Lightroom has evolved into a powerful editing tool over the past few years. Once just a glorified filing system, it is now a standalone program in its own right. There are days now when I don’t use Photoshop at all because Lightroom is all I need.
But as they say, with great power comes great responsibility. Now Lightroom is so much more complicated that you do need more time spent learning how to get the most from it. It’s not just new users, but we would all benefit from a couple of hours spent revising new functions and features every now and again. In this video, Christian Möhrle walks us through over 70 tips to get the most from Lightroom.
Of course, there are way too many tips to go through all of them here, so I would urge you to watch the whole video. But here are a few that I picked out that were certainly new to me.
Drag the Histogram
You can adjust the exposure of your image simply by dragging the histogram to the left and right. So simple, and I did not know that you could do this!
Visualize Spots
To remove sensor spots, you can use the spot removal tool to make them visible. Just click the visualize spots box at the bottom of the screen. Easy peasy!
Auto Radial Gradient
You can create a radial gradient as large as your photo by holding down the Ctrl key and double-clicking on the image. This can actually give you greater control over adjustments than using the global adjustment panel.
Sharpen parts of the image
In the Effects panel, you can add sharpening to specific parts of the image only. By using the masking slider, you can select everything but the sky, for example, and the sky won’t get sharpened. You can check where the mask is by holding down the alt key while clicking on the masking slider.
Reference Photo
Here’s another tip I didn’t know. You can use a photo to use as a reference to make all the other photos the same. Very helpful if you need a consistent look across images shot in different lighting or locations. In the bottom left corner, you will find the icon to set up the reference photo. Just pick one from the thumbnails and drag it into the empty space.
There are 65 more useful tips in this video, with demonstrations of where to find everything. If you have just 14 minutes to spare, this could be a great use for that time!
Let us know what new tip you learned!
