How to Use Some of Lightroom's Most Powerful Tools

While it remains primarily a cataloging program, Lightroom has made some significant steps forward in editing capabilities in recent years, and it is now possible to complete entire edits within the program, making your workflow far more convenient and efficient. This helpful video tutorial takes a look at the three of Lightroom's most useful tools, the Masking panel, Healing Brush, and Panoramic Merge, and how to use them. 

Coming to you from John Branch IV Photography, this great video tutorial will show you how to use three of Lightroom's tools: the Masking panel, Healing Brush, and Panoramic Merge. If you have not tried out Lightroom's new Masking panel yet, it is really worth trying out. It has legitimately improved the quality of some of my images by allowing me to make edits that simply would not have been worth the time before. It has also allowed me to be more precise. For example, for portraits, I normally like to reduce the exposure of the background by about a third of a stop to emphasize the subject. This used to involve using the brush tool to create a mask around them, but now, I simply use the Select Subject command, invert the mask, and I'm done. Check out the video above for the full rundown.