Give this one a try, and you’ll super dig it.

Thanks To Everybody Who Join Us For Photoshop World 2024

The conference wrapped up yesterday (Hurricane and all), and I’m very grateful to all the folks who spent 3+ days with us learning, and laughing, and making friends. The weather here proved to be a challenge, but our team did an amazing job of keeping the trains on the tracks. I’m very grateful to Erik Kuna, Ron Ducan, Christina Sauer, Jason Stevens, Eric Hathaway, Juan Alfonso, Dobson “Gibmaster,” Kathy P (K-Pop), and our whole crew, who worked through it all and delivered an amazing conference with lots of “Lightroom learnin’.”

Here’s wishing you a safe, dry weekend. #GoBucs, and #RollTide!

-Scott

The post How To Turn Any Collection Into a Favorite appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.

It’s the longest I’ve been away from home (and work) – a whole month, and while I had an absolutley fantastic time, it’s great to be back.

First, I taught a workshop in Norway, then after a few days with some dear friends in England. After that my wife flew over to London to meet me, where we boarded a cruise ship for a trip around England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, and Northern Ireland, and back to Norway to celebrate our 35th wedding anniversary.

I put together a Web page (using Adobe Express) with some of my favorite images from before the workshop (during our scouting days) and then from the workshop (including lots of behind-the-scenes images). Lots to share and the story behind it all, if you’ve got a sec.

Here’s a link to the images: https://new.express.adobe.com/webpage/r3WsEHRGQfqdj

Thanks for giving ’em a quick look.

It’s great to be back, and I’ll be hitting ya with some more Lightroom tips later this week.

Cheers,

-Scott

The post I’m Back From Norway (and here’s some photos) appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.

I’m up here with my dear friends (and KelbyOne Instructors) Mimo Meidany and Dave Williams, doing a hands-on travel photography workshop for 12 photographers from the US and UK, and we are already having a ball.

ABOVE: That’s Mimo, me, and Dave somewhere in Lofoten.

Yesterday and today, we have just been scouting locations all over Lofoten for the workshop. Then, the workshop kicks off tomorrow night at a great local restaurant where we’ll have a tasty dinner as a group and lots of wine, then we’ll give our first official briefing for the next day’s shooting adventure. I just cannot wait! This place is just otherworldly. Indescribable beauty (right now, there is a little bit of rain, too – but with any luck, it will have mostly moved on by tomorrow afternoon. At least, that’s what we’re hoping).

So, not much Lightroom stuff to share today, so I’m hoping Rob will sweep in and save the day with this column (as he so often does), but I just wanted to say hi to everybody and here’s wishing you a week of great images, no matter where you are.

-Scott

The post Howdy, From Norway’s Lofoten Islands! appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.

Super handy stuff – the masking tools are a real game-changer. Thanks, Terry.

Have a great Monday, ya’ll.

-Scott

The post Using Lightroom’s Masking Tools for Adjusting Clothes and Facial Hair appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.

She. Is. Awesome, and her courses are brilliant! Here’s a link to her 12 (that’s right, twelve) full-length KelbyOne courses. You can buy any one of them for $29 or join, become a member, and watch them all).

Thanks, and have a great weekend, everybody (and yes, football is back!).

-Scott

The post Awesome Video on Enhancing Portraits in Lightroom appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.

Let me know if you agree, disagree, or if you’re dealing with noise in a different way, etc., down in the comments.

The Photoshop World Conference 2024 is coming up next month!

It’s back again on Sept. 24-26, 20204, and it’s three full days, multiple training tracks, all online, featuring your favorite Photoshop World instructors and the Photoshop World experience, complete with an opening keynote, the attendee party, the Guru Awards — the whole nine yards and it’s going to be awesome! Don’t miss out – register now and save a ton on your ticket. Go to PhotoshopWorld.com and save your spot for the Lightroom, Photoshop and Photography online event of the year.

Have a great week everybody – I’m taking a few days to take my awesome wifey on a trip to celebrate her birthday, but I’ll be back shortly (well, if all goes well. LOL!). Have a great week!

-Scott

The post Some Straight Talk About High ISO Noise (and dealing with it) appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.

If you do regular backups of your catalog (and I’m hoping you do when you see that dialog above, which appears when you quit Lightroom Classic), it will make a COPY of your entire catalog. Each time you hit that ‘Back up,’ it makes yet another backup copy. Sure, it compresses that backup quite a bit, but still…those backups can get really large in file size. Worse yet, after a couple of weeks, they’re so outdated that those older ones become useless anyway.

If you did wind up with a corrupt catalog (rare, but it can happen), you would restore from your most recent backup, right? So, what are you doing with all those old updates from months ago, years ago? Nothing. They’re just eating up space for no reason, and that’s why today, Friday, is the perfect day to “Delete your old Lightroom backup catalogs.”

Look inside your Lightroom folder (the one where your catalog(s) are stored) (mine was inside my Pictures folder on my Mac), and look for a folder named “Backups.” Inside that folder, see if you don’t have a whole bunch of backups that are way out of date (as seen above) and just eating up hard drive space for no reason.

If you don’t see a folder named ‘Backups,’ that’s because you don’t have any backups (ack!), so if disaster strikes (your catalog gets corrupted), you will be starting over from scratch in Lightroom. For more information on backing up your catalog, check out this article we did on backing up your catalog (why you should and how to do it), and hit this link.

I still had some old backups from June of 2023 hanging around. If somehow my catalog got corrupted, I would want to use a backup from Late July of 2024—not one from a year ago and so on. So those outdated backups are doing just one thing—eating up space. Now’s the time to pitch ’em, seeing as it’s ‘Delete Your Old Catalog Backups’ Friday!

I hope that this process frees up some space for you. If you looked in your Lightroom folder and didn’t even see a folder named ‘Backups,’ maybe it made you quit Lightroom. Then go and hit that ‘Make Backup’ button so you at least have one on hand in case disaster strikes.

Here’s wishing you a “Football’s almost here” type of weekend!

-Scott

The post It’s ‘Delete Your Old Lightroom Backup Catalogs” Friday! appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.

Above: Here’s the image we’re going to work on, and while there are a number of things I would probably remove along that left wall, I’m mostly concerned with that bright spot at the bottom of the stairs, right in front of the vase (it looks like a light beaming through kind of a crescent-shaped opening.

STEP ONE: We head to the Develop Module and I’m going to zoom in tight on the area we’re working on. Next, I click on the Remove Tool in the toolbar (it’s shown as circled here in red. Its icon looks like an eraser). Then, I painted over the bright spot with the tool, as seen above).

STEP TWO: And here is the result, which is pretty bad, but that’s often what you get with this tool (at least, that’s been my experience. Sometimes, it works pretty well, as long as what you’re removing is really simple, but it really falls down on more complicated fixes.

OK, let’s hit “undo” (Command-Z on Mac, Ctrl-Z on Windows) and try again, but this time, we’re going to turn on the Generative AI checkbox (as seen circled above in red).

STEP THREE: With Generative AI turned on, you use the tool like you always would, so I just painted over the bright spot again (as seen above). Now click the ‘Apply’ button to let it do its thing.

Above: After a few seconds, here’s the first result. I say “first” because it gives you three options. The first result is pretty darn good.

Above: To see one of the other results (called ‘Variations’), click the left and right arrow buttons in the Remove panel (circled here in red). I usually find that the 2nd or 3rd variation looks best, but every once in a while, #1 wins out. That’s why it’s important to view all three.

You can clearly see how vastly better this new AI feature makes the removal process, so I leave that checkbox on all the time—I don’t see any reason to go to the “worse result” version of the tool. High-five to Adobe for bringing this to Lightroom. It’s a game-changer when it comes to removing distractions.

Travel Photographers: How to Shoot Like a Pro On Your Next Vacation

We just released a brand new course on how to shoot travel photography like a pro, and we shot the entire course on location in beautiful Santorini, Greece (even though it’s shot in Santorini, the techniques are not about shooting in Greece – you’d apply these same techniques no matter where your travels take you. Check out the official trailer below (it’s just 60-seconds, but you’ll get the idea):

You can buy the course for $29 or watch it and all our other courses on travel photography (and everything else, including a ton of courses on Lightroom) by becoming a KelbyOne member for just $20 a month (cancel anytime and it’s 100% money-back guaranteed!).

Here’s the link to the course.

That’s it for today – hope you have an awesome Monday!

-Scott

The post Does Lightroom’s Remove Tool’s Generative AI Feature Really Make a Big Difference? appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.

Told ya it was short (and sweet), and I hope it was helpful.

Have a great weekend, everybody!

-Scott

The post Great Little One-Minute Video For Help in Setting Your White Balance appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.

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 big gap between the larger outer and inner circles, you have a lot of feathering applied (it’s a soft-edged brush). If the two circles are very close together, it’s a harder-edged brush.

Above: To shrink the size of the brush (the feathering amount moves in tandem with it), press the left bracket key on your keyboard ( [ ) to shrink the brush size and the right bracket key ( ] ) to make the brush size larger (these keys are just to the right of the letter “P” on a standard QWERTY keyboard).

Above: If you want to leave the brush size as is but change the amount of feathering (as seen above), hold the Shift key and use the same left and right bracket keys.

Above: You know that Edit Pins that appear on screen when you paint over an area? Well, you have some options over how they appear.

First, you can show/hide them by pressing Command-H (on Mac) or Ctrl-H on Windows. Next, in the left corner of the options bar along the bottom of your image, there’s an option which lets you choose when the edit pins appear.

Always: (the one with the checkbox, shown here) means the pins are always visible, even when your cursor isn’t over the image.

Auto: your Edit Pins automatically hide when your cursors moves away from the image area, so if you move your cursor over to move any of the Adjustment Brush sliders, they auto-hide.

Selected: It only shows the pin you’re currently working on and hides the others. This is a pretty decent choice because once you’re working on a different pin, why do you need to see the others all the time? Sometimes, you might, but not usually.

Never: This one is kinda obvious. It never shows the Edit pins.

Above: One more — if you want to see the area you painted over (the mask), you can either:

(a) Move your cursor over the active pin, and it will display the mask as a red tint, as seen above.

(b) Press the letter “O” on your keyboard, and it keeps the mask turned on (like you see above) so you can see the mask as you paint.

Here’s a helpful little one-minute video I did a while back (when the Brush tool was still called “The Adjustment Brush”), where you’ll get to see some of the tips you just learned here in action, but there’s also a tip in there for folks using Lightroom on a laptop that is really helpful. Check it out below:

OK, I hope you find one or more of those helpful. Have a great Monday, everybody!

–Scott

P.S. BONUS TIP: If you’re using Lightroom Classic and you hold the Option Key (on Mac or the Alt key on PC), it switches you to the Erase brush, which is handy if you’re painting and you spill over onto an area you didn’t mean to paint on – you can just brush that spill away while holding that key down.

The post Tips For Using Lightroom’s Masking Brush appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.