Lightroom contains powerful tools hidden just below the surface. Knowing these can significantly improve your workflow, giving you more control over your images.
Coming to you from Mickey Pullen with Eastern Shore Photo Instruction, this insightful video highlights several underrated Lightroom tools, beginning with color profiles. Profiles aren't merely defaults to accept; instead, they’re customizable starting points. For example, hovering over the grid view quickly previews how each profile impacts your photo, making it easy to find the right look without blindly guessing. Another subtle tool involves the white balance eyedropper. Pullen points out an overlooked benefit—by glancing at the navigator window while hovering over different areas, you instantly see real-time color changes, greatly improving accuracy.
Pullen also sheds light on the targeted adjustment tool, both in the tone curve and color mixer panels. Instead of guessing how adjustments might affect your photo, this feature allows precise editing by directly clicking and dragging over specific colors or brightness levels. This direct manipulation ensures you’re adjusting exactly what you intend, streamlining the editing process. Similarly, the histogram provides quick adjustments to luminance by dragging sections directly, offering immediate feedback on shadows, midtones, and highlights. Combined with the option-key trick to visualize blown-out or crushed areas, this becomes an invaluable precision editing tool.
Another practical but lesser-known feature explained by Pullen is the enhanced resizing of Lightroom’s editing panes. With a simple keystroke, you can expand the width of your editing area, granting finer control over sliders and adjustments. Additionally, he covers sharpening in detail, emphasizing the masking slider, which restricts sharpening only to essential edges. This prevents unwanted texture or grain enhancements in smooth areas of the image.
Generative remove tools and the compare tool round out this helpful list. Generative remove allows precise object removal with quick adjustments using a brush-and-eraser system. If the edit isn't perfect, the option key offers quick corrections without redoing your entire selection. The compare tool, accessed with a simple shortcut, allows visual assessments of edits side-by-side or overlaid in various orientations. This tool gives immediate clarity on your adjustments' impact, helping you judge edits more objectively.
Pullen’s guidance demonstrates clearly how seemingly minor features can significantly improve your editing efficiency and precision. Whether you're tweaking color profiles, fine-tuning white balance, or making exact color adjustments, these lesser-known features offer meaningful improvements in your workflow. His practical advice and clear explanations provide actionable techniques you can immediately integrate into your process. Check out the video above for the full rundown from Pullen.
Great info for new photographers and refresher for the yes i know all. One thing not mentioned is in the tone curve if you are not so good at the selections on the curve and pushing and pulling on the curve if you just select the white S you will get sliders for Highlights and Whites also Darks and Shadows. The key for Shadows (for me) is the shadows in the lower portion of images, like a beach in the foreground in a astro Milky Way dark image. The four sliders make different part in the image that are not so global, like Highlights and Whites are at the top part and Darks and Shadow are at the bottom of the image. But another is after using sliders in the main section Global and image is not that bright you can go to the Tone curve shadows and can brighten the image. This really a time saver not knowing where to pull the curve.
Beware in the masking curve section there are no sliders when clicking on the white icon in the curve adjust, I wish Adobe would make sliders in the masking curve section.
Great tip on the tone curve. Thanks for adding it in comments!