I’ve been using Lightroom for a couple of years now and it is a very powerful program, especially if you are a wedding photographer and you have a large quantity of photos to pick and edit. Not only it is great for organizing your photos, but it is very good for editing them. It is most beneficial when used to edit RAW images because, as we know, RAW images keep every bit of information stored just as the image was shot. This is not to say that it isn’t good for editing jpg, but you will not untie the true power of Lightroom until you start editing your RAW files.

I’m going to share with you 5 tips about Lightroom that I feel you must know to improve your image progress and also your editing potentiality. These are tips that I have accumulated over the couple of years that I’ve been using Lightroom and they help me tremendously. So, without further delay, let’s get started.

1. Use Brightness Instead of Exposure

So the header of this tip is a bit misleading. I am not saying to use brightness over exposure all of the time. But, there are times when you will have more control over your image when using brightness, contrary to exposure. The difference between brightness and exposure is that exposure takes preference on shifting the highlight range of the image. For example, take a landscape picture and everything is a touch underexposed, except for the sky. If you bump the exposure up by using the exposure slider, then you will possibly blow out the highlights and this is because when using the exposure slider, it increases the highlight area more than it does the rest of the tonal range in the image. Now, when you use the brightness slider, you will shift the tonal range evenly. This has the same result when darkening an image, or lowering the exposure. You will see that the exposure slider takes priority of the highlights and lowers them more than the rest of the tonal range. Try it out and see what I mean. Take two of the same images, load them into Lightroom and identify the difference between brightness vs. exposure. In addition, +50 equals one stop of light on the brightness slider and +100 would be 2 stops of light, etc.

2. Control Your Use of the Clarity Slider

The clarity slider can make the details in an image exceptional and also help out with inherent blur from the camera. Clarity slider does look for contrast in the middle of the tonal range and boost the contrast. In images with a lot of detail this can make a big difference. I usually set mine to +30 for starters and then measure from there. There are times when you will not want to bump the clarity slider up because it can be unhelpful. When editing a portrait, you will probably not want to bump your clarity slider up. Every person has pores and those pores just happen to be in the middle to upper tonal range, which the clarity slider affects. When you are trying to get flawless skin, you should try backing off of the clarity slider and see what it does to the skin. I do start with -15 and make changes from there. The benefit is that you will not lose detail overall in the image, unless you make a major adjustment, but you will start to see the skin smooth out quite nicely. With a few more adjustments, you will get flawless skin that look very satisfying.

3. Use the Adjustment Brush for Smoothing Skin

This feature of Lightroom that is far better and faster than Photoshop can accomplish. When trying to smooth the skin of a portrait, just take the adjustment brush by pressing K and then click on the little arrows (one pointing up and one pointing down) to the right of “Effect:”, and click on “Soften Skin”. This can change the settings of the brush to lower the clarity and also lower the sharpness. Paint over the subject’s face, being careful not to paint over the eyes, eyebrows, lips, or hair. If you do paint over one of these features, you can hold the “alt” on PC, “option” on Mac, to erase your brush strokes. Another tip is to press “o”, for overlay, to see where you are painting. This will show the red mask of the areas that are painted. Once you paint where you want, turn the overlay mask off by pressing “o” again, and then adjust your clarity and sharpness sliders for your brush to get the desired result. Remember, not to overdo it. You do not want your subject to look pseudo.

4. HSL Works Magic for Skin Tones

As a wedding photographer, my goal is to always give my subjects appealing skin tones. If I have to correct the exposure of an image, chances are that my skin tones need more than white balancing. Even though we all want to shoot a perfect exposure every shot that we take, but unfortunately, this just doesn’t happen. So, when it’s time to adjust the skin tones, I head to the HSL panel for the rescue. With too dark image, I start off by de-saturating the skin tones a bit. Not too much or your subject will look like they have grey skin and we don’t want that and I’m sure your subject doesn’t either. The best way to do this is to use the target selector tool, which looks like a target and is in the top left side of the HSL panel. Take on the subject’s skin and drag down. This will target only the colors that you grab with the target selector. Once you have lowered the saturation a bit and got it looking good, I move to my luminance and brighten things up a bit. This will re make your subjects skin glow. (And it will glow a LOT if you are not careful.) This takes a little bit of practice and you will get the hang of it by trial and error. This is the most complicated tip and by practicing anyone can perfect it.

5. Post-Crop Vignetting

I utterly love Light Room’s Post-Crop Vignetting tool. In my opinion, it applies the most natural looking vignettes of any method that I have tried. There is something about a good vignette that helps to make an image complete. It takes your eyes and keep them to the center area of the image and keeps them from going outside of the photo. This is another feature that I believe is better than anything Photoshop has to offer, because it looks so good and you can add one in about 5 seconds. Once you are done editing your photo, scroll down to the “Effects” panel and use their settings for your vignette. Amount = -52, Midpoint = 67, Roundness = +20, Feather = 50, Highlights = 0. This should darken the corners a little without hindering the rest of the image.

Those are my 5 Lightroom tips and tricks that I believe every photographer should know, especially wedding photographers. Please e-mail me and let me know what your idea. I would love to hear your feedback and I will be glad to answer any questions you may have. Until next time, happy shooting!

Deric Cain Photography is a professional portrait and wedding photographer providing maternity and newborn photography, engagement photography, wedding photography, high school senior portraits, children and family portraits located in Pensacola, Florida.