STEP ONE: Go to the top of any panel and right-click to the right of the panel’s name to bring up a pop-up menu of options. Choose “Customize Develop Panel” (as shown above).

Above: This brings up the ‘Customize Develop Panel’ seen here, showing the default order of panels. The checkboxes on the right show which panels are visible (if you uncheck any panel it hides that panel from view).

STEP TWO: To change the order, simply click and drag on the name of the panel you want to move and drag it where you want it in the list. Above, I’m dragging the ‘Effects’ panel up higher in the list, and when it’s directly below the “Tone Curve,” you’ll see a thin blue line appear. Once it appears, you can let go of your mouse button, and that panel will now appear in that order. When you’re done dragging the panels in the order you want them, click the ‘Save’ button.

NOTE: Don’t worry – if you change your mind later and want to return to the default order, you can just click the ‘Default Order’ button at the bottom of this panel.

STEP THREE: When you click ‘Save,’ a dialog will appear (seen above), letting you know you need to restart Lightroom to have the changes take effect.

Above: Here’s the new order of the panels after the reordering. Again, you can also return to the default order in that same Customize dialog. That’s all there is to it.

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

-Scott

The post How To Reorder Your Panels In Lightroom Classic appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.

The real news is that we gained the Point Color panel that allows for much finer control over a customizable range of color. The HSL panel remains unchanged and is still quite useful. So, what does Point Color do that the HSL panel cannot? There are two key functions of Point Color that differentiate it from HSL, first being that Point Color allows us to fine tune the range of affected colors with a high degree of control, whereas each specified color in the HSL panel affects an unchangeable range of similar colors.

We’ll look at some example photos to show why that is important. The second key difference is that Point Color is available as a global adjustment (affecting all selected colors in the entire photo at once) and as a local adjustment in the Masking panel. Taken together it means that while HSL can be quite useful when you are happy with adjusting the predetermined range of colors affected by each slider, we now have a tool that gives us far more control to narrow in on a very specific range of colors and make desired adjustments both globally and locally. Let’s look at some examples to see how this works.

Getting Oriented

When you first view the Point Color panel there is not much to see, but as soon as you grab the Sample Spot Color (Eyedropper) tool and click on the color you want to sample it comes to life. Note, I have expanded all the disclosure triangles in the panel to reveal all the options.

Next to the eyedropper you’ll see a color swatch representing the selected color (note, as you adjust the color this swatch will change to show both the original selected color and the adjusted color). Below that is a large color field displaying the selected color (indicated with a black pin) within the range of hues that will be affected. Below the color field is a color bar displaying a larger view of the selected color (this also changes to show the original and adjusted color). To the right of the color field is a color rectangle that shows the selected color within a range of luminance values.

With the color selected you can now adjust that color’s hue, saturation, and luminance as desired by dragging within the color field or color rectangle or by moving the Hue Shift, Saturation Shift, or Luminance Shift sliders. Dragging left or right within the color field adjusts the Hue Shift. Dragging up or down in the color field adjusts the Sat. Shift. Dragging up or down in the color rectangle adjusts the Lum. Shift. As you make adjustments by dragging in the color field, you’ll see how the corresponding sliders move in concert. Likewise, moving any of the sliders results in seeing a white circle move in the corresponding color field to represent the resulting change.

Putting in Practice

Let’s say I wanted to shift the color of this young woman’s dress from a very saturated red to a less saturated pink. If I were to use the Targeted Adjustment tool in the Mixer tab I could try to shift the hue, saturation, and luminance towards a more pink color, but because the original color was so similar in hue to her skin tone, the end result is less than desirable. There’s no way to constrain the range of affected hues with this tool or use it with Masking.

Let’s reset those adjustments and switch to the Point Color tool. I’ve used the eyedropper to sample the color of the dress. Looking at the colors in the color field I can tell I’m going to run into the same issue I had before, so let’s use the Range controls to see if I can limit the range of affected color to avoid affecting her skin and lips. The Range slider can be shifted right to expand the range of affected color or shifted left to decrease the range. With the Range disclosure triangle expanded we can access more granular controls for fine tuning the hue, saturation, and luminance range I want to adjust. In a case like this it can be helpful to check the Visualize Range box, which changes the unaffected colors to grayscale and leaves only the affected range in color.

Now we can clearly see areas of her arms and face that will be affected if I don’t constrain the range of affected colors.

With the range dialed in to just affect the dress I can now make the desired shifts in hue, saturation, and luminance to change the color of the dress without affecting her skin.

That type of adjustment was just not possible before using HSL alone since we had no way to customize the range of hues being affected by the adjustment. As close as the color in the dress was to some of the color in her skin tone, I was able to limit the affected range of hues narrowly enough to effectively isolate the dress from her skin, but there’s even more power in Point Color than in just limiting the range.

Point Color in Masking

In that example I was just (barely) able to isolate the color I wanted to adjust from the subject’s skin tones, but what if limiting the range of colors wasn’t possible, or the same color existed in more than one place within the photo, and you only wanted to adjust one location? That’s where Point Color’s other difference over the Mixer (HSL/Color) can be found, which is in Masking. I’m going to reset/remove the global Point Color adjustment by double-clicking the Point Color label at the top of the panel. Alternatively, you can right-click a color swatch and choose to delete the swatch (or all swatches) from the contextual menu, which does the same thing.

Next, click the Masking icon to enter that tool. Since I have a person in this photo I can leverage the AI-based masking ability to select just her dress with a single click on the Clothes checkbox under Person Mask Options, then click Create Mask.

With her dress masked, I can expand the Point Color panel and use the eyedropper to sample the color of her dress as I did before. With Masking, you’ll likely see the overlay by default at first, but as soon as you select the eyedropper the mask is hidden so you can see what you are sampling. Thanks to the mask I don’t need to worry about constraining the color range as this adjustment (and any other adjustment I decide to apply to this mask) will only affect her dress. That means I can just focus on adjusting the color of the dress right away.

There’s often more than one way to achieve an adjustment, and the right way will depend on the photo and what you are trying to achieve. With Point Color you have such a fine level of control that just wasn’t possible in Lightroom before, and we still can utilize the HSL/Color controls too. This opens wonderful possibilities for fine tuning skin tones, removing color casts from shadows, adjusting product photography to better match the desired color, and so much more.

The post Get to Know Point Color in Lightroom Classic appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.

[Editor’s note: It seemed fitting that my last blog post of the year should be my last column in Photoshop User magazine, which ceased publication with the December issue. I’m incredibly grateful for the opportunity to have written my Under the Loupe column for so many years. – Rob]

When you first expand the panel, you’ll see everything is grayed out until you check the box next to Apply, which brings it to life and applies the settings to the selected photo.

By default, it uses AI to create a depth map of the photo and applies the default blur amount of 50. Having a photo with a clearly distinguishable subject will improve the quality of the depth map it creates. With this photo, I was impressed with how well it detected the subjects and even the default settings helped to separate them from the background. This tool is no replacement for in-camera depth of field blur and won’t replace any of my fast lenses, but in this case the photo was shot with the Canon RF600mm f/11 lens, so I couldn’t open the aperture any wider. My goal is to use Lens Blur to help the owl and squirrel stand out more from the busy background, without it looking too fake (obviously in the eye of the beholder).

Let’s get oriented to the panel. The Blur Amount slider does exactly what it says, and if you take it to 100, you’ll see we’re heading into fake looking blur territory. Below that slider are five different bokeh options, and hovering your cursor over each will reveal a pop-up with its name and description. The first is the most normal looking, but definitely worth clicking each one and exploring how each affects the photo. A photo with out of focus light sources will really show the differences between each option. If your photo does contain out of focus light sources (imagine a string of holiday lights in the background), then the Boost slider can be used to adjust the brightness of those light sources (the effect is very subtle on a photo like this).

For some photos, simply adjusting the desired Blur Amount and Bokeh option may be all you need to get the desired effect. If you want to fine tune things further or if the AI generated depth map doesn’t quite work for your photo, you can manually select what is in focus using the Focal Range controls. At the top of the Focal Range pane are icons for the AI generated depth map and a crosshair icon that allows you to click (or click-drag) over the region of the photo you want to be in focus. I think the AI did a good job of finding the desired subject, but there are some areas I want to refine, so I’ll leave the AI depth map and explore how I can modify what is in focus and what is blurred.

To really see how the depth map is working you’ll want to check the Visualize Depth box, which displays a color-coded depth map overlay on the photo. The warmer the color the nearer to the camera while the cooler the color the further away. You can see these are the colors displayed in the Focal Range pane as well. To visualize what exactly is in focus, keep the checkbox checked, then click on the handle within Focal Range. Dragging left or right will change what is in focus and you’ll see the in-focus area of the photo displayed in white. You can also reduce or increase the size of the rectangle to further refine what is in focus and what is blurred.

For this photo, I tried to reduce the size of the in-focus area as much as possible to ensure the owl and squirrel were in focus along with the branch they are on, but there were still some areas of the owl that remain slightly out of focus, and this is where the Focus and Blur brushes at the bottom of the panel come into play. The Focus brush allows for painting in areas that we want to be in focus, while the Blur brush allows for painting in areas that we want more blurred. The Size, Feather, and Flow sliders work just the same as they do for the brush in the Masking panel. There is even an Auto Mask checkbox that works great when brushing over an object with clear edges between it and the adjacent area. In this case, I’ll select the Focus brush, reduce its size (the left and right bracket keys also adjust brush size here) to fit within the area of the owl not fully in focus, and paint over its back and tail to include those areas in focus.

You can paint with the overlay on or off as desired. Use the Amount slider to blend your adjusted area in with the rest of the photo. Zooming into 100% shows some areas along in focus objects that need help along the edges, such as the branch coming up in front of the owl. Switching to the Blur brush, I can fine tune those edges to clean that up and match the blur along the edge to the background’s level of blur. Just as when brushing in Masking, hold the spacebar and click on the image to zoom in/out, or to click and pan around.

When done brushing with either tool, use the Amount slider to fine tune the look to all the areas you brushed and blend with the rest of the photo. If you want to make a new brush adjustment, click the + sign next to the brushes to begin a new adjustment with a different amount setting. In this case I wanted to ease the transition of blur on the bottom branch as it heads into the background below the animals. Now, I know this is not the same as true lens blur done in-camera, but I do like having the ability to make the subjects stand out of a busy background in a subtle way with quite a bit of control. Be sure to use the eye icon on the Lens Blur panel as you go to see the photo without Lens Blur for comparison.

For a more exaggerated example, I’ll take a photo with a very wide depth of field and give it a strong blur effect to simulate a shallow depth of field. After letting Lightroom create its AI depth map I’ll grab the Point/Area Focus tool to manually click on the car to tighten the area of focus even more.

I’ll turn on Visualize Depth, and further refine the area I want to be in focus around the car.

I’ve got the area dialed in, but due to the car windows we can see into the background, but those areas are still in focus. Grabbing the Blur brush, I can brush over the areas within the windows to match the blur with the background.

With a new Blur brush, using a lower Flow setting to slowly build up the effect, I can paint on the hill behind the car to separate it from the car with a more subtle blur. If you accidentally paint over the wrong area, you can hold the Option (PC: Alt) key to flip the brush to an eraser to erase any errant strokes. By using a lower flow and multiple brush instances, you can build up layers of blur. In an otherworldly image like this, I think the added blur can enhance its look (again, subject to taste), and the Lens Blur tool provides a pretty high degree of control even in its Early Access state. I look forward to seeing how this tool evolves and how it can help us achieve a final look beyond what our cameras and lenses can do alone.

As a final note I’d like to thank Scott Kelby, Chris Main, Kim Doty, Barbara Thompson, Jessica Maldonado, Margie Rosenstien, and Angela Naymick, along with all the rest of the behind-the-scenes team that have made Photoshop User magazine so wonderful for so many years. I’m sorry to see this is the final issue, but it has been an honor and a privilege to have been able to write for it since Lightroom first came on the scene. Thank you to all who have read these issues, and I hope to see you still in the KelbyOne community and LightroomKillerTips.com. – Rob

The post Exploring the New Lens Blur Panel appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.

Just one week until the Worldwide Photo Walk
It’s this Saturday, October 7 all around the world – it’s free, it’s fun, and it’s all a great cause (to support the Springs of Hope Orphanage in Nakuru, Kenya). Sign up for a photo walk near you at worldwidephotowalk.com – see you there! OK, on to today’s tip:

Q. Why is it that sometimes, when I go to the White Balance presets menu in Lightroom, I get a list of a bunch of different white balance presets, and sometimes I only get two choices: Auto and Custom?

A. It’s because one time you were looking at the White Balance presets for a RAW image, and the other was a JPEG or TIFF. You only see that longer list of preset choices (seen above right) when you’re working on a RAW image — if you click on the JPEG or TIFF image, you’ll only see Auto and Custom (seen above left) as your choices because the white balance you chose in in the camera is already assigned to JPEGs and TIFFs. With a JPEG, you don’t get all those other choices like you would from a RAW image where the white balance preset isn’t already “baked in” (so to speak). 

Q. I heard you have to shoot in RAW because if you don’t, you can’t change your White Balance. Do I have to switch to shooting in RAW?

A. This is actually an age-old myth — you absolutely can change the white balance for JPEG or TIFF images, no problem. I think this myth started because when you shoot in JPEG, you don’t get all the White Balance presets like you do for Raw images  (you only get the Auto preset, as I mentioned above). That doesn’t mean you can’t change the White Balance. You still can change it using the Temperature/Tint Sliders and the White Balance Eyedropper tool (and I personally use those two the most anyway). 

So, the fact that you “can’t” adjust the White Balance for JPEG images is absolutely a myth. However, I feel the results you get when tweaking your white balance look better when performed on Raw images versus JPEG, and you can test this and see for yourself. The next time you’re out shooting, change your camera to shoot in “Raw + JPEG” mode so you have two files of the exact same photo — one in Raw and one in JPEG format. Find an image whose white balance is off, then open both images in Camera Raw and correct the White Balance on both of them, and compare the results and you’ll see what I mean.

Q. I notice that when I’m adjusting the Temperature and Tint sliders, sometimes I’m adjusting the Kevin amount, and other times it’s just positive and negative numbers like +14 or –12. Why is that?

A. It’s that whole “RAW vs JPEG” thing again. When you adjust the Temperature settings on a RAW image in Lightroom, you’re adjusting the Kelvin temperature, so you’re getting the same familiar Kelvin settings you’d have if you chose a custom white balance on your camera. When you shoot in JPEG, you’re adjusting a white balance already embedded in your file, so you’re not adjusting Kelvin numbers.

Hope you found those helpful.

It’s going to be a great week. Let’s rock this! 🙂

-Scott

The post Clearing Up Some White Balance Myths appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.

If you want to zoom in, press Command–+ (PC: Ctrl–+) and you get the tighter view you see above. If you press the letter Y again, you return to normal view (the after view). If you want to toggle through the different comparison views (left/right, top/bottom, and single-image split-screens of each), click the button with YY on it on the left of the toolbar, just to the left of the words “Before & After.” To leave this mode altogether, press the rectangular button to the left of the YY button (or just press the letter D).

Hope you found that helpful.

My “Ultimate Photography Crash Course” is just a few days away!

It’s Tuesday, August 15th live online, or come and spend the day with me in person in Orlando at the Orange County Convention Center. Check out this short video with the details:

Tickets and more info at kelbyonelive.com/seminar

Here’s wishing you a kick-butt Monday!

-Scott

The post How To Get a Side-By-Side Before/After in Lightroom appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.

Thanks to Mimo for sharing that (and for being on the show and for recording some amazing courses for KelbyOne during this visit).

I’m teaching my first in-person full-day seminar since 2019 live in Orlando, Florida, next month

I am super psyched to be on stage next month at Orlando’s Orange Country Convention Center for an updated version of my “Ultimate Photography Crash Course.” I took all the things I would share with a friend if I had one day with them to make a real impact on their photography and their post-processing, and I put it all into this one day. I’m so sure you’ll love it; it is 100% money-back guaranteed if it’s not the best live photography seminar you’ve ever attended at any price, ever!

You can attend in person in Orlando, but if you can’t get to Orlando, you can watch it live online as it happens. Best of all, it’s only $99 for the full day. For tickets or to get one of the very limited seats we have in person in Orlando, visit kelbyonelive.com and I’ll see you August 25th in Orlando for a day that will change everything.

Have a great weekend, everybody!

-Scott

P.S. I’m doing the opening keynote at the ClickCon conference up in Chicago on July 31st, and I’m focusing on Photoshop’s incredible AI-powered features. If you’re at the conference, I hope you’ll come and say hi. Here’s a link for tickets (the conference is packed with live shoots – over 200 models and 50 hair/makeup artists with tons of shooting bays and themed shoots. It’s going to be awesome.

The post How To Get The “Mimo” Look in Lightroom For Your Black & White Images appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.

STEP ONE: Here’s our original image. Kind of washed out and “meh” looking.

STEP TWO: So we tweak the settings in the Develop Module to make it less “meh.” Lots of contrast, some Dehaze to cut the haze, some Texture to bring out detail, a graduated filter to darken the sky — the standard stuff.

STEP THREE: Here comes the fun part. Now that you’ve got that image done, you can scroll through your entire shoot, and when you see an image where you want to apply that same look, you just click the Previous button, and it applies the edits you did to the previous photo to this photo. Take a look at the image above. Kind of ‘meh,’ right? Go to the next step.

STEP FOUR: Hit the Previous button, which applies the same edits to this image. In this case, after hitting the Previous button, I thought it was a little too dark, so I just dragged the Exposure slider a tiny bit to the right. Boom. Done. Huge time saver.

Now anytime you see an image that you want to have this set of edits (including the little exposure boost I just gave this one), just click the Previous button, and whatever you did to the previous image gets applied to this image.

Hope you found that helpful, and here’s wishing you a fantastic weekend!

-Scott

P.S. I am super-psyched to be giving the opening keynote presentation at next month’s ClickCon Conference in Chicago. I’ll be doing the whole keynote about all the wild AI-powered stuff in Photoshop and I’ve got some absolutely mind-blowing stuff to share. How you can make it (here’s the link with details on ClickCon).

The post One Of The Most Helpful Buttons In All of Lightroom appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.

Above: Here’s the original image, and if you look along the edges of the chrome frame of the car window, you can see a purple highlight, almost like we traced those areas with a thin purple magic marker. Let’s zoom in a bit tighter so you can really see it.

Above: Oh yeah, you can really see it clearly when you view it at 100% size, as seen above. There are a number of different ways to get rid of it, and we’ll start with the easiest method first.

Above: If you took the shot in Raw mode on your camera, start by going to the Lens Correction panel (in LR Classic) or the Optics panel (in LR ‘Cloud’) and turn on the ‘Remove Chromatic Aberration’ checkbox (as shown here). That alone will often do the trick right there. Boom. Done. Sadly, in this case, it barely did anything, but this often does a great job, but when it doesn’t work (like in this case), then we go to our other tools.

Above: if you’re using the ‘cloud’ version of Lightroom, you’d go to the Optics panel instead, and there you’ll find the ‘Remove Chromatic Aberration’ checkbox (as seen above).

Our next line of defense against this nasty color fringe is to click on the Manual Tab in the Lens Correction panel (in Classic) or click on the word “Defringe” in Lightroom ‘cloud’ to expand the options and that’s where you’ll find the ‘Fringe Selector’ eyedropper (seen above). You use this eyedropper to tell Lightroom exactly which color you want it to remove.

Above: Here, I’m taking the eyedropper and hovering it right on the purple edge fringe. You can see in the pop-up loupe grid that’s attached to the tool just how much purple there is along the edge of this chrome area (that’s obviously not supposed to be there). Click on this color area, which becomes the color Lightroom will neutralize for you.

Above: Here’s what it looks like once I click that Fringe Selector eyedropper – the chromatic aberration is gone! You might have to try clicking in a few different areas of purple (or green – just depends on the image) until it gets all the color, but it should only take just a few clicks (so just a few seconds).

The last technique is to do the process manually using the Defringe sliders, and I have a short video (below) that goes over that technique, so give it a quick look (it’s short).

Well, there ya have it. Three ways to get rid of that annoying edge fringe. Hope you found that helpful.

Here’s wishing you a kick-butt Monday!

-Scott

The post Using Lightroom’s Eyedropper To Get Rid of That Nasty Purple/Green Fringe appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.

STEP ONE: Here’s our original Raw image, and at this size, you don’t see the noise very much, but if you zoom in to 100%, there’s noise a-plenty!

STEP TWO: Scroll down to the Detail panel, and at the bottom of the panel, under Noise Reduction, click on ‘Denoise’ (as shown circled here in red).

STEP THREE: The Enhance Preview window appears (seen above), and Denoise will be selected by default (as seen here). There’s an amount slider so you can increase or decrease the amount of noise reduction you’d like to apply, and it also shows the estimated time it will take to apply this fix (in this case, it estimates 55 seconds).

STEP FOUR: Here’s a zoomed-in before and after so you can see the results. I used Compare mode to show this because when it does its thing, it creates a new separate Raw DNG image, so you have your original and a new file). This is those two side-by-side). You can see it did a pretty nice job removing the noise (better than anything we had built in within Lightroom or Photoshop before.

Above: here’s a zoomed-in look where you can see it did a really nice job of holding the detail.

Next time you have a noise image, give this a try – I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised with the result. Let me know what you think. Have a great Monday, everybody!

-Scott

P.S. The Lightroom Conference kicks off this afternoon with a special pre-conference session I’m teaching on “Lightroom Classic for Absolute Beginners” – then starting Tuesday, it’s two full days, two full training tracks, amazing instructors, and so much to learn (plus, the entire conference is archived for a full year for you to stream on demand). Don’t miss you – tickets and more info at bit.ly/3BqMWvN – see you online.

The post First Look at Lightroom’s New Built-in AI-Powered Noise Reduction appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.

NOTE: The Creative Profiles are found by clicking on the little four-rectangle icon near the top right of the Basic panel, right below “Black & White.”

Using a Creative Profile Doesn’t Move Any Sliders

This is a biggie. When you apply a Preset in Lightroom to get a particular look, it just moves your sliders (some or a bunch of them) to a “preset” position. However, applying a Creative Profile doesn’t move any sliders whatsoever (see below).

So, you can apply a Creative Profile, and then start tweaking your image without messing up its look (if you apply a preset, and then move any of the sliders in the preset, it changes the look of the preset). You can also apply a preset, and then apply a Creative Profile to your image without messing up the Preset. It’s a totally separate way to give your image a look that doesn’t mess with your sliders or any preset you applied. Huge!

There are 17 Great Black & White Creative Profiles

This is my preferred method for converting a color image I shot on my camera to a black and white image, and there are 17 different black and white profiles for you to choose from being able to hover your cursor over each one until you find the perfect conversion is so helpful. Of course, once you choose a black-and-white profile, you can still edit your image using all the rest of the sliders in Lightroom.

It’s Easy To Save Favorites For Quick Access

If you find a Creative Profile (Color or B&W) you like, you can just click the “star” icon up in its top right corner (as seen below), and boom — it’s added to your main Profiles ‘Favorites’ pop-up menu. No more digging through the Preset Browser – they’re right there in the menu.

There ya have it. If you’re not taking advantage of these built-in Creative Profiles, I hope this gives you three reasons to give them a shot.

Here’s to a great Monday — hoping yours is a healthy, happy, and creative one!

-Scott

P.S. I’m heading out Friday to the “Outsiders Conference” in Kanab, Utah. If you want to attend in person, use the code KELBY100 to save $100 off the registration fee. If you want to watch online instead, here’s a code for $50 off that registration: OUTSIDERS50 – you can register for either at outsidersphoto.com

The post Three Reasons Why Lightroom’s Creative Profiles Are So Handy appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.