Lightroom Editing Tips
Hi friend!
Chances are you came to this post to get some help with your editing. So let’s get right into it! Here are my top tips for editing photos in Lightroom.
Note: this post touches only on post-production. For tips on achieving the right in-camera settings for taking good photos, head over to this post.
Adjust the White Balance
The white balance is the temperature of an image. Sometimes you’ll find that an image looks either too cool or too warm – this is how you change that. You can manually adjust the temperature and the tint to reflect the tone you want to create. Note that the general rule of thumb is if you change the temperature to be more ‘cool’, you should also adjust the tint to be more 'green’ and vice versa.
Adjust the Vibrance and Saturation
Vibrance and saturation may seem like the same thing, but they’re not! They’re more like sisters, rather than twins. Vibrance should be the first thing you adjust – it picks up specific tones that need more or less saturation (depending on which way you’re sliding it) and adjusts only those, whereas the saturation affects all of the colors in the image. My rule is to generally leave the saturation alone, and sometimes even decrease it. I’ll play around more with the vibrance depending on the photo and mood I want to create.
Tweak the Highlights and Shadows
Depending on the lighting in your photo, you may need to adjust the highlights and/or shadows. Bringing the highlights down will lessen the ‘harshness’ of the whites in the shot. I typically have the highlights brought down in my edits. Bringing the shadows up will give more detail to the darker parts of the photo. This is great for sunsets or darker shots, but be careful not to bring them up so much that it removes the depth of the photo and creates a lot of noise.
Check the Luminance
Toggle the luminance tool of each color in your photo to make it darker or lighter. This is an effective tool for skin tones and skies. If the skin tone of the people in your image looks too flat and un-natural, toggle the luminance of either the orange, red and/or yellow color to make adjustments.
Straighten the Horizon
Don’t you dare export a photo without checking the horizon first! It’s easy to tell if it’s straight or not when it’s clearly visible (e.g. looking out at the ocean) but your eyes should still naturally be able to tell if the surroundings don’t look level. You can adjust the horizon line by moving the ‘angle’ tool left and right under the crop section.
Marvel at your masterpiece!
Hopefully after adjusting the above you’ll have a final image that you’re proud of. You could spend forever editing, and this post only just scratches the surface on what you can do in Lightroom, but my motto is always ‘less is more’ when it comes to editing!