Blogging 101: Photo Editing with Lightroom

I’m going to say exactly what I said in my editing with Photoshop post first. Which is I would always recommend shooting in RAW format with a DSLR camera. You can use any type of image in Lightroom, but RAW files help to create a higher quality image as it’s more precise to edit before converting to a JPG file.

First things first is importing your images. Once the image you want to edit is in your Library, you can choose to be in the develop tab which lets you edit.

Tones, Exposure and Contrast

Similar to photoshop, you can edit your tones, contrast and exposure of your images. I always, always, always increase my contrast as I like my images to pop just a little bit more. I then fiddle around with my light and dark settings to find the right brightness for the image.

You can also edit you tone curve, which I usually ensure is in a vague s shape to make it have some contrast between dark and light, whilst also looking real. Lightroom’s settings has most of the light settings together, and it is always a worry that you will edit it a bit too much so it doesn’t look nice anymore.

Temperature, Clarity and Vibrance

In Lightoom you can also change the temperature, clarity and vibrance. Each of these effects the image slightly differently but helps the overall effect to make the image pop. Temperature is also important if your original image is already too warm or cool toned.

Copying Edits and Creating Presets

Lightroom has an awesome function where you can copy the edits you’ve made to an image and replicate them on another image. This is great if you have a batch of photos which need the same lightening or darkening edits to be optimal for your style of photos.

By using the Develop > New Preset option, you can also create your own presets if you’re aiming for a particular branded look. This is what a lot of bloggers use for their Instagram images to have a themed look throughout their feed.

History

Note that you can see your history of edits at all times! Above where the copy button is, you can see what you’ve done and you can go back to previous versions of your image. This is super helpful if you create an image you love but then you keep going and it slowly starts going downhill because you’ve done too much!

It’s Not All About Editing

As you can see in the before and after above, you can vastly change the lighting to be how you want it to be. But there’s always a risk of overdoing it as well. With Lightroom, there’s often a process of trial and error to find the right look for your images. It also helps to take good photos in the first place, the photo I used had poor lighting, so when I made the white surface look as white as I wanted it to be, it looks extremely fake. But if I had used my soft box light, it would have made the edit easier to make whiter, and it would have looked better.