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Hello people! Welcome to this tutorial! I am going to explain you here how to use
Adobe Lightroom 5, in very easy steps.
If you are looking for something in detail, check the quick index in the video
description to save time.
First of all, Lightroom 5 is one of the coolest softwares to edit and manage your
photos, in fast and very easy actions. This is truly recommended to people that do
work on photos. What differs from the known Photoshop software, is that Lightroom is
better focused on media expecially on photos.
First of all, on your left side, you have all for navigation. Lightroom does work with
catalogs, which are personalized groups of media. With media it's intended any
image or video that is recognised by Lightroom. At first, you will have no
catalogs and all empty. So start with importing any media. Go to Import...
button at the bottom. You will be directed to a new window that will let you browse
what you want to add in Lightroom, under the Source section. Lightroom will show
automatically the pieces of media when you click on the folders that have content.
The photos or videos that are checked are all the ones that will be imported. To make
all easier, help yourself with the Check and Uncheck All buttons at the bottom.
In any window of Lightroom, you can choose how to visualize the photos. At the
bottom you can choose to view many photos at once or just a single photo per time.
You can do this through the two icons on the left, or simply double-clicking on the
image to see. In the first case, so in Grid View, the bar on the right sets the size
of each image; in the second case, called Loupe View, the bar is the zoom in and
out of a picture. This does work on videos as well, although what you will see
and manage is just its first frame.
If you look on top, you will see what Lightroom is doing. On the left you have
the source folder, so where you are picking the image. On the centre, you
choose the action. In our case, we are adding media from the source to our catalog.
But we can choose Copy and Move. The info below will describe the action. In case
you choose Move or Copy, the right side will be used to set the destination folder,
that you can further check on top. Here we just see the Add action. Then just click
on Import. Your catalog is just done! Editing it is very simple. First of all, you can
import other media by selecting All Photographs and clicking on Import... again.
In case you want to remove photos instead, just select one of them and right-click.
Then go to Remove Photo. Make sure to choose Remove to delete the photo just
from your Lightroom catalog instead from your hard drive.
What you are actually seeing, is the Library section. This is used to manage the
group of photos in general and your catalog as well. Each photo is ordered with a
number on the top left corner. The order can be changed through the Sort option
at the bottom.
The general images overlook can be modified through the options at the bottom.
You have here the Grid and the Loupe View, and others that you can try out.
At the bottom, you have another navigation space, to select the image interested
in one touch.
The Library section is not used to edit photos into deep, but to change
information about them, for example title, tags and comments related. On the
right you can start editing. Quick Develop is used to edit the photo very fast and in
a cool way. Always click on the arrows on the right to see all the sub-options inside.
To edit the property described on the left, just click on the buttons. The right arrows
increase the property's value. Whereas use the left arrows. A double arrow does
vary the value of the property deeper than the single arrow. Use Metadata instead
to change info and comments related to the photo selected.
You can indeed make fast operations directly from your Library.
For example, if you approach your mouse on an image, you can use the buttons on the
bottom corners to rotate the image. Approach on the top right corner to add
the photo to the Quick Collection, which is like a second catalog where you
add photos through this rounded button. You can find such catalog always on the left.
On the top left corner you can add flags, through which you can recognise photos
and organize them. In the Library Loupe View, you can look at your image better,
just zoom in by clicking once, and drag your pointer to move around with the hand.
Click again on the image to zoom out.
Even more, you can use Navigator to view better your image. Use the quick options
on top and click on an image's point to set where you want to have a look at.
Very important, expecially while editing photos, is the Histogram on the top right
corner. When you select an image, the Histogram will show you the color spectrum
of such image. For example, if you choose a photo where there is a lot of blue color,
the Histogram will show a peak in blue color. In this way you know which are the
more present colors in the image.
In case you want to edit photos into deep, go to Develop section, next to Library.
Below Histogram, you have different options to edit your image properly. In case you
don't find these options, click on the right arrow to show them. Click on
the arrow on the right to open the sub-options. Whenever you need to edit
values, you can proceed in three ways: you can drag the point on the bar, or you can
insert a precise value by clicking once on the numbers. Even more, you can approach
your mouse on the number and drag on the left and right to change it.
Let's see these options in detail. First of all, before starting, it is very important to
save the state of your original photo. To do this, just go on the left, in the Snapshot
section. Snapshot is done to save the state of an image in a particular moment,
shown through date and hour by default. Click on the plus in the top right corner
to save the current original photos. You will click on such whenever you want to come
back to this.
The first step usually done is cropping the image. Go to Crop Overlay, through
the first button on the left above all. This is important to select just the area of the
photo you want to save. The rest will be cut off. Drag the mouse on the image to set
the area to save. Then edit such area through its boundaries and dragging.
Hold Shift down to keep the aspect ratio constant. Approach externally
the crop area edges to rotate. Then just click on Done at the bottom.
In case you don't like how the image is, or it is mirrowed, just go to Photo and then
click on Flip Horizontal or Vertical.
In a second step, you usually edit lightness and contrast. This is fully ruled by the
Basic section. Here you can change the balance between shadows and lights.
The image is OK if its Histogram doesn't show too much high peaks on the
extreme left and right.
Use Shadow bar to make visible the darkest parts of the image.
Go to Presence section to make the image's colors more vivacious.
Use Detail section to make the image less blurry or more. A small detailed
picture will make you see the effects of your actions.
The third step is to enhance the colors of the photo. Go to Split Toning. Hue and
Saturation work together to give color to your image. Saturation adds color,
starting from the ones of the image. Hue is used to change the dominating color
given from the Saturation effect. In this way, a red image can become blue, and so on.
The Saturation can be applied differently on highlights and shadows. Balance sets
how these have to communicate.
Notice the switches on the left. These turn on and off each section.
The section HSL, Color and B&W are Hue and Saturation, but applied singularly on
main colors instead on all of them together. Similar is the Camera Calibration, just
try it.
This is basicly the main operations you make to enhance your photo.
In case you want to know how to apply nice effects on your photos, check the video
related in this show.
What to do while editing? To save your intermediate editings, go on clicking the
plus in the Snapshot section. So that, in case you don't like the current final editing,
you can always click on a previous snapshot done to come back. If you want to
undo the latest action done instead, go to Edit and then to Undo or simply press
CTRL+Z from your keyboard. If you want to go more backwards, go to History
on the left.
In case you want to edit quickly, you can use the Presets on the right. These edit
your image according to the values saved in Lightroom, ready to use.
How to save such an image modified then? Go to File and then to Export...
The window appearing seems complex, but just do this. In the Export Location go to
Browse and select where to export your image modified. Uncheck the subfolder
option if you want. In File Naming check Rename to and write the name of the
image. In File Settings choose the kind of format, and increase or decrease
quality. Use Image Resizing to give a new resolution to the image. Then just
click on Export.
If you want to save a whole Catalog, you firstly need to add images to the Quick
Collection. Then just right-click on it and go to Save Quick Collection and change
its name in the next window.
Well, this is all! Check the other videos in this show, to know the other features of
Adobe Lightroom 5. Thanks for watching!