- Supp everybody welcome to my first ever Lightroom basics masterclass. I'm going to take you through every single
panel in Lightroom today. So you know what everything
does, how to use it. And more importantly,
how I use these features in order to get my
professional level edits. So without further ado,
let's jump into Lightroom. (dramatic music) (upbeat music) It's a freaking holster for your camera. It took me 10 years to figure this out. Never get caught without your camera. Okay, so you wanna learn
how to master Lightroom in the shortest amount of time possible. We are going to handle
that in today's video. By the time it's over we'll have you out there in
the world, editing in no time. I'm going to need you to
remember three things. This is the process in which we edit photos
and it's chronological correction, color, finishing. C, C, F, correction first, color second and then you finish the photo. So with that being said let's literally just dive into Lightroom. So you've opened Lightroom, how do you import a photo? Well, you go to the Library
tab right here at the top and then click Import
down at the bottom left. Once your photo is imported, click it and move on over to the Development tab. By the way, all the photos
that I use for examples or demonstrations in this video will be right down in the description for you to be able to download
and edit right alongside me. So pop quiz, what is step number one? It is correction. This is correcting a photograph so that it looks like a normal photograph. We're not gonna color it. We're not gonna make it
look ready for Instagram but any photo that might be too bright we're gonna fix it. Any photo that might be too
dark, we're gonna fix it. We are going to fix it. Step one, correction, fixing it. So we have our presets on
the left, if you have any. Our main photo right here in the center, and then all of our panels
we're gonna be working with on the right. We're gonna be literally
starting at the top and working down to the bottom. The first one is the Basic tab because it was literally created
for the correction phase. Again, do not color your photo in this tab even though it seems
like it might be easier. This tab is for correction. So the first thing we do
is white balance our image. You can do that either by
dragging this little marker onto a white part and clicking or preferably I just do it by eye because sometimes it's not right. So there we go, white balanced. Moving on, we have this
little block here called Tone. It's made up of exposure which is the brightness of the image, contrast which is the overall
contrast of the image, highlights which corrects the
bright parts of your image, shadows which corrects the
dark parts of your image. The white slider sets the white point for your actual highlights. So you can see it, kind
of goes hand in hand, same with blacks and shadows. So even though there's no
obvious problems with our image let's still go through and correct it. I'm gonna bring up the
exposure just a little. The contrast slider adds
contrast to your image, but again, remember you're not stylizing. You're just correcting. So only use this on flat footage. Highlights, I will bring up a little bit. Don't wanna mess up the shirt. I'm going to bring down the shadows make the background a tiny bit darker so that our subject stands out. This is before this is after. And even though it's minor, this is a very decent correction. At the bottom of the Basics tab you'll see Texture, Clarity, Dehaze. Texture deals with the overall grit and sharpness of your image. Clarity deals with a very
contrasty like washed out image very popular in product photography and like military photos. And then Dehaze is a feature
I actually don't use a ton. If you ever have a hazy photo, Dehaze is a perfect tool to help kind of scale back the haze. Now, two of the sliders you
really want to understand are Vibrance and Saturation because a lot of people
actually don't know what the difference is and it's massive. Saturation brings up all of the colors in your image. As you can see here, it's over-saturated but Vibrance brings up all
of the colors of your image while protecting skin tones
up into a certain point. That means if there are
people in your photograph and you're trying to get more color you should be using Vibrance and not Saturation to avoid turning people into oompa loompas. While it's very, very minimal, this is a good correction for me. This image looks like it
looked with my eyes that day and now we are ready to move into color. Now, the reason we did not
apply all of the effects and looks that we wanted
in that previous section is because we're gonna do it now. And we're gonna do it
in a more advanced way, moving into Tone Curve. This is the section that
most people probably clicked this video, wanting to see. This Tone Curve gives people more problems than anyone in the world. And now it won't have to, this
is a curve, as you can see I can draw points and make it into an S make it into a backwards
S or whatever you want but what do you do with it? What is it? And how, how does it work? The Tone Curve is just contrast. It is another word for contrast on the right hand side, over
here, we have our highlights you see, we bring them
up, image gets brighter. We bring it down, It gets darker. So we're gonna raise our highlights. And then we're gonna take the shadows which are on this side, the left side. And we're going to bring those down making the slight S
looking curve on our chart. This is the contrast we wanted. We did not wanna use slider up in Basic. This is the contrast we wanted. Also, if you're looking for that Matte film, look,
you achieved that here. You find the black point
right here at the bottom and you bring it up off the ground and it gives you that old faded film look. This is how you achieve it. It's very simple. Now, how do I actually use the S-curve? Well, there's more to it than just this. This is the Luma Curve, this white button. This is the light, the
brightness and shadow contrast. Then next to it, we have
red, green and blue, ROYGBIV. Those are our primary colors and it can be super overwhelming because when you bring up the red as you can see it floods the
red in all of the highlights or it takes all the red out of
the highlights leaving green. So what do we do here? And how do we get it to work? Well, it's hard and confusing and that's why everyone's
photos look different. But a good rule of thumb is
to do an S-curve as well. So what I'm gonna do is bring up this side and bring down that
side doing this slight S and while it doesn't look good at first I'm gonna continue doing it till the green, the red and the blue, all roughly the exact same amount. And what it will do is as you can see start to balance each other out. Now I can look, get the image and go it's got too much contrast,
and it's now a little green. So I'm gonna come into the green tab and mess with the green. There we go. Okay, now we're starting to get somewhere nice small movements. That looks good. Contrast looks good, color looks good. You can tell I'm getting am excited. Tone Curve mastered. Let's move on to the next
part of color, which is HSL also known as Hue,
Saturation, and Luminance. Please take note of the
red flowers in this image. That's what I'm gonna be
effecting to show you. The Hue is the actual hue of the color. The Saturation is the amount of color for that particular color. So as you can see, and then Luminance is the
brightness of that color. With all of this in mind this tab is where we start
selectively editing colors. I don't like green. Okay, so let's go to Hue. And here we could change green
to make the leaves yellow. A lot of people do that or a
darker green, which is cool. Still don't like green. So I'll come over to Saturation and I could take all the green out. That's kinda cool. Now I'll go to Luminance
and try that in green. I can make it, Oh, that's too brighter. Oh, I can make it really dark. I like that. Now effectively with these three sliders I've been able to just affect the green without even having to worry
about the rest of my image. Just so you know, if you have a picture of the ocean or water,
you would go into Hue and you would bring the water
to more of an Aqua color. And then you could go into the
Luminance and brighten it up. And all of a sudden
you've got blue-ass water. Okay and just like that
my corrections are done in Hue, Saturation, and Luminance. And just to review remember Tone Curve is
where you're gonna find the overall color and vibe of your image. And then HSL and color is
really where you're gonna start honing in specific colors. But that is HSL. It's not scary. It's actually your best friend
when it comes to correcting and manipulating individual
colors one at a time. Moving on, we have Split Toning. Split Toning gets its name
from being able to tone which is color, the shadows
and the highlights separate. You are able to split
them, applying one color to just the shadows and one
color to just the highlights. A warmer tone for the highlights
and bring up saturation. And then I'm gonna do a blue or a complimentary color against
the orange for the shadows. And as you see, as I bring up saturation it actually brings in
blue just to the shadows. Whereas highlights brings in
orange just to the highlights, play with Split Toning. Don't expect to use it on every photo. I know I don't and I'm
not going to here either. Now we are almost done
with the coloring process. There is only one more panel
you need to know about. It's actually my favorite panel, the least known about panel, and it's all the way at the bottom of Lightroom Classic only. Which is why I use Lightroom Classic. It's Camera Calibration. Now Camera Calibration is
meant to actually manipulate the mathematical camera color
values inside your camera. I use it to my advantage all the time. It's so touchy that any little
change changes everything and any change in the
slider, changes everything. So everything has to work together. This is how I use it and I'd recommend playing
with it this way, too. I start by taking the red to the right, red primary to the right. See, it kinda makes the
image all green and weird. Then I take blue primary to the left and it starts balancing out my image. And then I use the green
slider to be able to hone in the tone of gold I want for the skin tone. We messed with saturation
and things like that. But look at that change, that change came from Camera Calibration. That golden skin tone came here, hidden in camera calibration, the one
place most people don't look. And I wanted you to know that so that you can apply
it to your photos too. But as you can see, this
is a very slept-on tool. This is the strongest tool
in Lightroom, in my opinion and it's not available in Lightroom CC. The orange is a little intense. So I'll bring down saturation
just right here in orange but I'll be honest with you that I would post that
to Instagram in a second. I love this image. And that my friends brings us
out of the coloring process. We have now corrected our image. We have now colored our image. The final step is to finish it. Now finishing it doesn't
mean just clicking, Save. Finishing it, is the little details. So back to our panels we have a panel right here called Detail. Lightroom sometimes
sharpens images for you. I usually leave sharpening
down and noise reduction down. I don't turn on anything in here. The reason being while sharpening sometimes
looks really nice on Instagram. If you print this photo,
it will look horrible. So I don't sharpen things because in five years
from now, the only version of the photo I'll probably
have is the edited one. And I wanna make sure if I
print it, it still looks good. Next Lens Correction. Now this isn't needed for everybody. Chromatic aberrations are
like weird color mistakes in your camera. It doesn't happen a ton,
but you can leave it on. Now a profile correction
is actually something that's quite needed. There's something called
barrel distortion in lenses. I won't get into it, but
check out my photo right here. This has taken on a lens 50 mil. And when I click Profile Correction, look at the edges of my image. Notice how they stretch back out. They're just correcting themselves. That's what it really looked like but my lens accidentally compressed it in. Next is this weird
transform crop function. Do not crop your images here. We'll get to that in a second. And then praise Jesus, Hallelujah. The last panel is Effects and the top effect is Vignetting. That's how you get either that white circle or a dark
circle around your image. It's just meant to like
bring the attention into the subject. And then the last thing is grain. You can bring it all the way up. If you wanna look like a vintage film. Again, I usually leave
grain down because again if I print this in the future, I want it to look its best it can. Now we're up at this top bar right here. And the first one is Cropping. This is where you wanna crop your image for Instagram or whatever you're doing. Instagram is a four by five crop. So like that. And as you see, if you click, Oh it goes through a whole
bunch of different ratios and cool guides you
can use for your image. I'm gonna select this one
here, line everything up, click Done, moving on. Now, I'll zoom in on a face and use the Heal Tool and
just kinda quick pimples and like, I'm not gonna try
to make someone look different but I will take away blemishes and any imperfections in the skin. The other option you have while using the Brush tool is a Clone tool which actually replicates the background. So like, I don't like
these sticks right here. So I'll select those. And then I'll just clone
flowers from over there. And all of a sudden the sticks are gone and I have more beautiful
flowers, all hail the Clone tool. Moving on, we have a Red Eye tool. This is just for, if you used flash and have a red eye problem, you just click the eyes obviously. Next up we have this
granulated filter tool. This is the same thing. These are all gonna be applying light and like more effects
of what you did before, but selectively. So you can bring them like
from the top and bottom and change the colors change the intensity, change what they do. They're just completely
draggable, super easy. Drag 'em where you need,
change the effects over here. You're good to go. The tool next to it is
the exact same thing. It's just a Circle. A lot of times I will use this
tool and invert it right here in order to bring more
light to a subject face. If it's kind of dark that way the eye goes straight to what
you want them to look at. Now we have the Adjustment Brush
tool right here on the end. This is probably one of the
most important tools to know. This is where you can paint
in different corrections and the place I use it all
the time is on the eyes. The most important part
of your photograph. I'm going to take the brush. I'm gonna click New. I'm gonna bring up the exposure a little and then using two fingers up and down. You can change the size of the brush. Just gonna paint in, in the
eye on both eyes right there. And then I can brighten the eye. I can change the color of the eye. I can add sharpness to the eye. This is somewhere I will use
sharpness, even saturation. Now the key here is to remember to make sure it looks natural. You don't want vampire eyes. It happens to people all the time. They go like this thinking it looks cool. And then when you zoom out all of a sudden there's
a Twilight four poster. Watch the eyes without the
brush and with the brush. It is subtle, but getting
an extra little bit of light in the eyes makes all
the difference trust me. Eyes are the window to the photograph. Well, technically they're
the window to the soul. Photographs have to have soul. So go through the eyes,
make sure the eyes are nice. And ladies and gentlemen you have made it through
the basics masterclass. This is literally everything. This is every single part of Lightroom. So save this video to a
playlist, send it to a friend send it to your own phone,
but reference it all the time. Because as you get more
comfortable with Lightroom you'll start doing that
thing you always do. And you'll forget about some
of these incredible tools. These tools are awesome. All of them. So use all of them. And with that everybody, I wanna thank you for joining me today. I hope this helped you into your journey with
photo editing and Lightroom. If it did please make sure
to give it a big thumbs up and subscribe. I would love to have you here. And make film and photography
related videos every week. So click the subscribe, turn on the bells, but seriously keep your camera
with you wherever you go. If you feel like you haven't been taking as many photos lately as you'd like it's just because you don't
have your camera with you. Bring it with you. You never know what you're gonna create and I'll see you guys next week. I love ya, peace.
