when it comes to editing portraits is now significantly higher.
The newly announced Microsoft Surface Book 3 is reportedly their most powerful laptop ever. So could it be good enough to destroy the competition? Namely, the new Apple Macbook Pro 2020. Photographers and creatives alike love Apple products for editing workflows, but could this be the beginning of the end for Apple's domination of the creative market?
Watching how others work is one way to improve. Watching how extremely successful people work is an even faster, better way to improve. In this video, watch how a very popular photographer edits images sent to him.
Lightroom is an intricate program with a wide variety of functions, and it can be easy to overlook some of its features. This fantastic video will show you three lesser-known Lightroom tricks that are really useful in a variety of scenarios.
Recent updates to Lightroom Classic have brought a new level of control over local adjustments: Range Masks. Within this, the Color Range Mask allows you to be clumsy with your adjustment brushes while targeting very specific parts of your image. Here’s a detailed look at how it works.
Most of the time, we think of Lightroom as a place for cataloging and global edits, but it also has some great local adjustment capabilities that can really put the finishing touches on an image. This excellent video will show you how to take advantage of those local adjustment features to improve your landscape images.
There is no doubt that a lot of photographers have strong opinions about Lightroom, but it remains the standard application for cataloging photos and performing basic global edits for a lot of creatives. This great video discusses three things one photographer loves about the program and three things he hates.
There is a bit of trend toward heavy post-processing in landscape photography these days, with advanced techniques like luminosity masks and focus stacking prevailing in lots of images. And while there is certainly nothing inherently wrong with those techniques, sometimes, it is satisfying to use simple, straightforward techniques to finish a photo.
If you are someone who frequently finds themselves coming home with large collections of very similar images, batch editing can save you loads of time and help you ensure more consistency in your edits. This excellent video will show you the power of batch editing in Lightroom.
We all know about Luminar. The post-processing software from the company Skylum is quite popular amongst a lot of amateur photographers. Perhaps professional photographers also. It is said to be an alternative for Lightroom, but I don’t agree.
Adobe introduced the Range Mask to Lightroom Classic a few years ago, and it’s a useful means for targeting an adjustment when the local tools — Adjustment Brush, Gradient Filter, and Radial Filter — are simply too clumsy. If you want a deeper understanding of how it functions in relation to Luminance, read on.
Lightroom is an intricate program, and for many photographers, it serves as the central hub for their images, making it crucial that you develop good habits in how you use the application. This excellent video discusses five common mistakes beginners make when using Lightroom and what you can do to improve your workflow.
RAW Power 3.0 gives Mac-based photographers a solid way to handle raw file editing that nicely syncs up with a version that runs on iOS.
Stockpiling makes some people feel secure against unexpected disasters and crises. Which crisis justifies stockpiling photographs? Let’s take a look at how we can reduce our amount of unnecessary data.
Lightroom's color brush is an odd tool, but paired with a range mask, it can be a fantastic means of making water look far more appealing. Here's how I transformed the muddy brown of this lake into water so blue that you'll want to jump in and go for a swim.
Late last year, Really Nice Images released their latest Lightroom preset pack, All Films 5. I've spent the last couple of months experimenting with it and will share my experience with it so far. I'll dig into the flagship features of creative profiles, native fading, and highlight protection to see if they are all they're cracked up to be.
The final step of any Lightroom session is the export process, and while it might seem like a simple thing, the application actually provides you with a wide range of options that allow you to customize the output to your needs. This excellent video will show you everything you need to know about exporting photos from Lightroom.
Capture One is multifaceted image processing and asset management software. As a raw processor, it is considered the gold standard, supporting over 500+ cameras, and with it comes a uniquely powerful tool-set for developing, color grading, and tethering. But that is just the tip of the technological iceberg that is Capture One.
Color is one of the most powerful triggers in life, and in photography, it is no different. We are irresistibly drawn to warm colors, sunrises and sunsets, the golden haze of dawn in a fall woodland, or the luster of summer strawberries.
Lightroom has a lot of great tools for editing your photos and putting your creative touch on your work, but one that gets a little less attention than some of the more common functions is the split toning panel. Nonetheless, it is a great way to add a personal touch to your images and develop your own style.
Would you throw 10,000 printed photographs in a bathtub to search for an image of your child’s first steps? No! So, why should you do it with digital files?
Adobe Lightroom offers many tools to organize your data and find the image you are looking for. Here is how I organize my photographs.
The raw versus JPEG debate is one of my favorite topics. As a software developer and photo nerd, I tend to gravitate towards the technical side of things.
There are a number of ways to get creative with color in Lightroom. I just learned a new one and have a feeling you might too.
Not all of us were born with our preferred eye color, and given that we can't change genetics, you will sometimes have clients who want to change their eye color. It is a pretty straightforward process, and this excellent video tutorial will show you how you can do it without even having to leave Lightroom.
One of the best ways to increase your efficiency in Lightroom (particularly if you frequently work with large batches of the same sort of images) is to create your own presets. This helpful video will show you how to create your own presets in Lightroom.
Split toning is a great and relatively quick way to create a unique look in your images. This excellent video tutorial will show you how split toning works and give you some great tips for using it on your own photos.
Lightroom presets are a great way to create quick and effective edits, but if you’re relatively new to photo editing, it might be useful to know how to make the most of them and when they should be avoided.
If you've not used Adjustment Brushes with Range Masks to make subtle changes to colors in Lightroom, you're missing out. This is how I used both tools to finish my edit of this rock climbing photograph.
If you are someone who frequently comes home with loads of related images that you edit in a similar fashion, it will save you a ton of time if you learn how to take advantage of Lightroom's batch-editing capabilities. This excellent video will show you everything you need to know to be up and running.
The radial filter in Lightroom and Camera Raw is a powerful tool if you know how to use it.
In the latest video from Nigel Danson, he gives us five creative ways to use the radial filter in Lightroom. In case you use Photoshop and Camera Raw, these tips apply there too.
Photographers generally think of Lightroom as the place to catalog their images and perform basic edits, while leaving Photoshop for the more advanced work. And while that is certainly a good general guideline, you might be surprised by just how much you can do in Lightroom. This great video will show you a range of more advanced editing techniques in Lightroom.
One of the best climbing photographs that I’ve ever taken came out of my recent trip to Switzerland. Here’s how I edited it using Lightroom, deploying a few subtle techniques using adjustment brushes to make the most of the colors and dramatic conditions.
One of the attributes of great software is that it has multiple ways to accomplish a single task. Lightroom Classic is one of those in that it has various ways to import files.
These differing import methods each have their benefits and limitations, but most importantly, they help you work in a way that is best for your workflow.
Benjamin Franklin once said: "for every minute spent organizing, an hour is earned."
Lightroom has a lot of features. Every now and then, you come across a feature that you either have never used or haven't used recently.
Lightroom is an intricate program full of lots of capabilities, and it can be easy to overlook some features. This great video discusses three lesser known capabilities in the program that will help you take your edits further and make your workflow more efficient.
Ever wanted to correct a mistake with your exposure or try a cool post-processing technique, only to find that the results weren’t all that you’d hoped? Image data may have inadvertently been lost in your workflow. These five steps can help ensure you have the best chance for technical greatness!
If you’ve never dared to explore the Hue, Saturation, and Luminosity (HSL) panel in Adobe Lightroom, don’t worry, you’re probably not alone. This short video is an excellent introduction to help you learn where to start.
All of your Lightroom development settings might be in your exported images. That's right, all of your adjustments, spot healings, tone curve adjustments, sharpening, etc. might all be in your exported files for all the world to see.
Dodging and burning is one of the most fundamental and versatile techniques any photographer can use to post-process their photos. However, you do not always need Photoshop to do it. This great video will show you how to dodge and burn your photos in Lightroom.
Getting skin tones just right is a subtle but very important aspect of creating professional portraits and setting your work above that of others. Photoshop has lots of tools for working on skin tones, but if you want to keep everything in one application, this helpful tutorial will show you how to get great skin tones working solely in Lightroom.
If there's one thing I've learned over time, it's that there are often different ways to accomplish the same task. Likewise, every Lightroom user does things in different ways. That doesn't make it wrong; it's just different.
As your career progresses and you accumulate more and more images, you will be more likely to start breaking off into multiple Lightroom catalogs. Eventually, however, you might need to recombine catalogs. This excellent video will show you how to combine multiple Lightroom catalogs while ensuring that everything stays the way it should.
Lightroom has become even better and more powerful the past few years and knowing all the little tips and tricks in the software with each new update can be a class in itself. Here’s five techniques you may not know that the Adobe raw processor can do to help you make better images faster and easier.
Is there ever a reason to shoot JPEG over raw when photographing people and clients? Let’s have a quick discussion about when it may be beneficial to photograph in JPEG or raw and why you might choose a lower quality file at capture versus the full digital negative.
There are many articles and videos on how to do certain things in Lightroom, but how often do you read about something that you shouldn't do? Let's cover a few of them.
Lightroom is a fantastic digital asset manager and image editor. Whether you use Lightroom for just organizing and keywording your photos or use it for editing, there are a few things you shouldn't do.
Creating dynamic and interesting images in a time crunch situation sometimes means you’ll have to finish your images in post to develop the most iconic and exciting imagery for yourself or a client. This has usually meant a good amount of time spent in Photoshop to extract and then blend your foreground and subject with your sky.
While there are a lot of advanced and intricate techniques for working with your images, one of the simplest but most effective methods for accentuating your subject in Lightroom is the radial filter. This helpful video will show you how the radial filter works and how to use it to help emphasize your subjects in Lightroom.
Well, it finally happened. Lightroom Classic now supports PSB files! To be clear, this is the February 2020 release (Version 9.2). So if you’re a Creative Cloud subscriber, simply update Lightroom to the latest version.
Whichever application you might encounter it in, the tone curve can be a little intimidating if you’re new to editing. This excellent short video from Mango Street gives you a great introduction to how it works in Lightroom, what it can be used for, and how to achieve some creative results.