It’s an article by Sergi Jordan, a fashion and wedding photographer who brings you five secrets to squeeze Lightroom and save you a lot of work (I must admit the fifth one didn’t know and was crazy about him).
As a photographer, Lightroom is an indispensable part of my photo editing process, I’ve been using it since version 4 and, over time and the inclusion of new features with the latest versions, its potential has grown, becoming one of the most recommended programs in the world for image editing.
- I have a secret to tell you.
- Despite being my favorite show and having used it for so many years.
- So far I’m discovering new features that leave me in awe.
- How could I have gone so long without knowing it?.
I’m not sure it’s my fault for being ignorant or Lightroom’s fault for not continuing to promote the use of these tools, but to avoid this situation, I have put together a list of secrets that have somehow improved or facilitated my editing skills in Lightroom. .
Whenever I wanted to make local adjustments in Lightroom, I had problems (especially trying to be accurate when selecting parts of an image) and I would always give up and end up using Photoshop, wasting time along the way.
The good news is that Lightroom has taken things more seriously in this regard lately, adding a feature called a beach mask that worked great for me every time I used it.
In this photo my intention is to reduce the exposure of the sky without affecting the rest of the elements of the image, the approach is already complicated, since we have a tree occupying almost the entire scene, the secret is to make a precise selection of the sky using the distance mask.
If we move to a graduated filter and throw it from the top of the image to practically the mountains, then reduce the exposure to -4, we will have recovered the texture of the sky, but seriously affecting the light present in the tree and mountains. .
To make sure that the filter only acts on the sky, at the bottom of the panel is the option: Beach mask and we have to select Luminance.
If now within the range we move the cursor to the right and move it to the left, the selection will be applied to the brightest areas of the image that are inside the filter, in this case the sky, being able to recover the texture without affecting everything too much. What do you think?
One thing I’ve often complained about in Lightroom is the low accuracy with which you can straighten an image. If, for example, when editing a landscape, I want to straighten the lines, when I use the cursor, I found it difficult to do so. Find the exact measurement. This simple trick I’ll tell you saved me a lot of tests/errors.
In the Trim and Straight panel, if you hold down the Command button on Mac or Ctrl on Windows, a different, yellow, or gold icon appears. When this tool appears, you can adjust the level of the image by drawing a line with the cursor. Find a straight line in your photo, draw it and your image will be compensated automatically, without the need to fight with the slider.
Lightroom is known for being a heavy and poorly optimized software, by which I mean that it consumes a lot of computing resources and is not very fluid, especially when it comes to moving between images, this inconvenience can get worse if you don’t have a state-of-the-art computer.
Now I have a new Macbook and I am very happy, but until recently I was fighting every day with an old laptop that Lightroom did not get along with very well.
One day, desperately, I found a tab in Lightroom preferences that saved me a number of options offered by the program to optimize its operation and the truth is that if I noticed a considerable difference once I changed some settings, especially when switching from one image to another.
These parameters are
Lightroom / Preferences / Performance / Use a graphics processor.
If you have a computer with a dedicated graphics card, this option will allow you to distribute some of the load Lightroom influences your processor and move it to the card, reducing the time it takes to upload images. If you check this option without having a dedicated card, performance can deteriorate, so make sure before you verify which model you have.
Lightroom / Preferences / Performance / Camera Raw Cache Settings / Maximum Size: 15GB
The cache allows Lightroom to record images and settings without having to reload them. The cache for the series you selected was 1 GB, which required Lightroom to load the content continuously, which lengthened the editing process. When testing with multiple settings, I found (at least with my computer) 15 GB is a good cache size to prevent Lightroom from continually cooling down.
Lightroom Catalog / Preferences / Performance / Optimize
In general, and without being too technical, a Lightroom catalog remains a large computer file composed of information and data, marking this option removes unnecessary information that has accumulated as you edit images, performing a cleanup that will improve the program’s response.
These three points relieved me of a lot of stress, allowing me to focus on editing Lightroom without long wait times.
In my opinion, Lightroom has a very intrusive interface. There is information scattered all over the screen and, since it is an image editing program, so much information sometimes distracts me, it is true that with the arrows on the sides I can hide all the panels, but still it is not the best method to appreciate fully detail the image I’m retouching.
A trick to highlight an image, by quickly deleting any interface, is to press the L button twice in a row, when doing this, you will see the photo with a black background, ideal if you want to focus on what you think the result, without having to deal with menus that appear everywhere. The good thing about this trick is that if you press L again, you reverse the effect and return to the original interface.
If you’re a photographer with a little travel, you’ve probably created more presets than you regularly use.
No problem if you don’t know what a preset is, I’ll explain it, a preset is always a set of editing settings that you can paste to your images, if for example you have made a very interesting touch-up for a customer’s wedding, Lightroom offers you the possibility to save these settings to apply them to future weddings that you may have through the “Preset” panel.
This is very convenient because it speeds up the editing process in an amazing way.
One problem I’ve encountered countless times with this system is that one setting is too powerful for one image. By powerful, I mean that when applied, the result is excessive contrast or the hues of some colors are too saturated. This happens because each image is different and it forces me to manually change it to correct it, which is a waste of time and dear readers, time is money, but I found the perfect solution to this problem.
Have you ever tried Instagram filters? Once applied, the application allows you to regulate the intensity of this filter with an opacity slider, in a very simple way, because the capture monkey guys have created a totally free plug-in for Lightroom that adds that same feature to the program. This add-on is ‘The Fader’ and works great.
The add-on allows you to select one of your presets, apply it to an image, and adjust the opacity with a simple cursor, such as Instagram or other filtering apps, such as VSCO. Simple, free and wonderful. You don’t know the hours of frustration that this plug-in saved me during editing, I’m very surprised lightroom doesn’t include this system, maybe we’ll see it in future releases?
And here’s this article. I hope these tips will be as useful to you as they are to me. Hightroom is an excellent program with very powerful tools, although some are a little hidden.
If you think most Lightroom users don’t know a tip, feel free to leave it in your comments. Thank you and soon!
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You can follow Sergi’s work on her website or on Instagram.
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