Photo Adventure Transcript

Download the photo here.

Welcome back Jay-Squad. Today we are going to turn this butterfly photo... into this photo using Lightroom. So let's get started.

The first thing I always do is go to the "Lens Corrections" panel and turn on the lens corrections. You can see that it already has my lens detected but you can manually select your lens if you need.

Next, I go up to the "Tone Curve" and change the "Point Curve" to "Medium Contrast" to see if I want to use that or not. In this case, I do not like it, so I will leave it.

Next, I go up to the "Basic" panel and change my "Temp". I've noticed, a lot of people tend to go toward the warmer colors. I typically like my photos on the colder / bluer side. I'll set that at 4350. Here's a before and after. You can see the difference mostly in the green leaves.

Next, I'm going to raise the shadows up to about plus 62. Then, I'm going to hold the shift key and double click word "Whites" which will automatically set it to what it thinks is the perfect balance. Plus 24. Then I'm going to do the same thing with the blacks. Hold shift and double click the name. It sets to minus 19. Sometimes I'll decrease it even further but for this image I like it here. Next, I'm going to increase the "Clarity" slightly to plus 14. I'll turn on and off the panel so you can see the difference.

Now I'm going to skip down to the "HSL" panel to the "Saturation" and reduce the green saturation to minus 40 so it's not so overpowering. Then, I'm going to go to the "Luminance" tab and increase the "Red" to plus 38 and the "Orange" to plus 47. My goal is to bring out these red spots more. I'll turn on and off the panel so you can see the difference. I probably would not have done this if red was a primary color in the background. But red is minimal in this photograph.

Next, I'm going to go to the "Detail" panel under luminance and zoom in to see the grain. I'm going to add 37 to soften it.

Moving down to the "Effects" panel, I'm going to add minus 14 vignetting. Ok, that does it for the basic editing. Here's the before and after.

It's ok looking but now here comes the fun stuff! Up at the top are the "Graduated Filters". I've already completed these to how I want them so I'll just turn them on and off to show you the difference. Here you can see I have 4 different ones because of the 4 circles. Starting with the bottom right, you can see that I am just using this one to darken the side with a minus .95. If I hover over, you'll see the red overlay that shows what's being affected.

The next one I have it set to minus .76 to blend out the exposure. I'll hover over that one so you can see. And the top one I'm using to brighten up the corner to plus .38. And to use these you change the settings to what you want and click and drag. Let's undo that and go over to the left one. Here you can see that I only use this one to increase the temp to 50. I wanted to bring out that orange color more.

Next up is the "Radial Filter". I'll turn that on and off so you can see what I did. I'm using three of these. Over on the left, I'm using it to bring up the orange again. I have the temp increased to 57 and the exposure increased to plus .57. Also my "feather" is set to 100.

Next, I have this middle one set to plus .48 exposure to brighten up the middle. I'll hover over it so you can see what's affected.

Next, I'll zoom into the eyes. I use this a lot for the eyes. I have it set to plus .86 to brighten the eyes and sometimes I'll increase the clarity but I didn't for this one. This really makes the eyes pop out. Lets zoom back out and take a look at the before and after. Now you can see what a difference that filter makes for the eyes.

Finally, the last step that I do with my photos is the "Adjustment Brush". I'll turn it on and off so you can see. This is my favorite adjustment to do and I always do it at the end of my editing. I like this because it feels like your painting. I use this to dramatize the hightlights and shadows of whatever I want. I'll hover over the first one which I use for the highlighting. You can see that I have it set to plus .86. I usually stay around that. And then I just click and brush in what I want to brighten up. Like this. I'll hover over so you can see the areas I did.

I do the same thing with this one but to darken the areas. I have this set to minus .76. And I'll hover over so you can see what I brushed.

And with that, this photo is completed. I hope this was helpful for you seeing how I edit my butterfly photos. Let me know if you liked this tutorial. Thanks for watching!