Now on to photo editing, so in order to edit our photos, we're going to be needing Lightroom and Lightroom
is an awesome free app that I used to edit all of my photos.
So in order to get it, just go to the App Store.
And then in the search bar, just type in Lightroom.
And then just click on the light room up at the top.
And then you'll see it right here, Adobe Lightroom, photo editing, and I've already downloaded before,
so I've got a little cloud symbol there, but you might have something that says get.
So just go ahead and click on that.
And then it's just going to download to just give it a second.
And then whenever it's done, just click on Open.
And then you can just go ahead and click on the skip button down at the bottom, right?
And then it's just going to ask you to sign it and now you can do this and just create a new account,
whether that's where the Dobi, Apple, Google or Facebook and I've already got an account.
So I'm just going to go ahead and sign in.
And then you're just going to want to give Lightroom access to all of your photos.
So first things first, we're going to want to import a photo, so to do that, just click on the little
picture with the plus button down at the bottom.
Right.
And then just import from cameral.
And then just select the photo that you want.
And then you can just click on the check mark up at the top, and that's going to add that to all photos
and we've got all photos right here, so we can just go ahead and click on this.
And then you can see the photo right there and then just click on it.
Now, here's where all the fun begins now if you have the free version of Adobe Lightroom, then selective
and healing down at the bottom left are going to have little stars on them, meaning that you have to
pay for them in order to use them.
And now they're unlocked for me because I have a paid account.
But honestly, you don't need them in order to create a beautiful photo at it.
So we're just going to go ahead and skip those for now.
And it really the first thing that we're going to be getting into is the light tab.
So I'm just going to scroll over and you'll see light right here.
We can just go ahead and click on that.
And then it's going to say, hey, help is there whenever you need it, but that's what I'm here for.
So let's just go ahead and close out of that.
Now, the first thing you've got is exposure, which is basically just how bright or how dark that you
want your image to be.
So if your image came out a little bit too dark, you can give it a little bit more brightness and kind
of neutralize the photo.
And then you've got contrast.
Now, contrast, whatever you drag it all the way to the right is going to make your shadows a lot darker
and it's going to make your highlights a bit brighter and it's going to create a real light and dark
effect.
And then if you go all the way to the left, it's going to neutralize the image and kind of flatten
it out.
It's going to grow it out a little bit.
And there's not as much contrast between the lights and the shadows now.
So what I like to do is just give it maybe a little bit of extra contrast and then you've got highlights
and highlights is basically the brightest parts of your image.
So anything that's really white, like the snow on these mountains or the clouds up in the sky.
So if you drag that all the way to the right, it's going to brighten those up a bit.
And then if you drag it all the way back, it's going to darken them out and it's going to expose a
lot of detail in the snow.
You can see there's a lot of dirt in that snow and it's going to show a lot of that.
So I honestly like to give it just a little bit of highlight pop just like that.
And then you've got shadows and shadows is basically the darkest parts of your image.
So like the trees in the foreground.
Now, if I drag them all the way to the left, it's going to darken those trees up a lot.
It's going to look really contrasty.
But if I drag them all the way to the right, it's going to expose a lot of detail behind the shadows
and those trees, which is really cool.
So you can bring out a lot of detail in your photos if they're ever too dark.
The shadows function is fantastic.
So I actually am going to give it just a bit, maybe like that, maybe a little less.
And then you've got whites and blacks and whites and blacks is basically just an extra boost for these
light and dark areas of your image, they work of very similar.
So if you drag the whites up, everything is going to get a bit brighter.
That's white and then vice versa if you go the other way.
And then same with blacks, it's going to kind of pop out your shadows a little bit more, just like
the shadows function.
It's just not quite as much as using shadows.
So to be perfectly honest, I don't really touch whites and blacks very much.
I only really focus on highlights and shadows.
And then the next most important tab that we have is the color tab.
So I'm going to go ahead and click on that.
And you can see we've got several different options here now.
And here we've got temperature.
You can see that this is obviously a sunset and it's very orange.
Now, what I could do is correct for that just a little bit by adding a little bit more blue.
Just a bit.
And that's going to neutralize the image a bit more so you can see if I hold my finger down, that's
what it was before and then after, it looks a lot more neutral now.
It does depend on whatever style you want to go for.
So if you like the sunset, you can even add a little more orange if you want to.
But the temperature slider is mainly for correcting as well as the tint, so if there's a lot of green
hues in this photo, I would want to give it a little bit more pink and then that's really going to
add to the sunset as well.
But what really is happening is you're correcting for white balance and white balance is basically just
the lighting conditions that you're shooting in might cause your photo to be really orange and kind
of look a little warm.
And that's when you're shooting maybe indoors with tungsten lights that are really orange and hue,
or maybe you're shooting around sunset and everything gets really orange.
If you wanted to add a little bit more blue to your photos and make them a little bit colder to kind
of neutralize, you can add a little bit more blue with the temperature slider and then you've got vibrance
and saturation.
Now I'm going to explain saturation.
First saturation basically just means you're boosting all of the colors in the photo.
So when you drag it all the way to the right, it's going to make all the colors pop a lot more the
blues, pop the greens, pop the purples, everything.
And when you drag the other way, you're basically creating a black and white photo.
You're taking all the color out of the image.
So if you want to give your your photos a really nice boost, you can use saturation.
Now, what I like more is actually vibrates and vibrates is a smart form of saturation.
Vibrance is going to take all the colors that need to be popped and it's going to pop them.
And then any colors that it already recognizes are pretty bright.
It's not going to pop those as much.
So it's a much more even way to add some more color to your image.
So I am going to pop this a bit, maybe just a little bit like that.
Whenever you're using anything in Lightroom, less is always more.
You don't want to go too crazy because if you throw a lot of it in there like that, the whole image
kind of looks broken and overprocessed and really doesn't look good.
Now, if you want to undo anything at all, you can click on this button up here at the top and that's
going to undo whatever your last change was.
Now, a cool function within the color tab is the mixtape.
So we're going to go ahead and click on Mix.
And this basically means that you can edit individual colors and their saturation and their hue within
the photo.
So let me show you an example.
I'm going to take the blues in this photo by clicking on the blue.
And you can see if I drag the huge slider all the way over to the left, it's going to create more of
a cyan colored sky, which is pretty cool.
Looks really unnatural if you go too far.
But if you give it just a little bit, it can just add a little bit of a different blue.
And then the other way you can make it really purple if you drag over here, but it's only affecting
the blues within the image.
And then you can also affect the saturation of just that color.
So if I wanted to just boost all the blues, I could do that without boosting any other color.
But I kind of like them the way they are.
So I'm just going to go ahead and live it.
And then same with the luminance.
This is basically how bright that one color is.
So if you wanted it to be really bright, you could make all the blues really bright almost to a white.
And then again you can make them really dark and expose a lot more detail in those blues.
Now, I'm going to do just a little bit of a negative 10, maybe luminance on the blues.
And then if I wanted to do the Greens, I could click on Green and I could change all the hues of the
green.
So if I drag all the way this way, you can kind of see it.
They're getting a little bit darker green.
And if I drag this way, it's a bit more orange.
You can see it in the trees there, which is pretty cool.
Now I'm going to make them a little bit more green because I took this photo in Seattle and it's really
green over there.
It's beautiful.
So I'm also going to pop them with the saturation a little bit.
Maybe just like that, then you can also play with the luminance as well.
But to be honest, it doesn't do a whole lot for those greens.
So I'm going to go ahead and just leave it.
And you can do this for any color in the scale, which is really cool.
I love the mix tab.
I use it literally for every single photo that I edit.
So then just go ahead and click on Done.
And then you've got the grading tab right here, which is within the color tab.
Just go ahead and click on that.
And it's going to try to give us a little bit of a tutorial, we're just going to exit out of that.
And this is basically assigning a color to the shadows, the mid tones and the highlights separately.
Now, right now, we're on the shadows.
You can see that I've got the button clicked on the shadows.
And if I want, I could add a color to those shadows, so let's just do it a little bit more drastically,
like let's say a red or like a green, something like that.
You can see that the shadows are mainly what's affected.
Now, this is a cool way to get like an old film look, you could add a little bit of red to the shadows
and then you've got the mid tones, which I'm not really going to touch very much, but basically the
same thing.
You can assign a color to them and then you've got the highlights.
So if I wanted, I could add maybe a little more blue to the highlights like that.
Or I could add some yellow, whatever I really want to do, I think blue probably looks the best.
And now this photo has a cool film.
Look to it.
So if I click on Done.
And then I just hold my finger down on the image, it's going to show us what it looked like before
and then when I let go, it shows the new one.
So it's a really cool way to get this old film.
Look, now, I'm not going to keep that.
It does look cool, but I'm going to go ahead and undo and we're going to go back to where we were.
Now, the next tab is called Effects.
So let's just go ahead and click on that.
And in here, you've got a few different options.
Now, the first thing is texture.
So basically, when you drag the texture slider up, it's going to sharpen your image a lot and give
it kind of some rough edges.
But to be honest, I don't really use it a whole lot.
If you drag it the other way, it kind of softens it up.
And there's a reason I don't use it very much, and it's because I like clarity a lot more.
Now, if you drag clarity up again, it's going to kind of sharpen your image, but it's also going
to add some more contrast to it and it's going to make it look more chiseled.
So if you want, like a really chiseled look to it, kind of grungy, you can drag it up.
And if you want more of a soft, dreamlike photo like that, it's really hazy and soft.
You can do that as well.
But again, I kind of like it the way it is.
I'm just going to go ahead and leave it.
This image is already pretty textured and contrasty, so I'm not going to add much more clarity to it.
But I love the clarity slider.
I use that one a lot.
And then you've got deejay's, which is basically just going to get rid of fog or any haze that's in
your photos.
So if you drag it up, it's going to get rid of all of it.
But it's also going to kind of break your image a little bit.
So you want to do just a barely like a little bit with this one.
You don't want to go too far.
And then the other way it's going to add haze.
So if you drag left, it's going to add a lot more haze, make it look more foggy and cloudy.
But I'm going to go ahead and leave it.
And then you've got the vignette.
And the vignette basically means that you are darkening or lightening the corners of your image, and
this really helps draw the attention towards the middle.
So if you're taking portrait photos of people and you want people to lock onto their face instantly,
then I highly suggest using a little bit of vignette.
So let me show you for a jog to the left, it's going to darken the corners of the image you can see
like that.
Now, again, less is more.
If you're going to do this, just add a little bit and it's going to draw your eye towards the center
or you can make them white like this.
But to be honest, I never use the white.
I don't really think it looks that great.
But you can if you want to.
But again, it's really great for photographing people to add a vignette and then whatever you do out
of yet, so let's just add a really strong one just so I can show you.
If you go down to midpoint and you drag that over to the right, it's going to push the shadows all
the way out to the corners.
So it's going to be a lot less.
Or if you drag it to the left, it's going to bring it way into the middle so you can kind of control
how much of that vignette you want.
And then you've got feather, so if I drag the feather all the way up, it's going to really smooth
out that transition from dark into your photo.
And if you drag it all the way to the left, it's going to sharpen it up to a complete circle.
Now, obviously, this looks ridiculous, so you don't really need to do that.
I think more feather is better.
So I'm going to give it a little bit more feather.
And then you've got roundness.
Now I am going to drag the feather back down just so I can show you, if you go over to roundness and
you drag it to the left, it's going to turn into more of a square.
And then if you jog to the right, it's going to turn into more of an oval.
Now, I think more of an oval is a bit better, so I'm going to keep it around there.
And then again, showing that feather way up.
And then I'm also going to go over to Vignette and just make that a little bit less, maybe just like
that, I just want a tiny bit of vignette and then you've got the detail tab.
So let's go ahead and click on that.
And here you've got sharpening.
So if your image came out just a little bit too blurry or out of focus, you can save it a little bit
by dragging up on the sharpening.
And that is just going to sharpen up every tiny little edge in your photo and just make it a little
bit more crisp.
Now, I'm not going to do that with this photo because it already came out in focus.
And then you've got radius detail and masking, which are just extra adjustments for sharpening.
But to be perfectly honest, I never use them.
You can drag them around and it really doesn't seem like they're doing anything.
So I just don't touch them.
But if you scroll down, you've also got noise reduction.
So with digital photos, there's always the risk that you have a little bit of noise in your shot,
especially in the shadows where areas are a lot darker.
And sometimes whenever you zoom in on an image, noise can look like this.
This is a very zoomed in picture of noise and it's basically just a bunch of pixels crowding around
your image.
So that's what this noise reduction filter does.
It can really take out a lot of those little pixels and smoothing out the image.
So the next tabs that we have are optics.
And this is just for lens corrections.
To be honest, I never really use it.
But if you had a photo in here that was maybe taken on a GoPro really wide angle and you want to kind
of flatten it out a little bit, you can use this tab and then geometry, if you click on that, is
really just to distort the image a little bit.
You can drag on these sliders and you can kind of correct it that way as well if you have a GoPro style
photo or you can correct top to bottom, left or right, whatever you want to do.
But again, to be honest, I really don't use this tab very much.
But one that I do use a lot is the Presets tab right here.
So let's just go ahead and click on that.
And in here, if you click on The Color right here, you can see you've got a few different categories
of presets that you can apply to all your photos, color, creative, black and white and so on.
So four in color, you can choose any one of these and it's going to apply a preset onto your photo.
So it kind of does a lot of the editing for you.
And you can go over to creative and you can do some of these little more desaturated.
I really like the look at that one a lot.
So if you hold down, you can see what it was before and then what it would be now, turquoise and red.
There's a lot of cool options in here.
And you just click on the creative right here and you can switch between all of the different categories.
And you can also make your own presets with all the settings that you apply to one photo and then you
can save them as a user preset.
But I'm going to talk about that in the next lesson.
So I'm going to go ahead and hit the X because I don't want to apply any of these presets.
And if you go over two versions right here, you can create different versions of this photo so you
can try out a bunch of different edits.
And each time you get an edit done, you can just click on create version and then you can just give
it a name, which I'm not going to do right now.
But it will create a version of this photo.
And then down here you can go through all the different versions and see which one that you like the
most.
And if you want to reset your photo, you can just click on reset and then you can reset just the adjustments.
You can reset all or all the way back to when you first imported the photo.
So if you wanted to start from scratch, you can use the reset button.
And if you want to export a photo to your camera so that you can post it on social media or whatever
you want to do, you just click on little box with the arrow coming out of it and then you just click
on Export to Cameral.
And this photo is successfully exported, so if you go over to your cameral, you can find it there.
Now, Lightroom does have a lot more features to it, but everything that I've shown you in this lesson
is what I personally use every day to edit my photos.
But if you do want to learn this app inside and out, I do have an entirely different course.
That's all about Lightroom Mobile that you can find on my instructor page.