Name: 10 Secret Lightroom Tricks the Pros Won't Share
Uploaded: 2024-07-15T05:29:48.000Z
Duration: 16 min 24 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Adverbs of degree

If you've ever thought to yourself, man, how do these professionals manage to edit boring photos into masterpieces, but just sliding a few simple sliders in Lightroom?

Well, then you've managed to come to the right place, my friend.

Modal verbs - B1

You see, for the last 10 years or so, I've been editing photos on a consistent basis, and in this video right here, I want to share with you 10 editing secrets that you might not know about, that the professionals use all the time.

And by the way, the last one, oh, it's an absolute game changer.

Alright, so the first step is this, my friends.

Let's say we are working with a moody photo, like you can see right here, and we want to make it a little bit more moody and bring out that fog and mootiness that is so beautiful when you're working with photos like this.

Now, what I would do, I would first think, okay, the mood is coming in here or the mood, the fog is coming in here, and I want to enhance that.

So I click mask, I go plus, and we add a linear gradient filter, and I drag it down something like this here.

Now, it's up to you how much you want to take it over the subject, but in my case, we can do it something, something like this here.

Alright, now what I would like to do is if I go down here, I add, take down the Dehaze, it makes this misty effect, but can't do too much because that was like a little bit too obvious, but we take it down ever so slightly, then down with the Clarity to soften it up.

You can even take down the texture, and then the cool thing that you can also do is with the Tone Curve, we can actually take up the black so the blacks aren't as black, and this makes it a little bit gray and adds this fade to it.

And look, if I take it all the way up, you can see what happens.

This is obviously too much, but adding a slight fade to this is something that I really, really, really much enjoy.

And then, in my opinion, it's just playing with these three until I find a like balance that I think looks absolutely sick.

Now, number two is something that I absolutely love to do, and that's this.

So, I'm working with this photo, and it's absolutely like perfect to do it here because we are backlit.

And what I would do now is that I would create a mask like this, and we create a linear gradient just like so.

Alright, so I'm covering the entire photo.

Okay, this is good for the sake of the tutorial.

Then, what I would like to do is to drag down the Clarity, and I'm softening the entire photo, softening the highlights down with the texture a little bit, down with the Dehaze just ever so slightly.

And then, I would even take up the Exposure just a tiny, tiny bit, up with the Whites a tiny, tiny bit, and down with the Highlights just a little bit.

Now, what I've done now is that I've softened the entire photo, and my aim is to create this dreamy glow effect, also known as the Orton effect.

Now, it's not perfect here because the true Orton effect only affects the Highlight, and it's this beautiful, filmic, dreamy glow that I personally am a huge fan of.

Now, to be able to get it to just the Highlights, what we need to do then is to do a little, you know, magic to the mask.

So, I click the mask right here, or you can right-click the mask, and then you go to Intersect with Luminance Range.

Now, basically, what you're doing now is that you can take away so the mask is just affecting the Highlights.

So, by dragging up here, and if you click Show the Luminance Range, you can see that now the mask is just areas.

And then you can also take this, and you can fade it out.

So, if it's all the way here, it's like a hard stop, but here it's gradual, because less and less, so it fades out.

And this makes the, like, effect that we just made, this, like, soft, dreamy glow effect, just affecting the Highlights, and then gradually to the Shadows, really mimicking this dreamy glow effect, and I absolutely love this.

Now, number three is a fairly new slider that I think is such a lightroom and all the magic that we can do here, and it's this.

So, in the Tone Curves, I'll just create a little, like, S-curve like this.

We can go down with the Shadows, then we can take up the Highlights, making a big contrast.

Now, usually, when you do this, you will see that you get a lot of contrast, but also the colors, like, you get a lot of punch in the colors, and they become really saturated, especially the orange colors that you can see right here.

So, the new slider that I'm talking about is down here, and this is the Refine Saturation.

So, basically, you can now play with the saturation as well, in combination with the Tone Curve.

So, if you drag it all the way down, you can see that the photo isn't as saturated.

So, the contrast that you're making with Tone Curve isn't affecting the saturation as much, which I think is a beautiful addition, because now we have just more control when it comes to making our beautiful masterpieces that we're trying to do.

So, number four is something that speeds up my work process tremendously, and that is this here.

So, I'm working with this photo, and I click Mask, I click Plus, and Sky.

Now, this is not the tip, although this, like, AI Sky Mask, it's pretty sick, because it also speeds up my workflow.

But, what I want to do is that I want to select the entire foreground.

Usually, in the past, I would just do a brush and paint it here, but what I can do with the Sky Mask is just to simply right-click it, and then go Invert, and we have a pretty beautiful mask that is affecting our entire foreground, and now we can and do our all-out changes, like this here.

It's too much, but you get what I'm, you know, saying.

So, number five also has to do with the Sky Mask, but it's about making it a lot better.

So, here, for instance, when you click Plus and click the Sky Mask, Lightroom creates a perfect mask around your sky.

However, it makes really harsh edges, which can kind of be a little bit, what do you say, it's not really like maybe the reality would be.

If you do the changes right now, you can see that there's a hard edge here.

So, what I would like to do is that, with the Sky Mask, I right-click, I go Intersect, Width, and then Linear Gradient, and then I just do a gradient from the top down to the bottom, like this.

So, it makes a little bit softer and a smoother transition from the foreground, and usually I'm photographing mountains, so it's not as harsh of a transition here to the Sky Mask, which is something that I personally like a whole lot.

Now, tip number six is honestly like something that is almost too good to share, and when I learned this technique, it took my editing skills like instantly, I'm not even kidding, to new heights, and I'm going to show you it in a second.

First, I just want to show you guys that I recently made a brand new preset pack.

This is like over 28 different presets that I use to edit all of my photos and all of the things that you see me post on social media.

Now, personally, I think this is pretty smart how I've organized it.

I have the Creative Presets, which are more of these stylized presets that are aimed to do like this, not maybe one click wonder, I don't really believe presets are to use that, but more stylized look, and then I have the Foundational Presets, which I personally use more to set a base tone, and then I can work out of it.

For instance, here, I just click a base tone for the winter photos, and I mean, a few clicks later, the photo looks pretty nice, and then I also have some seasonal presets that I use for autumn photos, summer photos, and winter photos, a few portrait photos, because sometimes I take, you know, portraits as well, and then I also have overlays, which are something that I absolutely love.

If I want to have a dreamy glow effect, I basically just click the dreamy glow, and we get that, like I showed you in the beginning.

And just to show you, for this photo here, I just click Golden Dream, and we get a beautiful base tone, and I usually don't like to mess with my white balance in the preset, because photos, you know, are different how the white balance is based on the lighting condition that you find yourself in, but afterwards, I would just add this up a little bit, and then maybe take up the shadows ever so slightly, and boom, I mean, this looks pretty good, and this didn't take a whole lot of time.

And personally, I use presets to ensure, like, a base tone and same tones to my photos, and then to speed up my workflow tremendously.

This has taken me, like, years to create.

It's my first preset pack that I release in many, many years, and I'm extremely, like, happy with it.

So, in the description, you can find a link which should take you to this pack.

If you buy it, you not only get, like, some sick-looking preset that I use, but also you support me at the same time.

Now, my friends, let's go to tip number six.

Number six, when I'm working with the photo, like you see here, what I like to do is to click the mask, I click plus, and I go to a gradient filter, and then I'm... a lot of mask on this photo, as you can see.

But I make a mask like this, and my aim is to put it just on the sunset itself.

And this is great when I'm shooting into the sun in a beautiful, like, in a sunset environment.

So, what I'm doing, really, I feather it out quite a lot.

I'm feathering this out like this, and then we have this mask that is, like, kind of just here.

What I'm doing now is that I want to enhance the sunlight and make it prettier.

And how I do that is that I go down here, and first, what I can do is to do a temperature slider to take it up.

So, this just basically makes, to the orange, we get the little bit more orange tones to the sunset.

Then, what I would like to do is I go down here and drag the dehaze slider just down ever so slightly.

What that does is just makes the... it makes the sunset become a little bit softer and a little bit mist to it, which I think is really, really pretty.

But too much, and it obviously looks whack.

So, it's all about these subtle movements here.

Down with the clarity, too, to make it bloom a little bit.

But what I tend to do when you do this is that you lose a little bit of the oomph and colors.

So, to reintroduce that, I usually take up the contrast just a little bit, and then it's just a balance of playing with the temperature slider, and maybe you can play with the saturation if that is something that you desire.

Last time I did a video like this, I made a total mistake there somewhere, and I got some comments.

So, if you want to roast me, you can do that.

And that is a little technique I use to make my photos more three-dimensional.

And what I mean by that is it's perfect when you have a subject like this.