Here are a few quick shortcuts for using the Brush tool inside LIghtroom’s masking feature for those of you just getting into Lightroom (or if you’ve been using Lightroom for a while, maybe you forgot about these, or never knew these existed, or just wanted a refresher). Once you choose the Brush tool (click the Masking icon, and from the pop-down list of tools, click on ‘Brush’), the Brush cursor (as seen above) shows you the actual size of the brush (the smaller circle inside). The larger outer circle shows the amount of feathering [edge softening] applied to your brush. When you see a ..read more

If you travel with your laptop (like I do), you want to be able to sort and edit on your laptop, but then when you get back home, you want to have all those edits and sorting move over to Lightroom on your home computer. This process is way easier than you might think, and I’ll take you step-by-step through the process (again, much easier than you’d think). Here goes: STEP ONE: Once you’re back from your trip, and you’re done with sorting and editing your images on your laptop, right-click (Mac: Ctrl-click) on the Collection (or, in my case, the Collection Set) you made during your trip and ..read more

Hello, fellow photographers. I’m Dan Harlacher from ON1, the creators of some amazing photography apps and plugins! I’m excited to show you the new Quick Mask AI tool in ON1 Photo RAW 2024.5. This tool is incredibly powerful and makes background replacements super simple. To illustrate its capabilities, I’ll walk you through three examples, from simple to complex. I also created this short video outlining each of these steps! Example 1: Simple Background Replacement Let’s start with a straightforward example—a bird photo. The original background is dull and shot in low light, resulting in a no ..read more

It’s been a while since we’ve done a “Back up your Photos” Monday, and if you’re a Lightroom Classic user, this day is for you. However, beyond that, if you’ve watched my SLIM System online course [Simplified Lightroom Image Management system], you know I’m always encouraging Lightroom Classic users to make sure they have a backup of your backup on a separate external hard drive (ideally in a separate location), because if your backup dies, well…you have no backup. So, in the spirit of “Backup Your Photos Monday,” I thought I’d share how I make a backup of my backup external hard. To keep my ..read more

There are a couple of things you can do to really make your fireworks images pop (no pun intended), and we take you through the post-processing step-by-step in this episode of ‘The Grid” below. We start the editing at around the 32-minute mark (the first part was about shooting fireworks), so if you get a chance, check it out below – it can really make a difference. Hope you have a wonderful holiday weekend. -Scott P.S. I’m joining a team of incredibly talented instructors as a part of the Muench workshop’s incredible trip to Antarctica and they are running a summer speci ..read more

It’s the Object Masking Tool – I use this one daily – I can’t tell you how much easier it has made my Lightroom life, yet it’s one of the least talked about tools in all of Lightroom. Check it this short video below, and you’ll see why: That is one flippin’ handy tool, right? Have a great Monday, everybody! -Scott The post This Lightroom Tool Does Not Get The Love It Deserves! appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips ..read more

I’ve been doing a series of in-depth photo guides for travel photographers for KelbyOne, and I’ve done it for locations all over the world (Paris, London, Lisbon, Rome, New York, Tuscany, Venice, and more), where I share the best places to shoot, the GPS coordinates; I show images from each location and give as many insights as I can. I did one for Chicago as well and one of the locations I talked about was a parking garage where you can shoot down on an intersection of the “L” (Elevated trains). When my co-host for the course, Larry Becker, saw the behind-the-scenes shot of me taking the sho ..read more

Don’t panic! It is not unusual to hear reports of some or all photos seemingly going missing after a new version of Lightroom Classic comes out that requires the upgrade of a copy of your catalog. The release of Lightroom Classic 13.3 required a catalog upgrade as part of the process of using this new version of the software. When this happens, Lightroom Classic creates a copy of (what it thinks is) your working catalog, and then upgrades that copy to work in the new version, then opens with that upgraded copy. If Lightroom Classic opens and all seems exactly the same as when you last quit the ..read more

This is just a quickie, but it shows how a little masking goes a long way. Above: Here’s the raw image out of the camera. Here’s a link to download the Raw image if you want to follow along: 2T3A0962.CR3_Download STEP ONE: The image is a little crooked, so head to the Transform panel (called the Geometry panel in the cloud version of Lightroom), and under ‘Unright,’ click on Auto (as seen here). By the way – you generally get better results from Upright if you first apply a Lens Profile in the Lens Correction panel (called the ‘Optics’ panel in LR cloud), but since the photo was taken with a ..read more

In the May update we saw the Lens Blur feature graduate from early access to a full-fledged feature, and with that came a set of adaptive presets for applying lens blur. We’ve seen other forms of adaptive presets in the past, such as those for portrait, sky, and subject. Added to the Presets panel is a new group for blurring the background. Adaptive presets utilize the AI-based subject detection capabilities to select or mask the target subject and then apply settings to the masked area. With the new lens blur presets it will attempt to detect the subject and then apply lens blur settings to ..read more