How to Edit Photos in lightroom & Photoshop 2021 ( beginner to professional)

Today i'm going to walk you through my photo editing process using lightroom

photoshop and a few extra touches of magic to transform these raw images into portfolio works of art here's how playtape so we probably all have our own preferred way of working with images or perhaps you're new to editing and you don't know where to start or how to advance up from taking jpegs to raw images or stick around to see how i do it and transform an image to something you'd be happy to hang on a wall if you're new to the channel think about hitting the subscribe button for more tutorials on photography editing tips and tricks okay enough said let's get into it okay so i'm going to go ahead and open up lightroom here and i'm going to import a couple of images that i'm going to edit for you today just to show you my process and how i go through things so i'm going to locate the folder on the hard drive and we'll import these images so i'm going to start with the image of the flat iron building in new york and as you can see this is a high dynamic range image from highlights to shadows it's been exposed just about correctly but we just need to bring back some of the detail in the sky because we want the focus to be on the building and the taxi in the foreground not on the brightest part of the image which your eye naturally goes to which in this case is the sky so i'm going to start with the highlight slider and reduce that all the way down to negative 100 and we've just got some more detail in that sky now and i'm going to increase the shadows just a hair by plus five and the whites i'm going to just reduce down to negative 20 and i'm

going to go quite severe on the blacks to negative 70. increase the clarity to plus 15 but counteract that grungy texture that the clarity always gives you next up i'll head down to the hsl sliders and i'll always start with the luminance sliders first because you have such control over the brightness of specific colors in this case i want more focus on that taxi in the foreground so i'll increase the oranges all the way to 100 and that's really made that taxi pop and i think some of the yellows too and darken the blues to enhance the drama in the sky and bring back even more detail and with color in general i often favor limiting myself to just a few colors either analogous colors or complementary colors there's a lot of information on color theory on the adobe color website which i'll put a link to in the description so with that said i'll head into the saturation sliders and take out the colors i don't want in this image like the blues purples and magentas and one last adjustment i'll do to the color is change the profile to vivid to really make the image pop with

color and contrast another tool i like to use to add some simple and effective results is the radial filter to add some pools of light so just on the road here is a good example so i'll choose the radial tool and draw a circle on the road and then simply increase the exposure by around a stop of light and that adds a soft and graduated pool of light onto the road and brings a bit more attention onto the foreground and likewise i'll take away some attention from the sky by decreasing the exposure on this radial effect now i'm going to add one last radial effect to the building bathed in sunlight and increase some warmth using the temperature slider and i think i'll just bring down the exposure touch too so using the backslash button on your keyboard we can toggle between the before and after to see our progress and that's just added a bit more drama and a late afternoon vibe to this image now it's time to ship it over to photoshop with photo edit in and choose photoshop and firstly i always like to make a copy of the base image to refer back to later in the editing process so now it's time to remove a few distractions from the image using the spot removal tool so i'll just tidy up the road here [Music] and this is a little extreme but this building over on the left is ruining the composition slightly for me and i think that's made a big improvement next up i'll create a levels adjustment layer and darken the midtones a touch to increase the contrast even further and now probably my favorite adjustment layer is selective color so this is where you can go to town with color grading you have a huge amount of creative control targeting colors changing the hue and luminosity and ultimately affecting the overall outcome of the image i'll choose the blacks from the drop down menu and with the magenta

slider add a hint of green with -1 and the whites a fair amount of yellows just to warm up those highlights next up i'll add a curves adjustment layer and drag up the curve to increase the overall exposure then i'll invert the adjustment with ctrl or command i and with a soft white brush just reveal those areas you want to brighten up now one last curves adjustment layer to target the shadows and i'll make a slight s curve to create contrast invert that with ctrl or command i and with that soft white brush just paint the dark areas you want from beneath the mask [Music] now on second thoughts i'm going to remove some of those yellows that we added to those whites so we've gone from a fairly average snapshot of an iconic building in new york and giving it some light punch and a real feel for the dramatic the wife get out of here so next up we have a portrait in the style of peaky blinders and i'm going to transform him into someone with some real grit and maturity so a few basic adjustments to the overall exposure

brightening the image shadows to around plus 50 white's around plus 10 um clarity at this stage plus 20 but i'll probably come back to this at a later stage in the edit and just like before luminance i'll increase the blues to a hundred percent and that's it for lightroom so once in photoshop the first thing i'm going to do is make his eyes sparkle so i'll create a new layer and with a soft edge white brush paint a little crescent on the iris then simply change the blending mode to overlay and that's a good start then add a solid color adjustment layer choose a nice light blue then simply right click and create a clipping mask which attaches the adjustment to the layer underneath so it only affects that layer then i'll reduce the opacity to around 25 percent i'll just group these layers together by selecting both and then ctrl or command g and rename the group eyes and just out of interest you can change the color of his eyes to whatever you like now if you fancy his eyes green then so be it but blue is what i'm sticking with so still inside the eyes group create a curves adjustment layer and drag up the exposure invert the layer with ctrl or command i and with a small white brush reveal the adjustment from the whites of his eyes [Music] and then creating a vibrance adjustment layer and clipping it once again to the layer

below i'll remove the red color cast from his eyes and finally reduce the opacity on the whites of his eyes to around 60 so it looks a bit more realistic so let's see his eyes before and after now that's a lovely set of twinklers next up i'm going to enhance the contours in his cheeks a touch by creating a curves adjustment layer and drag down the exposure and then as before invert the adjustment layer with ctrl or command i with a soft edge white brush but this time set to five percent flow just begin darkening the cheekbones and shadows on his face a really useful tool for jobs like this is a graphics tablet they can be expensive but to be honest i couldn't do without one and it's probably my greatest asset after photoshop itself this one is a wacom intuos pro [Music] so now we have a bit more definition in those cheeks nose and eye sockets next up is my secret method for enhancing mid-tone detail affinity photo is an editing software just like photoshop but with some features which i love and in some cases prefer over photoshop so i'll drag our psd file into affinity photo and make a copy of the background layer with ctrl or command j and up here in the personas tab we have tone mapping once the persona has loaded we have a bunch of presets over here on the left which i rarely use but over on the right here we have tone compression which i don't use all

that much but local contrast is where the magic happens i'll increase to about 25 to 28 and i'll show you a quick before and after it's pretty incredible and in my opinion much better results than simply using clarity and texture in camera raw and lightroom but i don't want the effect everywhere so i'll create a mask and invert it with ctrl or command i and with a soft edge white brush reveal the effect from beneath the mask so the eyes don't need this effect because they've already been retouched i have the saved psd file back in photoshop now and creating a stamped layer with ctrl alt shift and e i'll rename the layer stamp and head up to filter and camera raw filter and i'm just going to bump the clarity slider to enhance the changes that we made in affinity photo and a touch of texture and that's it we've gone from this to a grungy gritty striking portrait so i think i've got time for one more edit so let's start with some basic adjustments reducing highlights to -60 shadows plus 40 whites upper touch to plus 10 and my clarity and texture opposing each other at plus and minus 50. heading down to the luminance slider i'll darken the blues in the sky touch and brighten the skin tones using the orange and red sliders i'll target the yellows to increase luminance in the wheat field and

purples will go to 100 in the saturation section i'll decrease the skin tones and greens will get rid of all together along with most of the blues in the clouds purples and magenta is also gone an effective adjustment in the color grading wheels is the luminance slider which i'll target the shadows with negative 60. this gives us some punch in those blacks a few more additions i'll make firstly with a gradient filter to darken the exposure in the top of the sky and a radial filter to target the wheat and increase the temperature in those yellows finally i'll change the color profile to adobe vivid so let's check our progress so far and that's looking okay so let's head over to photoshop and i'll make a copy of the background layer and then with the spot healing brush tool just tidy up the road [Music] and this little distraction here next up using a curves adjustment layer drag down the exposure invert the mask with ctrl or command i and with a white brush hardness at zero percent and flow 100 just begin darkening the foreground to create a vignette and lead the eye into the center of the image so that's looking pretty good next i'm going to completely desaturate the colors in the grass i'll use the hue saturation adjustment layer select yellows from the drop down and bring the saturation down but we've lost the nice color in the field so with the mask selected and a black brush i'll reveal those warm yellows and also the skin tones were affected too next up using selective color i want to target the blacks and add a slight blue color cast moving on to a gradient map adjustment layer i have a cobalt blue and white gradient which i'll change the blending option to soft light and this is a bit strong so i'll reduce the opacity to around 25 so here's a really neat trick for creating atmosphere depth and separation to an image using a curves adjustment layer bring the black point up and curve it a touch i'll invert the mask with control or command i and with a brush set to white hardness around 50 percent just begin to paint the distant objects you can take a little more care with the intricate parts of the image but for the sake of time i'll just rush through this section [Music] and i'll just soften this little transition here too so almost there one more curves adjustment layer to brighten the image invert the mask soft white brush roughly paint around the wheel and the brightest parts of the bike now you'll notice a blue tint on those areas which i can resolve using the blending option luminance and one final change by double clicking on the layer to open up the layer style dialog box i'm going to remove the effect from the blackest parts of the image using the underlying layer slider and a quick before and after has given us some real punch in those highlights so that's it let's take a look from where we started in photoshop that's not a bad effort for six minutes and from the raw file to the finished image we have a lovely professional looking photograph worthy of a portfolio shot that's it team thanks for watching don't forget to like and subscribe and i'll see you next time.