It's honestly kind of a pain in my opinion. That's all I've got for the tone curve tool in Lightroom Classic. Below, I'm increasing the overall contrast of the photo by dropping the blacks in the exposure panel and raising the whites. When I wrote the first draft of this guide, I noted that this process was something I stumbled into and had no idea how "right" it is, so it was somewhat nice to discover that I wasn't alone in using the exposure panel to control the overall tone of my images. Betty, on the other hand, decreases highlights. Most of the time, when I start editing, my image is already accurately exposed so I don't tend to touch overall exposure but I almost always push down the blacks in my images in order to create more contrast. BASIC panel in Lightroom ExposureĪnyway, it was interesting to discover that Betty and I had found our way to many similar steps in our editing but approached them with different goals in mind. She spent an afternoon with a wedding photographer learning the basics of Lightroom and then found her footing through tinkering. You should pause reading here and go scroll through her entire Instagram feed because the progression in her editing style from when she started out in 2016 to now is so fast and so phenomenal. So I got in touch and we had a long and wonderful chat about editing. Her edits always compliment her photos so well. She has a very strong aesthetic that somehow never tips over into being excessive. Okay, enough about organization and on to the fun part, the editing! As I was starting to write this, I was thinking about photographers whose editing style I admire and Betty quickly came to mind. I keep this year and last year always accessible on my computer and at the end of the year, I archive the catalog that is 2 years old onto an external hard drive. Currently, I have separate catalogs for clients and for myself by year. I know, editing is definitely way more fun to think about then cataloging but if you keep your work well organized, it will benefit you later down the road. Anyway, I usually have a vague recollection of some photo that I may have taken and I just have to spend 30 or 40 minutes diving around my archive to find it. The smart image search in Lightroom CC is definitely a feature I’m deeply smitten with and one reason I’d like to fully switch over. Honestly, I’m awful about diligently keywording my photos. Often, I need to find photos from 2 or 3 years back and I wish I could report that I’ve been excellent about keywording all of my work and adding pertinent information. 5 years later and about 200,000 photos in, the cataloging function of Lightroom has become much more important to me. At that time, I was just taking photos for fun. I jumped right in and didn’t think much about my photo organization. When I started using Lightroom, I always thought of it as an editing tool. Since Lightroom Classic is where I do most of my edits these days, this guide is focused on using that but I will likely do another one for Lightroom CC when I fully switch over. Occasionally, I get pinged by various companies coming out with new photo editing programs but at the moment I use Lightroom, Photoshop and VSCO actively. I've thought about purchasing Capture One, since the go to for most photographers when they're shooting tethered but I've resisted thus far. So my typical workflow is still within Lightroom Classic and I export JPEGs to dropbox folders to send to myself or clients. I’m slowly trying to transition to Lightroom CC because I’m excited by the possibility of having constant access to my catalog on all of my devices but am currently frustrated by their lack of preset syncing and custom export settings (UPDATE: preset syncing is getting rolled out now!). Professional Photo Editing SoftwareĪnyway, I currently use Lightroom Classic on my main computer for most of my photo cataloging and editing. I think it’s good to learn and understand all the programs because there are slight difference that enable you to do specialized things. Additionally, within the Adobe suite, you can spend months diving into all the programs and discovering that aside from Lightroom, you can often do the exact same things in Photoshop or Bridge and Adobe Camera Raw. Whether you’re new to Lightroom or have been using it for years, I think it’s important to realize that there are multiple ways to do just about everything in Lightroom. Lightroom has been my go to for photo cataloging and editing for the last 5 years. You can also find all of my photography gear recommendations here. Some product links are affiliate links but all are where I make my gear purchases.
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