New retouching tools in Adobe Lightroom 5

7 Tricks for Quick Portrait Retouching in Lightroom

Have you ever had a situation where you need to process a photo very quickly, but you don’t have time for additional portrait retouching in Photoshop? At such moments, a few tricks for processing portraits in Lightroom will come to the rescue.

1. Spot Removal

The first and most obvious action to improve the model's skin is to apply local Spot removal corrections (shortcut Q) on the Develop tab. To retouch the skin, select the Heal mode. I usually have Feather at the average value of 50, Opacity 100, change the brush size (size) as needed while working with the square bracket keys on the keyboard ([ - decrease, ] - increase).

If you work carefully, you will get a very good result in a short time. The rules for retouching are the same as when working in Photoshop. The size of the brush is slightly larger than the stain we are removing.

We use a brush only on a homogeneous surface and make sure that the sample does not fall on the contrasting edges of the image, otherwise we will get a lot of dirty spots instead of perfect skin.

Most often, Spot Removal has to be used to remove single pimples and blemishes, and not for such extensive retouching, but with practiced skills, anything is possible.

2. Clarity engine minus on large portraits

This technique will help you if the texture of the model’s skin is overly emphasized (harsh light, large pores on the skin, various cosmetic defects and imperfections). Everything is simple here: in the main settings, move the clarity slider to the left, focusing on your personal sense of proportion. We do it very carefully so as not to get that same “soap” that is talked about so much when discussing retouching.

3. Soften Skin mask to remove skin unevenness

Almost the same method as described above, but working more subtly. In local corrections (switch to this mode using the brush icon in Develop or use the K hotkey) there is a standard Soften Skin preset. Click Custom and see a drop-down list. Select Soften Skin and use a brush with ready-made settings to work on the areas of the skin that need to be corrected.

The advantage of using a brush is that you can use a separate layer to work on individual areas of the portrait where retouching is especially necessary. For example, a place near the wing of the nose, where the pores are slightly enlarged and a layer of foundation is visible.

4. Shadows in minus, Blacks in plus

This manipulation will reduce the visual contrast of shadows and highlights, so the skin will appear smoother. In some cases, these settings can frankly ruin the frame and make it look flatter, so use this technique very carefully.

5. Highligts are a plus, Whites are a minus

This method can help if the model's skin has oily shine or very harsh highlights, and the previous method with Shadows did not help much. The skin after this technique becomes matte, but the overall volume in the image is greatly lost, so know when to stop.

6. Raising the black point in curves

If the light in the portrait is too harsh, then you can raise the black point in the curves (lower left tail). At first glance, the method almost repeats the option of moving the black point (Blacks) to a plus, but you can achieve a special effect through your own curve settings. If there are strong highlights in the photo, you can also try lowering the white point on the curve slightly. The lights take on a grayish tint, but now this is often used as an artistic effect in processing.

7. Sharpening with a brush

All of the listed “quick” retouching techniques in Lightroom are in one way or another based on reducing contrast. That is, we deliberately “spoil” the photo, sacrificing the detail of the frame and achieving the effect of smooth skin. Additionally, to smooth out the shortcomings of the methods, you can restore sharpness to the eyes and other details with a brush with increased sharpness and clarity, shifted to plus. As with everything, the main thing is not to overdo it. Make sure that the sharpness does not turn into unpleasant graininess.

On the portrait of a girl taken as a sample, almost all of the listed processing options were applied.

Now the model’s skin looks softer and more radiant. Of course, such retouching is destructive (we partially lost the volume and texture of the skin), but if you do not plan to additionally work on the image in Photoshop, then the resulting result will completely satisfy the viewer.

The processing methods described above can be used individually and in combination with each other (the ideal situation is when the image is so successful that no special processing techniques are required). By tradition, I remind you that it depends only on you whether after processing the frame will become more expressive or will be hopelessly spoiled. Proper use of any tool is only possible with constant practice. Good luck!

Portrait retouching in Lightroom

As you master the art of photography, you may encounter the fact that your photographs may have small defects that require retouching. Lightroom can do this very well. This article will give tips on how to create a good portrait retouch.

Applying retouching to a portrait in Lightroom

Retouching is applied to a portrait in order to remove wrinkles and other unpleasant imperfections and improve the appearance of the skin.

1. Launch Lightroom and select the portrait photo that needs retouching.
2. Go to the "Processing" .

Evaluate the image: does it need to increase or decrease light and shadow. If yes, then in the “Basic” section, select the optimal settings for these parameters. For example, the light slider can help you remove excess redness or lighten too dark areas. In addition, with a higher light setting, pores and wrinkles will not be so noticeable.

Now to correct the complexion and give it a “natural” look, go to “HSL” - “Brightness” ( “Luminance” ) and click on the circle in the upper left side. Point at the area to change, hold down the left mouse button and move the cursor up or down.

Skin Smoothing from the drop-down menu . This tool smoothes the specified areas. Adjust the brush settings as you wish.

You can also try reducing the noise parameter for smoothing. But this adjustment applies to the entire photo, so be careful not to ruin the image.

To remove individual defects from a portrait, such as pimples, blackheads, etc., you can use the “Spot Removal Tool” tool , which can be called up with the “Q” .

Here are the key techniques for retouching a portrait in Lightroom, they are not that complicated if you understand everything.

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Retouching a Photo in Lightroom

In comparing the Movavi editor and Lightroom, I promised you to write an article on photo retouching in Lightroom. I'm sure many people are interested in this topic.

So, let's take one of the RAWs from the archive that I recommended earlier.

There are actually a lot of retouching methods, as well as tools for this task. The most basic thing to start with is getting familiar with the Stain Removal . This tool is similar to the Stamp tool in Photoshop.

Removing stains

The tool is very primitive and simple. Select “Spot Removal” or do it with the Q . We set the brush size we need, click on the problem area of ​​the skin and a second time click on the area of ​​the skin that is as similar as possible to the first, only without defects. How I did it:

Actually, that's all. Nothing complicated. But, this tool is usually used for spot retouching, not extensive.

Definition

If the model’s skin is the same as mine in the photo, namely very structural (harsh light, large pores on the skin, etc.), then in order to soften the skin, you can use the “ Clarity” .

Skin changes when using the Clarity slider (Click on photo to view)

The main thing here is not to overdo it, so as not to turn the photo into a complete “soap”.

Correction brush

The essence of this method is the same as the method above, but more accurate. Select the Adjustment Brush and the Soften Skin .

As we can see, this effect also uses minus clarity. Now we move the brush over the areas of skin you need (you can adjust its size).

Shadows and blacks

Another simple way of retouching, similar to “Clarity” , is to use two sliders, namely: “Shadows” and “Blacks” . The whole point of the method is to “Shadows” to a negative value, and the “Blacks” to a positive value. For example:

And the result. As you can see, this method is not so effective and cannot always be used.

Lightness

If your complexion seems unnatural, too light or dark, then we can use “HSL - Lightness” . This, by the way, is an ideal way to change the color in a photo for an entire object that is not one color.

So, we have already gone to the “HSL - Lightness” and see a circle with two arrows.

Click on it, go to the area that you want to edit, hold down the left mouse button and drag up or down, depending on what you want to do. Experiment.

That's all, if the lesson was useful to you and you want more lessons on retouching, put “+” so that I know what is interesting to you and what is not.

5 Useful Tools in Lightroom That Few People Use

In this lesson, we described several very useful tools in Lightroom, which for some reason many people do not use to edit their photos, and in vain.

Straighten Tool - Perspective Correction

Sometimes it happens that the horizon in photographs is tilted, making the composition awkward. Perhaps you were holding the camera incorrectly or simply did not pay attention to the frame at the time of photographing. Either way, you can fix this in Lightroom using the Straighten tool, which is located under the histogram and looks like a perforated rectangle. Or you can simply press the “R” key on your keyboard to activate the Crop and Straighten menu in the Adjustments module. When you do this, the image you are working on will be framed by a cropping edge. By holding the corners of the photo, you can rotate it as you see fit. Correcting the horizon line will be more accurate and easier.

Select the Straighten tool and draw a line to counter the linear surface in the photo. The longer and straighter the line, the easier it will be to align. In the photo below I didn't have a distinguishing line to help me decide where exactly to draw the line. So I used their shoe line as a guide. In this case, everything worked out well enough that I pressed enter to accept the changes. The only thing you have to remember when using this tool is that it may crop the edges a little, making the photo look compressed. If your photo that needs to be corrected is already quite compressed, then be very careful when using the Straighten tool.

HSL (Hue, Saturation, Lightness) panel

The color adjustment tool was a very interesting find for me. It allows Lightroom to determine the HSL for you, so you can monitor the changes and stop the moment you achieve the artistic result you want. I use this tool quite a bit, since all color adjustments to photos and additional elements such as skin tone are changed in Lightroom. This tool won't be ideal for retouching fashion photos, but for wedding, family, and landscape photos, it will give you more flexibility without resorting to Photoshop.

To activate the tool, all you have to do is tap on it and then tap anywhere in the photo where you want to make selective changes. In this photo I decided to highlight the color of the sky and add a little blue in the area I wanted to emphasize. You simply drag the tool up to increase the HSL or down to tone down a specific color of your choice. Remember that the color adjustment tool should be in the place where you want to make changes.

Along with using the white balance tool to adjust your skin tone, you can use the color adjustment for this purpose. But I must warn you that the changes will also affect other areas of the photo that contain the same color with which you are working. So don't overdo it.

Spot Removal Tool

Stain removal is another great tool that you can use to your advantage. It has come a long way from being limited to just a round shape to features similar to the Healing Brush in Photoshop. Although it is not as flexible as its Photoshop counterpart. But limitations aside, here's what you can do with it.

You can select Spot Removal by clicking on the icon, or press the “Q” key to activate the menu. There are two stain removal functions available to you here: clone and restore. Basically, this tool is used to replace the selected area with a similar one. If you're familiar with Photoshop, Clone is identical to the Healing Brush Tool for Replacement. I don't use it very often unless there is a clear purpose for it. But I use healing, and it is similar in functionality to the healing brush in Photoshop. It creates a very soft and smooth texture that blends well with the rest of the pixels in the photo.

In the photo below, I decided that the leaves in the bottom left corner were distracting enough that I didn't want to make them part of the image. Here's how I used the Stain Remover brush to get rid of them:

And here's the before and after:

You can use this tool to remove stray hairs, minor blemishes, and distracting items that aren't very difficult to remove. I use it to remove smudges and specks from photographs. Keep in mind that this tool will not work if you have a large area to work with.

Simply draw on the area that needs attention and instantly see how the tool reconstructs it and where the pixels came from. You can move the sample area and manipulate the tool as you wish. Here are the areas that were identified using the Spot Removal tool during the portrait retouching process.

Adjustment brush for Brightness, Dodge and Color Management

I use the adjustment brush in different cases. I can brighten shadows in certain areas of the photo without affecting the remaining shadowed areas. I can selectively boost color or sharpen without moving into Photoshop. Here are some examples of how you can apply it.

Select Adjustment Brush from the menu or press “K”. Select the area you are interested in by outlining it. In this case, I decided to increase the sharpness, brightness and intensity of the eye color.

You can't make every change with one brush stroke. It may take several attempts to achieve the desired result.

Here's a small example of how you can change your eye color:

Select the area you are interested in by outlining it. Click on Color in the Adjustment Brush panel. Select the color you want and experiment with opacity and saturation. Press Enter to accept the changes.

Gradient - filter

Basically, the Gradient Filter is used to balance or correct the exposure of large areas that cannot be effectively corrected using the Adjustment Brush. But you can also use it to create a special mood in your photos. You can successfully simulate a colored reflective surface, which usually happens when shooting through certain objects.

Below is an example of a planned shot that I think captures the feeling of warmth and summer. The photo was taken through a bush with yellow flowers.

Here's an example of how you can create a similar effect in Lightroom. Click on the edge of the photo and drag down to where you would like to create the effect. Once the filter is placed, you can select a color and use sliders to change saturation and other effects.

The good thing about the gradient filter is that you can make changes at any time, and the program will remind you what was applied before. So you can reuse the effect or create new settings. Plus, you can still copy-paste applied settings between different photos.

Here's another example of creative use of a gradient filter:

The processes described may not be as flexible as using Photoshop, but if you're dealing with a lot of photos and need a shortcut, these tips will work wonders. You can use these techniques for almost every type of photo!

Official release of Lightroom 5. What's new?

At the beginning of the second decade of June 2013, Adobe Systems Incorporated announced the start of sales of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5 for Mac OS X and Windows. It can be purchased either as a separate license or as part of an Adobe Creative Cloud subscription. Lightroom 5 offers new photo editing features and workflows. A free beta version of Lightroom 5 was first shown in April 2013.

What new does Adobe offer us in Lightroom 5?

Smart Thumbnails or Smart Preview

Now you can fully work with photos, even if the originals are on another computer, a removable hard drive, or on one of the many cloud services. When you import photos into Lightroom, you can create a Smart Preview and then store the original RAW photos on a removable hard drive, network drive, or cloud service. You can delete the originals from your computer. Then process your images in peace without worrying about free space on your computer's hard drives. After processing, you reconnect to the disk or cloud service, specify the location of the photos, and Lightroom restores the connection with the full-size originals. Now you can export photos in full size. For clarity, you can watch the video.

Improved retouching capabilities

The algorithm of the Spot Removal tool has undergone significant changes for the better. Now you can work not only pointwise, but also retouch complex areas of arbitrary shape. Just use a brush to paint over what you want to remove, and Lightroom will try to select the appropriate part to replace it. Also, the complete non-destructive operation of this tool has been preserved, in accordance with the Lightroom ideology. Below is a video showing how this tool works.

Radial filter

In addition to the usual gradient filter, the developers also added a radial one. It allows you to create effects like vignetting, and also has the full functionality of the Graduated Filter and Adjustment Brush tools. Select a circular (or oval) area in the photo, select the desired changes, they are applied to the entire photo except the selected area (or vice versa, only to it). You can watch a video of how it works.

Improved auto-correction of optical distortions.

Another significant innovation is a new family of functions for automatic correction of perspective and optical distortions, called Upright. These magic buttons are located in the Lens Correction tab. They are designed to automatically correct blocked horizons and verticals, as well as eliminate optical and perspective distortions when shooting with a wide-angle lens. In this case, it is advisable to first enable Enable Profile Correction, as well as removal of chromatic aberrations and auto-framing (Remove Chromatic Aberration and Constrain Crop). It must be said that in the full version of the program, the automatic distortion correction algorithms began to work much better!

Remember my ironic video about this innovation, where Lightroom could not cope with the littered horizon? Now it can be “buried”, but still let it remain as a reminder that it is premature to draw conclusions based on testing the beta version of the program. In the new video I use the same pictures that put the beta version into a deep stupor. Now you can see the difference.

Ability to view channel values ​​in LAB.

Personally, this small feature, invisible at first glance, caused me great delight! It’s called, we finally thought of it! Channel percentage values ​​were very inconvenient to use, both when assessing extraneous color shades and when performing artistic toning. Particularly great inconveniences arose when transferring the color harmony created using the Adobe Kuler online application to a photograph. Well, there are no channel values ​​in percentages! But there are values ​​in the LAB color model. Now everything will be much easier. Watch the video to learn where and how to enable channel mapping in the LAB color model.

Improved tools for books and slideshows

Also in the new version of Lightroom, the capabilities of layout of photo books and creation of slideshows have been improved. Now you can easily add page numbers to photo books, you can create custom templates, and you can use videos when creating slideshows (previously you could only use photos).

Full compatibility with previous version

Despite all the innovations, there were no fundamental changes in the image processing process, as was the case in version 4 compared to version 3, in the fifth version. Therefore, to fully study Lightroom 5, you can successfully use the training materials for Lightroom 4 . Checking the compatibility of presets for Lightroom 4 with the version of Lightroom 5 also revealed absolutely no problems.

35 lessons on working in Adobe Lightroom

Adobe Lightroom is a graphic editor designed to facilitate and automate the photo processing process.

If we compare Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop, the latter certainly wins in terms of the ability to apply various effects, processing, retouching and other modifications to photographs.

However, if the main task is to process more than 100 photos in the same style, tighten the white balance, remove glare, add the same effects, then Lightroom will cope with this task faster than Photoshop.

Lightroom ideology

This applies not only to Lightroom, but also to other converters and cataloguers, of which there are a great many.

Basic ideas for working in Lightroom:

– Sources remain intact
– Photo focus
– Basic tools always at hand
– Convenient cataloging

In this article, we have collected almost 4 dozen lessons that will help you not only master the basic capabilities of working in Lightroom, but also learn how to independently create presets for batch photo processing.

Lightroom from the Beginning - Lesson #1 Basic Settings

Lightroom from the Beginning - Lesson #2 (Tone Curve)

Lightroom from the Beginning – Lesson #3 HSL /Color /B&W

Lightroom tutorials (lightroom from the very beginning)

Complete Russian course on Lightroom

Last news

• Recover deleted photos. Deleted photos are now moved to the “Deleted” album, from where they can be restored within 60 days
• Import and play videos
• Additional search options. Look for photos at specific focal lengths, Raw and HDR images, panoramas, and depth map images. To do this, start typing “focal length:”, “type:” or “depth map:” and then select the desired option from the catalog suggested by the autocomplete function
• Improvements to the ChromeOS and tablet experience, including support for interactive tutorials
• [Premium] Action section. View all comments and ratings added to photos with access to Lightroom
• Bulk metadata editing. Change the title, caption, copyright, star rating and flag status for several photos at once
• ACR integration: support for new camera models and lenses in Adobe Camera Raw 11.4.1 (for a complete list of supported cameras and lenses, visit https://www.adobe.com/go/supported_cameras_en)

• Improved image quality when moving sliders for editing
• Fixed a bug that blocked the application when connecting to external drives
• Fixed an issue where some metadata was not included in exported photos
• Fixed an issue that caused styles to be hidden
• ACR integration: support for new camera models and lenses in Adobe Camera Raw 11.2.1 (for a complete list of supported cameras and lenses, visit https://www.adobe.com/go/supported_cameras_en)

• People feature: Find photos of people using the People tool, powered by Adobe Sensei. Lightroom CC automatically tags people in your photos, conveniently grouping all photos that include a specific person.
• Improved search function: When you enter text in a line, search options are displayed. You can search by camera model, lens, shutter speed, aperture, ISO, keywords, location, and more.
• Improved High ISO Photo Rendering: Photo processing is improved by rendering high ISO photos taken in low light with more natural color.
• Online Sharing options : Choose which photos to share (tagged only, rated photos, or other photos), and change the app's color theme right from Lightroom CC for Android.
• New tutorials: Processing photos for the first time, Targeted Adjustments and Guided Alignment tools.
• Better quality when shooting HDR.
• ACR integration: Support for new camera and lens models in Adobe Camera Raw 11 (see this page for a complete list of cameras and lenses supported by Lightroom).
• Fixed an issue where the application would crash.
• Fixed an issue where no changes were copied. This resulted in the inserted settings not matching the original photo.

• Sync styles and profiles: your favorite styles are always at your fingertips, on any device
• Create and manage styles: Create your own custom styles and easily save frequently used adjustments
• Healing Brush Tool: Fix blemishes and remove unwanted objects in your photos
• Guides feature (iPhone only): Step-by-step tutorials for using Lightroom CC
• Feature in development "Advanced HDR Support": Enable HDR shooting mode on compatible devices, which has not yet been officially tested and verified
• New Features Dialog: List of fixes and improvements in chronological order
• Sort By Rating: A new sorting option that lets you sort photos by star rating
• Significant bug fixes:
  • Import from Dropbox did not work on Android M and earlier
  • A service running in the background crashes on Android O
  • Color blurring in DNG images from LG devices
  • On devices with an interface in Arabic, the message "Unable to load version in development" was displayed
  • Could not detect SD card on device running Lollipop
  • Couldn't import images downloaded from WhatsApp
  • After launching the application, a blank screen appears for a long time

• Geometry tab, including Vertical Position, Controlled Vertical Position, and Geometry sliders. Get the perfect perspective by using tools to straighten horizontal and vertical lines, even in photos where the horizon line is not visible (premium feature).
• Adding watermarks during export.
• Use Google Assistant's Find Mountains in Lightroom CC feature to launch the Lightroom app and search for matching photos (requires Android Marshmallow or later).
• Add photos to Lightroom from your favorite apps that support sharing.

• Optimized for the new Google Pixelbook.
• HDR support for Samsung Note 8 and One Plus 5.
• Bugs have been fixed and the speed of the application has been increased.

• Selected Area Editing Brush - Selectively edit any part of your image.
• Smart Search - Adobe Sensei identifies objects in your images and automatically adds search keywords.
• Hierarchical collections - Nested levels help you create even more organized albums.
• Keywords - improve the search for relevant tags with keywords.

We've received a lot of positive feedback on the latest version of Lightroom for Android, which we've used as a basis to fix any bugs we might have. And now we are looking forward to new reviews!

• Fixed a bug that resulted in the application crashing on devices running Android O.
• A number of problems have been fixed, which has improved overall stability and increased speed.

We fully support Android! Experience a completely new user interface.