In this video and article, I’ll share 10 helpful Lightroom tips that can improve your photo editing.
#1. Auto tone in Lightroom
The auto tone section Lightroom gives you is a really good start to your editing process in Lightroom. You don’t have to accept the results — just reset after but use it as a guide.
#2. Angle tool in the Lightroom
Inside the top tool, there is a little thing called the Angle Tool. Essentially it’s a line that you can draw along the horizon on any straight line and your image will be horizontally or vertically aligned.
#3. Crop overlays
When you are cropping, you don’t just have to have the simple grid as a guide. You can cycle through multiple overlays by using the ‘o’ key. It’s that simple. Press shift + o and you can rotate the overlays too.
#4. Add focus using the Lightroom radial brush
This one is pretty amazing. Just use the Lightroom radial bush and turn the sharpness down to -100 — this actually blurs the photo. Then paint out what you want to stay sharp. Duplicate the effect to make it more visible.
#5. Reset specifics
Simply double click on the name of any slider and it resets it to 0. This is a really quick way to reset things easily. You can also turn whole sections off by using the toggle to the left of the module title.
#6. Quick before and after using
Let’s make this a short one. Just hit backslash to turn off your edits and hit it again to turn them back on. This doesn’t change or erase the edits — it only hides them.
#7. Luminance
One of the most powerful features. This looks at the lightness or reflective to light a certain color range is. By using this tool you can easy effect trials of an image that contains certain colors. Skies, trees, and skin tones LOVE this tool.
#8. How to draw straight lines in Lightroom Classic
Yes, its true: Lightroom CC Classic allows you to draw perfectly straight lines. Just hold shift when drawing in any of the local adjustment tools and click again and you’re done. A perfect line between the two points. Keep holding and clicking and the lines continue to be joined.
#9. How to use Lightroom Virtual copies for speed
Create multiple copies of the same image without duplicating it on your hard drive. That means more variations and without wasting more space. great for delivering multiple edits of the same image.
#10. Use Lights out (L)
Give yourself more focus when you are editing by using lights out mode in Lightroom. Just hit ‘L’ and the everything but the photos go dark. It’s an amazing little trick to get rid of clutter in an instant.
About the author: Ed Gregory is a photographer and the founder of Photos in Color. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author. Gregory teaches tutorials on Photoshop, Lightroom, and photography, and you can find more of his videos on his YouTube channel. This article was also published here.