3 Lightroom Tricks That Will Change How You Edit Photos

Lightroom is a fairly straightforward and simple piece of software to get your head around. But, like anything, there are always shortcuts and tricks you can use to improve and streamline your workflow. In this 6-minute video from Travis Transient, try out these 3 top tips for making Lightroom life flow more smoothly.

Here’s a quick rundown of the tricks discussed (watch the video above to see how they’re done and what they do):

1. Accurate Brush Strokes

Masking and selecting areas using Lightroom’s brush tools can be a little tricky to get absolutely perfect over edges. But just hold down the Cntrl or Cmd key (Windows or Mac) and Lightroom will “snap” to the edges as best it can.

2. Sharpen Your Sharpening Adjustments

The Alt key is quite magical in Lightroom. It does a whole host of things; in the case of sharpening, it helps you concentrate your efforts only on the areas that need it.

Holding down the key whilst moving the Mask slider will turn the picture black and white, highlighting the edges which are going to be sharpened. This way you can remove blank background areas immediately from the selection.

Holding the same key whilst moving the sharpening slider turns the image temporarily black and white, allowing you to better see the actual sharpening in effect.

3. Use Dehaze to Highlight Problems

The Dehaze tool, found under the Effects panel in the Develop window, will let you spot any sensor dust marks. It also makes fringing more evident, allowing you to help Lightroom remove it using the Defringe tool.

You can also open up the spot removal tool and tick “Visualize Spots” at the bottom of the window. This will also highlight dust spots for you.

You can find more helpful tutorials by Travis Transient by following his YouTube channel.