Hi! This is Sabina and welcome to another Pangolin Photo tutorial. Today I am going to be sharing my five favourite Lightroom hacks with you.
Some tips and tricks that really helped my edit workflow, and I a'm
sure you are going to love them too. If you do like our content, please don't forget to subscribe, by clicking the BELL button below, so that you get notified once a
new video is uploaded. Alright! Let's get started. Lightroom
Classic is the version that I am going to be referring to in this tutorial...and it
is an application with tons of great features that lots of people simply
don't know about. So, in this tutorial, I am going to show you my favourite
features that I tend to use all the time. Most people like to make use of
Lightroom's powerful lens correction tool, that automatically fixes lens problems, such as distortion, chromatic aberration, and vignetting. However, I found it a bit tedious to continuously having to scroll down to my lens
correction step, and then check the two boxes, for each and every image. If you,
like me, and you like to save yourself some time, here is s a little trick. You can
actually create yourself a preset, that will apply the lens correction, to each
and every image on import, into Lightroom. So, you never have to worry about the
lens correction step again. Now, to create a preset, select any raw file in your
library that is not edited yet, and go to the develop mode. Go to the lens
corrections tab, and tick the boxes. Remove chromatic aberration and enable
profile correction. Now, head over to the left, where you find a preset tab, and
click on the + icon to create a new preset. Let's name it lens correction, and
make sure in the dialog box, that you check none, beside the Lens Corrections
features. Click create, and the preset is now saved under your user presets. Now,
next time you import images into Lightroom, all you need to do is apply
the lens correction preset, that you find under 'apply during import user presets',
and all your images are being corrected automatically. Lightroom lets you schedule regular
back-ups when you exit the software. These back-ups only contain your Lightroom catalog, but with time they take up a considerable amount of hard drive
space. Although, it's good to have back-ups, you do not need to keep all of them. So,
here is what I do on a regular basis, to create more space, on my hard drive. First, you need to locate where your Lightroom folder is. Open the catalog settings, found within the Lightroom Classic menu.... or, in some other versions of Lightroom, you might find it under the Edit menu. Under the general tab, you will find a file path with the location of the Lightroom catalog folder. Open it up
by clicking the show button. here you will find a folder named back-ups, and if it is your first time deleting back-up files, you will probably have a much longer list
of back-ups than I have. Probably reaching all the way back to when you first installed
Lightroom. Now you can delete all the back-up files you don't need anymore, and
only keep the latest few. That should clear up a significant amount of space...and don't forget to repeat the process in a few weeks again. One of the most powerful, but not so
obvious features in Lightroom, is holding the Alt or Option key, while dragging on
a slider in the develop mode. This gives you a visual feedback, of how and where,
the adjustments you make is affecting your image. Let me show you. When you
click the crop overlay icon, grab a corner and drag the mouse. The crop
overlay remains anchored to the opposite corner. But what if he wanted to crop the
image to the center? You would have to crop first, and then move the selection
around, to get your subject in the middle. Here is the fix. Hold the Alt or Option
key down. When you grab a corner and drag the mouse. Lightroom now keeps the crop
overlay centered. The next really useful feature, and one that I use all the time. Holding the Alt or Option key lies within the adjustment brush. If you hold
it, while using the brush, Lightroom automatically switches to the eraser. You can now quickly erase parts of the mask. As soon as you let go of the Alt
key again, the brush turns back into a + symbol, which means that you now
back to your current brush settings, and you can continue painting. Here is another really great function of holding the Alt or Option key within the adjustment
brush, as well as the radial filter or graduated filter. Hold it down, while
clicking in the circle icon of the filter, and drag your mouse left or right
to intensify or lessen the effects apllied. If you have changed multiple sliders, all of them will be increased or decreased at the same time. Within the
spot removal tool, holding the Alt or Option key, will convert the spot removal
icon into a little scissor, and you can now easily erase any spot removals gone
wrong. Auto on the Exposure, Highlights, Shadows, Whites and Black sliders, will
show areas where the whites or black are clipped, as a result of the adjustment. When you adjust the shadows in the blacks, the white areas of the images are not
clipped. While in exposure highlights and whites the black areas are not clipped.
Alt or Option in a masking slider in the detail panel, shows a black and white mask over the image. The areas which are black are not sharpened, and those which are white will be sharpened. A really great tool for only
selecting your main subject for sharpening. The alt or option key is also
super useful in the split toning tool. Holding it down, while dragging the Hue
slider, under either highlights or shadows, to reveal the effect with saturation set to 100. A great way to see which colour you have selected, to add to
your highlights and shadows, Here you can see the black and white image, without
the split toning, and here it is with the colour tones applied, to the highlights
and shadows, for a sepia effect. Do you know that Lightroom has a very
powerful masking feature, that helps you target your adjustments? The auto Mask
feature is located at the bottom of the brush tool panel. Once enabled, the brush
will automatically select and mask, specific areas based on a precise point
(or points) of where we click on the image. Let's say I want to make some
adjustments to the sky in this image, without affecting the trees, grass or the
zebra. I am selecting a new adjustment brush. Make sure the auto mask feature is
checked, and start brushing on the blue sky. Although the auto mask is doing a
great job selecting the sky, it is still quite a job to be painting all over. Here is a much easier way...head over to your navigator panel on the left, and select the preview size to 1:16. Now head back to the brush, and increase the brush
size, to cover the entire image. Also lower the feather to roughly only 5...and click once again on the blue sky in the image - multiple times if needed - to select
the entire sky. You can see now, with only a few clicks, the sky has been masked, and I can now do whatever adjustments I like. I can take my exposure way down, or all the way up. Adjust saturation, or whatever I feel like doing. Let's try and select a background, once again, using the same method. See how the
lioness is being selected as wel. Now why is that? Well, because the area I have clicked on in the background - to sample the colour - is simply too similar to the
colours of the lioness itself. Not to worry. There is an easy fix. As you have learnt before, holding down the Alt key, while in the adjustment brush, you now
switch automatically to the erase.. and can simply brush out the lioness, so
that only the background is being selected. Now I can darken the grass around the lioness, to make her pop a bit more. ...and there you go, before and after. The targeted adjustment tool, found in the
tone curve and edges of the colour and black and white panel, makes adjustments to
colour, contrast, and exposure, with precision and ease. Here is how? In the top left of the tone curve window, you will notice a little dot. When you click it, you have activated the targeted adjustment tool. Now simply click on the tone you
want to edit in your image, and drag the mouse up or down, to brighten or darken. You can now see the curve adjusting up or down, depending on how you drag the
mouse. Let's say, instead of modifying the tone curve, you want to modify the colours. Adjusting the saturation to make them look more vibrant. Click on the HSL colour
panel, and select the hue, saturation and luminance tab. Once you select your
targeted adjustment tool, click and drag on the colour in your image that you want
to be more or less saturated. Modify other colour values, by clicking different headings in the HSL menu. Hue, for instance, will allow you to click and drag a colour, to change how that colour appears... making it more yellow or red, for
example. Luminance will adjust the brightness of a tone. But instead of
making the selection based on the highlight shadow, or mid-tone values, the targeted
adjustment tool will select based on colour, and make all yellows in the scene
(for instance) brighter or darker. The targeted adjustment tool is also
immensely useful for black and white images. Under the black and white panel,
activate the targeted adjustment tool, and you can now adjust the black and
white mix. Altering, for instance, whether red tones - from the original image - are
translated into highlights, mid-tones or shadows. Creating a unique black and white look. There you have it. That is my 5
favourite Lightroom hacks. I hope yours too now. If you do have any other tips or tricks, I would love it if you could please share them in the comments below. Thank you so much for watching, and see you in the next episode. Bye, bye!
