Using Lightroom: How to Elevate Your Images
If you’re a photographer or a social media marketer, using Lightroom can really up your photo quality and the impact of your images, find out how.
Are you looking to up your photography game?
If you are, this post is for you.
Editing and enhancement software like Lightroom can give your photos a unique edge. But if you’ve never used Lightroom before, you might not know what the big deal is.
We’re going to tell you! Read on for these top reasons you should be using Lightroom today.
Getting Organized with Lightroom
Whether you’re a beginner or an old pro, Lightroom can perfect for all skill levels. It’s especially useful if you’re shooting in RAW. This is a better file format as it captures more detail than JPEG.
You have to process RAW photos. So, you’ll need to learn how to use one of the software options if you don’t know how to already. If you don’t have any editing software, you shouldn’t shoot in RAW. You won’t be able to see them.
Organized Image Management
You can use Lightroom import to duplicate your images. You can have one for the catalog, and keep another as a backup.
You can ever do this in different formats. For example, RAW for the catalog and JPEG for the backup.
It’s easy to apply metadata and keywords to your images on import too. And you can apply any of the processing presets as well.
Allows Logical Workflow
The way Lightroom works is it’s made up of modules. These are:
- Library
- Develop
- Web
- Slideshow
You only will see features that made sense for the mode you’re working in at the time. This makes Lightroom quicker to learn, and it’ll be faster in practical performance.
You Don’t Lose Originals
A huge advantage is that your edits remain separate from your original photos. Unlike Photoshop, you’re never actually altering the photos themselves in Lightroom. So it’s non-destructive editing.
Lightroom records your editing history. This lets you return to any point in your editing and start over from that point. Or, you can press reset and start from the very beginning again.
You can create virtual copies and make alternative edits. Then you can compare the edits and keep the ones you like best. It won’t bog down your system either. These virtual copies only take up a tiny amount of memory.
Before and After Views
There’s also Lightroom’s before and after feature. In a single click, you can go back to see what you were working with before you started editing. Then back again to what you have now. It’s a good way to stop yourself from taking images too far.
You have 4 different views in Develop mode. These let you see the difference between your edited, adjusted, and original photos.
The split modes are especially useful. They’ll allow you to see changes to a single photo. You can drag the dividing lines to zone in on specific parts.
No Limit on Undo
Because lightroom acts more as a database, rather than a traditional image editor, Lightroom can undo everything you’ve done at any point. You do this by using the History panel, and it’ll work even if you exit the program and go back in.
Any graphic designer can confirm that with Photoshop, you only get 20 undos (or history states). And they’re only available during the current session. Close it, and your history resets.
While you can increase Photoshop’s number of undoes, it’ll eat away at your hard drive space and slow the program down. This is because it actually creates another copy of the photo every time you edit something. Yikes!
Over 2 Million Add-Ons
If you’re going to miss working in Illustrator and Photoshop, don’t panic. You can download thousands upon thousands of items from them to make you feel at home. These include:
- Fonts
- Add-ons
- Presets
- Illustrations
- Actions
With Envato Elements membership, you’ll have unlimited access to this fast-growing library. There are millions of creative design assets to explore.
Streamlined, Easy Cloning & Healing
With the Spot Removal brush, you can set it to healing or cloning. Healing with blend the surrounding pixels. Cloning will copy those pixels with no blending.
You can click, or click and drag to get rid of blemishes, power lines, wrinkles and so much more. You can even set the strength of these changes with opacity controls.
Batch Editing in Lightroom
The ability to apply settings from a single photo to several others is another huge benefit. This means that with the click of a button, you can do a quick and efficient edit to an entire session.
When you have edited a photo to how you like it, you can take those edits that you’ve made. You then apply them to the other images from that session that have the same exposure and lighting.
But it doesn’t end there. When you’ve applied those edits, you can still change or play around with anything you applied. You’re not stuck with the same edit settings if you don’t want them all to look exactly the same.
If you’re choosing to sync any of the filter options over several images, you might need to adjust them a little. Highlight the filter you used on each photo. Then select the PIN that appears, and move this effect around. If you’re cropped several images, you can adjust it on each image to better suit it.
You shouldn’t overlook batch editing in Lightroom. This will be a huge time-saver for those large sessions and multi-edit situations. Check this out if you’d like to find out more on how to batch edit in Lightroom.
Once You’re Using Lightroom You Won’t Look Back
As you can see, using lightroom can elevate your photoshoots to the next level.
Not only does it make managing your entire portfolio a breeze, it will also keep your original photos pristine. Every tool you could ever need is available through add-ons, and all of this can be applied to batches of images, saving hours when working with a full photoshoot.
If you found this article useful, be sure to check out our other blog posts.
