Seven Simple Photo Fixes with Adobe Lightroom CC Video Lecture | Adobe Lightroom CC: Photo Editing Masterclass - Design

hey everybody I'm Nathaniel Dodson from
tunt vidcom welcome right into this
Adobe Lightroom tutorial where today
we're gonna take a look at not five not
six but seven fixes for common mistakes
you're gonna run into or not mistakes
problems you're gonna run into with
photos in Adobe Lightroom these are
things that I think you'll find useful
if you're just an amateur or somebody
who shoots photos for fun maybe a
student just getting started in the game
or you're a rock-solid seasoned veteran
out there killing the game I think
you'll like this tutorial and if you do
like the tutorial make sure you
subscribe to my channel so you never
miss another Lightroom or photography or
Photoshop related video in the past
present or future and you can hit the
little bell icon to turn the
notifications on so you'll really never
miss a video
and that would be SuperDuper cool with
all that junk out of the way let's jump
into Lightroom and check this thing out
ah it's always such a great feeling when
you sit down to edit your photos knowing
that at some point soon you're gonna
have some really sweet photos to either
add to your portfolio share with friends
or send off to a soon-to-be very
ecstatic client well of course that is
if you don't find yourself vexed with
these frustrating things trying to
figure out Lightroom and how to correct
some common problems that you may run
into and in this video I'm gonna break
down seven common solutions that you can
use very easily in Lightroom and these
are solutions I find myself using very
often when working with my own images in
Lightroom and hopefully they'll be
useful to you so let's get started with
number one fixing under or over exposed
images now I know it sounds really lame
and very simple and it is but there's
some really cool stuff you can do here
so we're gonna start with a few
underexposed images here but these
principles stand true whether
underexposed or overexposed I've got
this shot of a few burgers from a food
joint I shot a number of years ago and
it's just a bit too dark for the
application I want to use it for this is
a classic case of when you just use the
plain old exposure slider and crank the
brightness right up I'm keeping an eye
not really on the image but on the
histogram above this stuff particularly
I'm looking to spread to the whole
histogram out all this stuff up here I'm
looking to spread the whole thing out
instead of having the majority of the
data clumped over on the left side of
the
histogram the left-sided histogram well
that's the shadowy parts of the image
the stuff on the right that's the bright
stuff there's not much of the bright
stuff here in this image there's just a
lot of the shadowy stuff we could have
been able to tell just from this
histogram that in all likelihood this
image was underexposed
I'm just looking here to have a much
more even dispersion of light throughout
this image and now checking out the
photo I can see that we have indeed
brightened it up quite dramatically
because we've cranked the brightness of
the entire image up we might need to
tone down some of the highlights in the
shot a little bit in this case because
we have very small concentrated
highlights we'll be better served using
the white slider to just fade them back
a little bit and take some of sort of
the the highlight bite out of the shot
and now we have a much more balanced and
bright photo and we can preview the
before and after of this image just to
see how much of a difference we've made
all right now also sometimes you'll have
an image like this one here where you
have extremes in darkness and bright
where right here at the edge of this
this building and the glass it's outside
and inside it's kind of dark so you get
these this extreme difference high
dynamic range going on here this is
another time when I would turn to the
histogram and one of the cool things
about the histogram here in Lightroom is
that I can just click and drag on the
histogram to target specific areas and
brighten or darken just that area so
here I'll grab the blacks and the
shadows and boost both of them and I
think I'll also grab the very brightest
areas and just reduce them a bit this
effectively will kill off most of the
contrast in the photo so we'll want to
use our basic contrast slider to boost
that back up again so I'll crank this up
until it looks good and you're gonna see
the saturation will probably get boosted
in all likelihood to an ugly degree use
the vibrance and saturation sliders to
tone things down a little bit if the
color seems a little blue which I think
it does in this case slide the
temperature slider toward orange a
little bit and further adjust the
saturation slider if needed again let's
just check out a quick before after and
we can see the changes that we've made
now here with this cityscape shot we we
have a similar issue where the
foreground is just far too dark
once more we would use our histogram to
drag that area of the image into the
type of brightness that we want to see
we may also have to here tweak the
exposures
and give this probably a little contrast
as well again if saturation becomes an
issue use that slide or just don't
things down a little bit and again here
let's check the before and after and we
can see that we've made a big change in
exposure now finally here with regard to
exposure sometimes you will get a very
bright Sun flare or here in my case I
just wasn't paying the best attention to
my flash up on a light stand and it
blasted my camera lens from here to
stinking next week but there's this
amazing tool in Lightroom it's called D
haze it's down under the effects tab it
works magic on photos like this as I
said just a second ago it's located here
under the effects tab I'm gonna drag the
haze up to 100 and really force
Lightroom to start working on this shot
it still doesn't look all that great but
you can see here I'll jump back up to
the basic tab and I'm gonna shift the
white balance to get rid of this
insanely heavy blue color cast and all
of the sudden we're gonna start seeing a
proper color image with heavy contrast
maybe too much contrast so I'll go back
down to D haze I'll tone it back to
around 80 85 % let's say and then I'll
play with contrast clarity and vibrance
here just to get a decent looking shot
the contrast slider and basic works
differently than the contrast we were
just getting because of D haze clarity
also works a little differently it'll
give us a nice mid-tone contrast but it
doesn't clear up haze like the D haze
option does and vibrance well that just
helps us tone down that kind of sticky
heavy / colored vibe we had going on
here in this shot okay moving along
number two this one's pretty easy fast
color correction in the basic tab you
have the giant eyedropper tool grab this
tool just click on it it picks it up and
then look for something in your photo
that should be white or light gray or
medium gray or dark gray or well you get
the point
gray has equal parts of red green and
blue if it is true proper gray it's not
a very dark green that would be very
dark green gray has none of that color
so if there is like a blue color cast in
your whole image something in the image
that should be gray is going to have
more blue than it should have and
therefore the whole image has this blue
color cast so if you look for something
in your photo that should be white or
gray or dark gray or even black Gray's
tend to work
better than blacks or whites though try
to stick with a gray just grab this tool
and click on that spot with the
eyedropper and Lightroom will
automatically correct your color so we
can do this here with the second photo
where obviously we know this guy's
boxing gloves well they should be black
not black with the bluish cast and I'm
gonna try to find not necessarily a
solid black area but I'm gonna prefer an
area that's kind of this dark gray or
nearly black instead of solid black and
using that tool and that technique we
get a much corrected photo all right
moving along to number three we can
correct the color cast manually
sometimes in Auto correction even when
it's targeted with something like the
mass of eyedropper tool it just isn't
enough I like to use a more advanced
technique in the curves tab I always use
the point curve not the parametric multi
slider version of the tool I just I
don't like it as much I don't think it's
as powerful now for this image you can
see and this is the case with a lot of
landscape type shots there's this heavy
blue haze near the horizon I'm gonna hit
the drop down menu here for the curves
and I'm gonna choose the blue channel we
want to start playing with the Blues now
if you don't know how curves works I
just did a tutorial on how curves works
in Photoshop just a couple days ago it's
a very quick video and it works the same
exact way here in Lightroom I'm gonna
link the tutorial here there'll be a
little pop-up that up in the top corner
this video player so you can check it
out and learn a little bit more about
curves if you're interested it's an
incredibly powerful tool I highly
recommend it now to keep this brief
you can see the histogram behind our
curve line and in this histogram is just
like the regular histogram just the blue
Channel not the entire composite RGB
image the stuff to the left is the
darker areas of the photo the stuff to
the right and that's the brighter stuff
in the photo now because we want to
attack the bluish haze by the horizon
we'll keep it stupid simple and we're
gonna grab the little targeted
adjustment tool right there in the top
corner of the curve panel and I'll click
right near the horizon and I'm gonna
pull downward to reduce blue until the
blue haze disappears but because yellow
is the opposite of blue you can see kind
of the rest of the image gets a bit of a
yellowish haze added to it and I don't
have anything personal against yellow
but we probably don't want this
yellowish haze on the rest of our image
well the beauty of the targeted
adjustment tool is we can click up in
the sky for instance to remove that
yellow haze and just watch our
line until it comes back to kind of its
original position over in the curves
dialog box and we can do the same thing
with the foreground or any darker areas
of the image any areas that aren't that
swath of blue and mid-tone area that
we're looking to reduce the blue from to
get rid of that haze at the horizon now
we can use the little tick box the check
box on the curves tab to just preview
this effect before and after and you can
see this is a great way to adjust color
that seems to be affecting only a
particular area of your image in fact
even making wholesale color changes and
color grading changes to your image
curves and the color channels and curves
are an amazing way to go really really
powerful stuff all right number four
targeting and adjusting isolated colors
so here I have this photo of this
African landscape we may feel the need
to either adjust the Orange dominated
foreground or maybe add some saturation
or shift the hue of the subtle blue sky
I'm gonna jump over to the HSL tab and
choose the all subsets so I can see my
hue saturation and luminance stuff all
in one fell swoop then I'm gonna choose
the colors that I want to play with so
I'm gonna change color with the hue
slider and change the intensity of that
color with the saturation sliders and
then change the brightness of the color
with the luminance slider so what I'll
do I'll begin with the oranges I guess
and I'm gonna make them a little more
yellow and then I'll go to the yellows
and make them a little more orange to
change the foreground up and I'll also
make the blue is more aqua to change the
way the sky looks and then I'm gonna
reduce the saturation of the oranges in
the foreground and I'm gonna boost the
saturation of yellow and then I think oh
I don't know I could boost maybe I'll
reduce the saturation of the Blues as
well just to change the sky even more I
know before we said we're gonna add
saturation to this guy whatever forget I
said that let's reduce the saturation
here and check this out
lastly I'll go down to the luminance and
I'm gonna boost the luminance of both
orange and yellows just to make a big
change in the foreground and I'll also
slide the luminance of the Blues down to
darken up the sky a bit just give a more
dramatic sky now as we complete these
changes you'll see some pretty big
differences which are only more easy to
see if I do a quick before and after
preview here I can use that same little
tick box check box to preview what's
happened here I do think I prefer the
original in this case
but the new one has kind of this cool
muted style that we made and we did all
those changes using only the HSL
adjustments isolating color and changing
individual colors here we used it for a
landscape but think about it if
somebody's wearing a bright yellow hat
and you want to tone it down or change
it to the color red you could come in
here and Target it and change it to
color red so a lot of really really cool
stuff you can do in HSL let's check out
another example here this is a very
practical use for this technique and
this is correcting sunburn so we can use
HSL to target the reds while also
playing with the orange channel to make
sure our skin tones remain as balanced
as we can keep them so here I'll first
shift the hue of the Reds toward orange
pretty far I'm gonna reduce the
saturation again of the Reds a bit and
then I'm really going to increase the
luminance of the Reds like way up this
is gonna really help blend the skin
while hiding the sunburn and all this is
just with a single color channel within
the HSL editor I could still play with
orange and yellow and tweak the skin
tone a little bit more but let's use a
little preview button here and toggle
before and after and we can see how we
very quickly corrected some extreme
sunburn now right number five
intensifying areas of a photo so one of
the fastest ways to quickly pump up and
sort of boom off' i an area of your
photo is by just grabbing the adjustment
brush right there beneath the histogram
and crank clarity up to around 45 set d
haze to around 5 and paint in more
crunchy details and punchiness where you
think your shot needs it so this shot
for the shot of these adult beverages
can you believe I have to call them that
for this shot we can hit the little tick
mark at the bottom of the adjustment
panel and we can see how much of a
difference this one little trick can
make look at all the detail that is
seemingly added right across the middle
of this shot really cool now here's
another example for something like this
photo well we already have a pretty
great sunset but can we make it even
more incredible using the same clarity +
D hazing trick we can use the graduated
filter tool and pull some tone into the
sky and I'll also use the graduated
filter I'm gonna change the settings
I'll go 45 clarity 5 D haze I'm gonna
pull it right down into the sky and as I
continue to look at the shot I think it
would would stand to improve quite a bit
if we boost the orange in the sky so
we're gonna push Orange temperature and
also shift the tint to add magenta up
there to the sky and then I think I'll
even pull the overall contrast up as
well I maybe even pump a little bit of
saturation into here and after you do
that we can even go a little further
let's go a little further and there's
this little color swatch down here near
the bottom of the adjustment panel
select that and we're gonna add a hot
pink color until it just makes the sky
jump with that that beautiful pink
orange sunset color that we all love so
much so again as we've done all day we
can just tick this filter on and off to
preview before after and see exactly
what kind of changes we've made here
alright number 6
leveling lens correction perspective
stuff a lot of important stuff that can
be really useful so to quickly level a
photo you can grab the crop tool there
and click on the level icon it literally
looks like a level tool and drag it
along any horizontal or vertical line in
your photo and Lightroom will shift the
crop so your photo will be perfectly
level just a very quick and easy down
and dirty little trick now here with the
shot I have over Philadelphia there's a
pretty severe tilt in the lens we can
even correct extreme shots like this and
this would be the same for if you're
standing at the base of a building
looking up and you got that weird
distortion that happens I'm gonna open
the transform tab and use the vertical
slider to swing this image as I think it
needs to be after I play with this a
little I'm gonna tick on the constrain
crop option to see what this photo
really looks like when we cut away all
the blank white background stuff I'm
gonna undo all that real quick because I
want to go ahead and show you some of
the other cool options here in the
transform panel we can choose to the
instantly level or instantly vertically
correct or both access with a single
click with these sort of six different
presets let's just go at the vertical
correction here because that's what we
know we need and once more tick on
constrain to crop boom looking good
alright so for our final simple photo
fix here in Lightroom this one is a very
general kind of all-encompassing tip if
all else fails go black and white so
sometimes you have an image that it just
didn't work out it's a little bit of a
mess maybe the colors didn't turn out
right or it's a touch out of focus just
it's not right maybe like the of a photo
of mixed light you can see this photo
here that I have is just a mixed light
it's a mess it's not at all what I
wanted
and with something like this just like
my personal mantra is again if all else
fails go black and white so we'll do
exactly that right here and see if we
can get something from the shot we're
gonna hit the B&W the black and white
button in the HSL panel and shift the
sliders around to change the way the
image looks and try to infuse a little
more contrast into this thing now
typically boosting the reds and yellows
will brighten up your skin tones which
is good to keep in mind just be aware of
the other yellow or red objects in the
shot and you also don't want to blast
somebody's skin to kingdom come
because then they start to look like a
very fake borderline porcelain doll it's
not a very good look now once I have a
base set I'm gonna jump back up to my
curves tab and make sure I'm working in
the composite RGB channel you just check
the drop down there and I'll drag the
black point on my curve upward a little
bit the bottom left corner of the curve
is the black point we'll drag that
straight up or just a little bit just to
give my absolute darkest bits of the
photo this sort of milky blackness and
then I'll add another point in my curve
a little above that on the curve line
and pull this new point downward just
until we reach to do reintroduce enough
you know kind of oomph to the darker
areas of the photo to know that we're
cooking with fire here I had a point a
little closer to the top of the curve
and pull this upward to boost kind of
that crispy snap we have on our
highlights and what we have in this
little formula is a way to convert
practically any image to a black and
white and get something decent out of it
a smooth yet high contrast black and
white image which will generally take a
mixed light shot a messy photo
distracting elements and just simplify
all that stuff simplify the image enough
to make all that stuff look pleasing or
at least usable once again and that's
gonna be it for this one so if you guys
enjoyed the video if you have thought it
brought you some value we'll consider
supporting the channel and pick up a
copy of my Photoshop course it's all
about how to retouch images in Photoshop
if you're a photographer if you do
photography if you like photography you
might just find something in there that
you really like and it helps support the
channel and for that hmm so thankful for
you
and if you don't want to pick up a copy
of the course well that's totally fine
too there's tons of other free tutorials
here on the channel go check them out
you can see you can see them all really
you can do whatever you want just take
the time and you could watch as many as
you like so
what is your favorite feature in
Lightroom do you have a favorite feature
in Lightroom is there something that you
particularly like Lightroom for share it
in the comments down below
just what's your favorite feature I
guess and for well all this different
stuff from correcting of the sunburn to
messing around with color and pushing
exposure and all the different stuff we
cover in this video guys that's it get
it got it good Nathaniel Dodson Tut
vidcom I'll catch you in the next one
and before you go make sure you
subscribe to my channel for more great
tutorials every day also by my course it
helps us do what we do and this channel
is supported by viewers just like you
you can also just click the thumbnail
and watch another video from this
channel see you next time guys