Our goal when we retouch wrinkles is not to remove them but to reduce their intensity. With wrinkles, the darker the shadows appear, the deeper the wrinkles look, and the older our subject looks. So we’re going to look at making the wrinkles look less deep and less intense without removing them altogether, which would make our subject look obviously retouched and probably kind of weird-looking.

Note: You can download this same image for free from Adobe Stock and practice right along using it. Here’s the link. You’ll need to log in with your Adobe ID to get the free Adobe Stock download.

STEP ONE: After importing the image into Lightroom Classic, press D to jump to the Develop module (or, if you’re using Lightroom for the cloud, click the Edit button at the top-right side of the window). Now let’s zoom in tight on our subject’s face so we can clearly see the area we’re working on while we’re retouching. You can do that by pressing Command-+ (PC: Ctrl-+) a few times until you’re zoomed in nice and close, as seen here. Click and drag to move the image around if necessary.

STEP TWO: In the toolbar below the Histogram, click on the Healing icon (it looks like a bandage). When it reveals a panel with three healing tools, click on the one on the far left; its icon looks like an eraser (as shown above). Set the Opacity to 100% for now.

STEP THREE: We’re going to start with the wrinkles on his forehead, so make your brush size just a little larger than the wrinkles you’re going to remove. You can resize the brush using the Size slider in that panel you just saw in Step Two, the Left and Right Bracket keys on your keyboard ( [ ] ); or, if you have a two-button mouse, you can use the scroll wheel.

STEP FOUR: Now you’re going to trace along that wrinkle, starting on the left side and painting all the way over to the right side of it. It’s kind of hard to see in this particular image but, as you paint, you’ll see a thin white outline appear in the size of your brushstroke. It’s there in this image, but, as I said, it’s kind of hard to see, though you can see my cursor above his left eye on the right side of the wrinkle.

STEP FIVE: When you release the mouse button, the wrinkle is gone (I did a side-by-side before/after here by pressing the letter Y so you could see the difference). So, the wrinkle is gone, but completely removing it isn’t our goal; it’s just to reduce its intensity, so we’ll fix that in the next step.

STEP SIX: What we’re going to do is bring back part of the wrinkle, and when we do that, the wrinkle won’t be nearly as dark so that it won’t appear nearly as deep, and our subject won’t appear nearly as old. Well, our goal is ten years younger, not 40 years younger. To do that, go to the Healing options panel and drag the Opacity slider to the left (as shown here), and as you do, it brings back the wrinkle. The farther you drag to the left, the more the wrinkle returns. Here I lowered the Opacity to 55%, and now you can see the wrinkle is there, but it’s not nearly as intense or noticeable as it was before.

STEP SEVEN: Now you can continue on with this process of painting over wrinkles, and the tool will remember that 55% Opacity amount, so when you paint over the next row of wrinkles, they’re already at 55% Opacity. Here’s a side-by-side before and after of just painting over the forehead wrinkles and those few between the eyes.

STEP EIGHT: Next, let’s do the same thing with the wrinkles under his eyes. Just paint over those areas to reduce their intensity. Have you noticed how much better a job this is doing removing these wrinkles than Lightroom used to do in the past? That’s because this erase Mode of the Healing tool is based on Photoshop’s Content-Aware technology and, in most situations, it’s vastly better than the old Spot Removal tool, which was well-named because that’s pretty much what it was good for: removing spots.

STEP NINE: Continue with the process of painting over the wrinkles for the rest of his face. After you’ve painted over all of them, zoom back out a step or so (Command-– [PC: Ctrl-–) and take a look at the image to see if that Opacity slider needs to be moved up for any of the wrinkles. To see the pins for each of your brushstrokes, choose Auto in the Tool Overlay drop-down menu below the left side of the image. Now, when you move your cursor into the image, you’ll see all the pins. Click on the one you want to change, and then adjust the Opacity for that wrinkle.

Above: Here, I changed all of them to 60%, so the wrinkles are lessened even more. You could also lower the Opacity if you want to bring back more of a wrinkle. Zooming out will help make that decision easier because you can see more of the overall face. Again, the side-by-side is a helpful view here too.

STEP 10: His eyes are a little deep set, and that makes his eye area look darker (and older), so let’s brighten that area up a little to finish things off. Up in the toolbar, click on the Masking icon (it’s the gray circle with the dotted white line around it) to bring up the list of masking tools. Click on the Brush tool (as shown above). In the brush controls, set both the Flow and Density to 100.

STEP 11: Make the Brush about the size of one of his eye sockets and paint over both eyes. Next, we’re going to increase the Exposure amount and dial in the right amount of brightness. You’re looking to match the brightness of those eye sockets with the rest of his face. In this case, that had me raising the Exposure slider to around +0.50, or around 1/2 a stop brighter, and that did the trick. You could probably brighten the whites (the sclera) of his eyes a bit too, which we covered last week.

Above: Here’s a final before and after reducing the wrinkles and brightening the eye sockets. By the way, now that I look at the final image, I think I’d probably back off that Opacity for the wrinkles by another 5% or so, bringing back a little more of the shadows, to around 55%, instead of leaving it at 60%. That’s the great thing about this technique: it’s as easy as dragging a slider at this point to dial in the exact amount for each wrinkle.

Next time, we’ll dig a little deeper into the world of retouching portraits in Lightroom. See ya then.

The post Portrait Retouching in Lightroom, Part 4 (Realistically Retouch Wrinkles) appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.

Let’s start with one of the most common portrait retouches, which is removing blemishes and reducing things such as hot spots or moles.

STEP ONE: Here’s our original image (KelbyOne members can click here to download this image for practice purposes only). The tool we’re going to use for removing blemishes is the new Content-Aware Remove brush. You get to it by clicking on the icon that looks like a bandage up in the toolbar near the top of the right side panels (this bandage used to be the Spot Removal tool, but in the latest version of Lightroom, it’s now called the Healing tool). When that panel appears, where it says “Mode,” click on the first icon (that’s the Content-Aware Remove brush) and, from here on out, it’s the only one we’ll use because the other brush; the Heal brush is, well, I don’t want to say it’s trash, but…it’s trash (and that’s being kind).

STEP TWO: Press Command-+ (PC: Ctrl-+) a few times to zoom in tight on your subject’s forehead (after you zoom in, you can hold the Spacebar and click-drag to move around the image). Note that there are a few minor blemishes up here we can remove.

STEP THREE: Size your brush, so it’s just a little larger than the blemish you want to remove. You can do this in the Healing tool’s options panel in the right side panels, but it’s easier to use the Left and Right Bracket keys on your keyboard: the Left Bracket ([) makes the brush smaller, and the Right Bracket (]) makes it larger. Move your cursor over the blemish you want to remove (as shown here).

STEP FOUR: Now, just click once. That’s it. You don’t have to “paint” with it; just a single click should do it, and as you can see here, the blemish is gone.

STEP FIVE: That’s the basic process, so for now, go ahead and remove the rest of the blemishes in this area by moving your cursor over them and just clicking once. Okay, you can see there’s a problem here: Your blemishes are replaced by little icons showing where you used the brush.

STEP SIX: If you move your cursor outside the image area, say, over onto the panels along the right side, as I did here, those icons will temporarily disappear so you can see how your retouch looks. I kind of hate this. Here’s why: I have to keep moving my cursor over to the right side panels to see if the retouch I did on the previous blemish looks good. But we can fix that.

STEP SEVEN: In the gray Toolbar along the bottom of your image, you’ll see the words “Tool Overlay” on the far left side (if you don’t see the Toolbar, press the letter T on your keyboard). Click and hold and change the option to Never (as shown here). Now when you click over a blemish, you’ll see the repair, not the icon, which is how the Healing Brush works in Photoshop. I only switch this option to Never when I’m using this brush; I switch it back to Auto show/hide, the default setting when I’m done.

STEP EIGHT: Now scroll down farther on your image (again, hold the Spacebar and then click and drag downward inside your image) until you see some moles just below her neck on the right (as shown here). I generally don’t remove moles as they are part of the subject’s character, but they appear much more apparent in photographs than they do in real life, so instead of removing them, most retouchers reduce their intensity.

STEP NINE: We’re going to use a similar technique as we did with removing the blemishes, same tool, and all. Resize the brush so it’s just a little larger than the mole, move your cursor over the mole, and click once to remove it completely (I know, I said we weren’t going to remove it, and we’re not; we still have another step to go). By the way, did you notice we don’t have the annoying icon here? We can see the area retouched inside the brush cursor. That’s because I have my Tool Overlay still set to Never.

STEP 10: Now, we’re going to head over to the Healing tool’s panel and lower the Opacity. I want you to think of this move as “Undo on a Brush,” and we’re going to use it to “undo” some of that complete removal. If you drag the Opacity to 0%, the mole would be back (we’d have undone our removal). If you leave it at 100% Opacity, it’s fully gone. As you drag the slider to lower the Opacity, the mole starts coming back, so you want to lower it to where it’s still there but not nearly as intense or noticeable. Here, I lowered the Opacity to 36%, so I brought quite a bit of it back, but not nearly all of it. So the mole is still there, just reduced.

Okay, we’re off and running in this new column

We’ve only just dipped our toe into what can be done, but it’s a start, and I’m glad you’re here with me for this retouching journey. See you next week.

-Scott

P.S. We just released a new online course on “A Beginner’s Guide to Photographicing Airshows,” taught by Erik Kuna and myself. If you’d like to check out the course, click here.

The post Portrait Retouching in Lightroom, Part 1 appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.

Here’s an example of a photo shot on an iPhone in Portrait mode so that a depth map is included. Using the depth map I can get close to just selecting the chickadee, but not quite.

Using Select Subject, I can select my entire arm and the bird, but not just the bird itself.

Because the bird is black and white and gray, I can’t really use Color or Luminance to narrow in on just the bird. I could try to use the Brush tool to brush over the bird, and prior to the latest update, that might be the best option. But if I am going to paint, then let the power of AI help ensure I get just the object I want to select. I’ll create a new mask and choose Object.

Then I can choose to either paint over the object with a brush or draw a selection rectangle over the object. For this example, I thought the brush gave me a better result.

Then, set the size of the brush and paint over the object (plus a little extra), and let the AI do the rest.

Thanks, Sensei! So far, using Depth, Select Subject, and Select Object I’m able to select different regions of the photo to adjust independently. Now that I have this Object selected, I can use the Duplicate and Invert option to create a new mask group with the intention of intersecting with Select Subject to have just my arm selected without including the bird!

That worked because I knew Select Subject included my entire arm and the bird. Since I had a mask for the bird I could duplicate that mask group, then invert the mask to include everything in the photo except the bird, then using the Intersect function to create a mask that is the intersection of the entire photo AND the results of Select Subject MINUS the bird (object). In other words, always think about how one mask can work with other masking tools to create more complex masks that wouldn’t have otherwise been possible.

In the end I can even use the new Content-Aware Remove to remove the distracting highlight at the top of the photo and end up with a subtly better image than I started out with.

The post Select Objects appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.

PROGRAMMING NOTE: Today is pre-conference day for our all online Landscape Photography Conference, and besides our orientation class, I’m doing a class on “What makes a great landscape photo?” and it’s not too late to sign up and start watching. Here’s a link with details and ticket info. Hope I see you there.

Happy Monday, everybody. Here’s a handy quick fix for situations where part of your image is brighter than you’d like it to be (like you see in the image above). The wall behind her on the right is too bright, especially since it’s on the side of her that’s more in the shadows (a large window is to the left). So, the balance of the light in the image is off. Here’s a trick that will fix it fast.

NOTE: You can download this same image and follow along by clicking the Download link below, then right-click on the large image that appears and choose “Save as” to save it to your computer, then import it into Lightroom. The image is for practice purposes only.

STEP ONE: Start by clicking on the Masking icon and then click on the Linear Gradient tool (as shown above).

STEP TWO: The reason I love this tool for jobs like this is that the transitions between the dark areas, and where it becomes transparent is so smooth. Drag the Linear Gradient from the top right corner down until it reaches her scarf (as seen here), then lower the Exposure amount (dragging it to the left), and lower either the Highlights or Whites (like I did here) to darken that area (as shown here).

STEP THREE: If you compare the image at this stage with the one back in Step One, you’ll see that while that background area is darker, it also darkened her jacket and hair a bit in the process, which is something we don’t want, and here comes the trick: In the Masking panel, click on Mask 1 to reveal two buttons: Add and Subtract (these allow you to use all of your tools to add to your existing mask, or subtract from it). In this case, click on “Subtract” and from the pop-up menu that appears, click on ‘Select Subject’ (as shown above). Once you click that, it uses AI to determine what the subject is in your photo, and it removes her from the gradient, so now there’s no darkening at all in her hair or jacket, as seen in the after image BELOW right.

FINAL: I’m showing an overall before/after above so you can see the image before we darkened the wall on the right at left, and after the darkening on the right, with none of that gradient affecting her at all, so now our light is better balanced. I do moves like this a lot to balance the light, whether it’s portraits or landscapes or travel – it works the same way (as long as there’s a recognizable subject in the image).

Hope you found that helpful. Here’s wishing you a kick-butt day!

-Scott

The post Great Trick For Balancing Lighting Using Lightroom’s New Masking Feature appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.

The most disorienting change is the replacement of the old Adjustment Brush, Graduated Filter, and Radial Filter icons with the single new Masking icon. Hopefully, once you click that Masking icon you are relieved to see tools you were looking for. However, they did get a slight refresh on the names, and while the names have changed, the basic functionality is the same. Here’s the cheat sheet with the old name first:

• Adjustment Brush = Brush
• Graduated Filter = Linear Gradient
• Radial Filter = Radial Gradient

Why the name change? I suppose to bring it in line with the names used in the cloud-based version of Lightroom. Thankfully the keyboard shortcuts remained the same for all three.

Additionally, we gained completely new AI-based tools for selecting the sky and a subject. While the sky sort of goes without saying, the subject, in my experience, seems optimized on people and animals, but if there aren’t either of those in the scene it will grab the most prominent subject (YMMV). Experimentation is the best way to learn the limits and power of those tools.

In the previous version we were able to apply a Range Mask within one of the three local adjustment tools (brush, grad, and rad), but now the former range mask tools can be used on the entire photo by themselves. To learn how to mimic the old Range Mask behavior check out my post from last week on Intersect Mask. I’m sure there will be many more tutorials exploring how to use those tools in the future as well.

The other new functionality we gained is in how we interact with the masks we create. In this case I applied a Select Sky and Select Subject mask to help me edit this photo. We can rename individual mask groups by double-clicking the name or clicking the three-dot menu and choosing rename. This is a huge help when you have multiple masks on an image (and you will have multiple masks).

Then there are the options for the overlay. We still have the default colors of red, green, white, and black, but now we can also apply a completely custom color of our choosing (click Color Overlay Settings to access color picker). Beyond colors we display the color overlay on a B&W image, image on B&W, image on black, image on white, and white on black. If you’ve ever used the Select & Mask feature in Photoshop you’ll understand these options right away, but if you haven’t simply try each one in turn and you’ll quickly get the hang of it. The goal of each of these overlays is to give us more power to evaluate what is affected by the mask so that we can refine it further.

By default, the overlay will appear as soon as the mask is applied to show you where it is, but then will automatically disappear as soon as you move any of the adjustment sliders. You can disable that behavior by unchecking Automatically toggle overlay. When disabled, you can toggle the overlay manually by pressing O just as you could in the previous version.

For a full look at associated keyboard shortcuts for Masking, click the question mark icon at the top of the Masks panel. While you’re up there, notice the Turn off masks icon at the top-left of the Masks panel for a quick way to see the Before/After view of your masking edits.

One last tip, another new default behavior is to automatically reset all editing sliders to 0 for each new mask. If you want to retain the mask settings from the last mask uncheck Reset Sliders Automatically at the bottom of the panel containing the adjustments. This way you can select a preset from the Effects drop-down menu for the mask you create, and those settings will remain for the next mask you create, and so on. However, if you want to start with a clean slate for each mask leave that box checked.

Ok final note, if you don’t see your local adjustment presets under Effects after upgrading to the new version, the most likely suspect is the Store presets with this catalog checkbox on the Presets tab of the Preferences. That setting may have been changed/lost in the upgrade to the new version, and if that happens your presets appear to have vanished. Changing the setting on that preference to what it was in the previous version should bring your presets back.

The post Get Oriented to Masking appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.

Previously we had Range Masks

In the prior version of Lightroom Classic (10.4), within either the Graduated Filter, Radial Filter, or Adjustment Brush, we could refine the affected area by applying a Color or Luminance Range Mask. Here’s a simple example, let’s say I wanted to affect just the flowers of this hosta (I think) plant. One approach might be to grab the Radial Filter, and place an inverted oval (so it affected the inside of the oval) over the flowers, like this.

Then, clicking the Range Mask drop-down menu I could choose Color, and sample colors within the flowers to refine the mask to only affect those colors within the Radial Filter I had drawn.

Only pixels within the area defined by both of those tools are masked. Once I finalized my mask, I could then dial in the desired settings I wanted to apply to the affected/masked area. Let’s look at how to do that in the latest version of Lightroom Classic with Masking.

Along Comes Masking

Let’s try to create that same mask using the new tools. Now Color Range can be used all on its own, so let’s start with that and select the same range of colors (note, I have the overlay set to Color Overlay on B&W with a bright pink to make it easy to see the mask).

I’ve used the Refine slider to narrow the range of colors down, but it is still affecting areas outside of the flowers I want to adjust. How can we limit it down to just the flowers? One option would be to click the Subtract button within Mask 1 and choose Brush, then brush over any areas I don’t want to include in the mask. That works, but it involves brushing all over the image, which might not always work depending on the photo being adjusted. What about Intersect? If I click the three-dot menu next to Color Range 1 (or right-click) I can go to Intersect Mask with … and choose from any of the existing tools. Let’s try Select Subject and let LrC do the heavy lifting instead of me painting.

Now the mask only affects the area within the Subject AND the selected Color Range (just like in the previous version of LrC). Of course, if needed, I could use the Add or Subtract options to refine the affected area even further.

Another Approach?

What if I started with Select Subject? I deleted my previous mask and clicked on Select Subject. It did a great job of masking only the stem and flowers.

Now, I want to refine that to only affect the flowers like before, but let’s not use Intersect this time. Instead, I’ll click Subtract and choose Color Range. Now everything within the Subject except the flowers is selected. That’s not the results I wanted (yet), but if you are coming from LrC 10.4 and didn’t know about Intersect it might be the approach you’d take at first.

So with that mask in place, the way to mimic the Intersect Mask behavior (or the behavior we had in 10.4 with Color Range within an existing mask) is to take one more step and Invert the Color Range subtraction. Yeah, not super intuitive, but watch. If I click the three-dot menu next to my Color Range subtraction and choose Invert …

I’m right back to the same results I got using Intersect Mask with Color Range previously.

Is there a reason to take the long road? No, but if you are using the cloud-based version of Lightroom you’ll discover that it doesn’t have an Intersect Mask with option, so you can achieve the same results by following these steps:

1. Apply your first mask (in this case I used Select Subject, but it can be any other).
2. Click Subtract and apply a second mask tool (I used Color Range, but use what you need for the job).
3. Click the three-dot menu next to that second mask tool you subtracted with and choose Invert.

Hope that helps!

The post Intersect Mask appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.

Get the Radial filter; hold the Command key on Mac (Ctrl-key on PC), and double-click anywhere within the image and it creates as large an oval as possible (as seen above) for you automatically.

There ya go – short and sweet, and we’re starting out this week with a shortcut most Lightroom users don’t know, but know you do!

Here’s to a kick-butt week, full of opportunities and good health!

-Scott

P.S. We’re just a few weeks from the all-online two-day, two-track Portrait Photography Conference. More into right here.

The post Cool Little Tip For Lightroom’s Radial Filter appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.

Try this one – I think you’ll super dig it.

Here’s wishing you a way better than usual Monday!

-Scott

P.S. We announced “The Portrait Photography Conference” last Friday, and it is taking OFF!!! Get more details and tickets right there.

The post Such a Great Little Tip For Getting Your Lightroom Spot Healing Brush The Right Size Every Time! appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.

Details, the full class schedule, instructor list, and tickets are available right here. I’m super psyched, and I hope I see you at the conference!

Now, for a handy little Lightroom tip:

When you’re using the Adjustment Brush, one of the options you have to paint a tint over an area of your image using the Color Picker that appear when you click on the little “X” swatch near the bottom of the Adjustment Brush sliders, as shown here.

The problem happens when you add a tint, and then change your mind. If you click the color swatch again, it just brings up the color picker, and if you’ve chosen a color, there’s no reset button in the color picker. So…how do you reset the color to “None?”

The trick is to not go back to the Color Picker. Instead just double-click directly on the word “Color” to the left of the swatch (as shown below), and it resets the tint color to ‘None.”

That’s it – it’s the little things, right?

Have a great weekend, everybody. #GoBucs! and #RollTide!!!

-Scott

The post A Cool Little Lightroom Tip (and we announced a new conference today) appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.

STEP ONE: Go to the toolbar, click on the adjustment Brush, and makes sure all the sliders are set to zero to start off (you can double-click on the word Effect and it will set all the sliders back to zero for you). Now move the sliders where you want them to be as your new default settings (as seen here where I tweaked the sliders a little bit)

STEP TWO: This step is the hardest. Once you’ve got the sliders where you want them – don’t use the brush on your image because that will mess up the whole new default thing. Just click the Done slider and you’re done. Now, when you switch to a different image, like I did here, and you click on the Adjustment Brush, your new default settings will already be in place, and now you can move the sliders to your hearts content and edit your images the way you want, and when you start on a new image, you’ll once again have your new defaults in place. That’s all there is to it.

Have a great weekend, everybody! #GoBucs and #RollTide!

-Scott

The post Creating New Default Settings For The Adjustment Brush appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.