In this tutorial we'll be diving into the editing controls that you'll use most in Lightroom CC. And in this lesson we'll be focusing on the powerful lighting controls. If you're following along with the sample files, add them to Lightroom CC and then select this photo and press E on your keyboard or go over to the right and click the Edit icon. That takes you to the Edit workspace and pops out this column of editing controls. The Light panel at the top of this column contains controls for adjusting what it says, lighting. If you need a reminder of what a particular slider in this panel does you can just hover over it and the tooltip appears with these animated sliders it can be really helpful. Now sometimes all you have to do in this panel is click one button, the Auto button. That automatically moves the sliders in just this panel to where Lightroom CC thinks they should be to improve the lighting in the photo. Once you have this start you then can come in and tweak some of these sliders. Maybe you want this to be brighter for example. Or you could adjust each of the sliders manually from scratch. Let's go ahead and do that. So, to set the sliders back to where they were. I'm going to hold down the Option key on a Mac or the Alt key on Windows and that changes the name of the panel from LIGHT to RESET LIGHT. Clicking RESET LIGHT sets all the sliders back to their starting point of 0. And that only affects the sliders in this panel not any of the other panels. The first slider in the Light panel, the Exposure slider controls the overall brightness of the photo. Dragging to the left darkens the photo and dragging to the right lightens the photo. If a photo is well exposed you usually don't have to take this slider too far in either direction. So, I'm going to drag that back a bit to the equivalent of about a half a stop increase in exposure in a camera. Now if a photo looks a little flat you can go to the next slider, the Contrast slider and drag that to the right. And that makes the dark areas darker and the light areas lighter, exaggerating the contrast. If on the other hand the photo is too contrasty like an outdoor shot taken in the middle of the day, you might try dragging the Contrast slider to the left of 0. And that reduces contrast. Now I usually don't move this Contrast slider so far from 0 in either direction. I'm going to put it back to 0 by double-clicking it and I want to show you another way that you can move this slider in smaller more controlled increments. You can come over to the value field to the right of Contrast, click there and then tap the up arrow or the down arrow on your keyboard to move the Contrast slider just a little bit, like that. And then press Enter or Return on the keyboard. The next four sliders Highlights Shadows, Whites and Blacks give you more a targeted control over the brightness of particular tones in the photo. The Highlights slider targets the bright areas of the photo. Dragging the Highlights slider to the right will brighten the highlight areas. Dragging the Highlights slider to the left will darken the highlight areas and have the added bonus of bringing out detail in highlight areas like clouds or like the waves on the left side of this photo. So, keep your eye on those as I drag the Highlights slider to the left. And now we see a lot more detail right over here than we did just a moment ago. The next slider, the Shadows slider controls the brightness of the darker areas in the photo. Keep your eye on the gray rock as I drag this slider to the left which darkens those tones. More often than not you want to drag this slider not to the left but rather to the right to lighten the dark areas and bring out detail there. As you can see now as I drag this slider to the right if you keep your eye on the rocks. Of course, we don't want to forget about the last two sliders in the Light panel, the Whites slider and the Blacks slider. These control the very brightest light areas of the photo and the very darkest dark areas. Dragging the Whites slider to the right will add some contrast to the photo by setting the very brightest light areas to pure white. You can but you don't have to. Hold down the option key on a Mac or the Alt key on Windows and then drag the Whites slider to the right. Your photo will turn black and soon you'll start to see some tiny bits of white or color. And that tells me that those are the areas that I'm pushing to pure white with no detail. Finally, the Blacks slider mostly affects the very, very dark parts of the photo and whenever I open up the shadows I'd like to drag the black slider over to the left and that will add a little more contrast and punch to the photo. So now let's compare a before and after view of this photo by going down to the before and after icon here and clicking. There's the original photo without the adjustments and clicking again to see the photo with the adjustments. Now adjusting the lighting in a photo isn't the only thing you can do to improve the look of the photo. There are lots of other global adjustments here in these panels and over on the right you can use the selective editing tools too to adjust just part of a photo. But adjusting lighting often provides the strong foundation you need to take a photo from just okay to one you're really proud of.

 

Sometimes a photo will have an overall color cast. If you don't like that you can correct it using the white balance controls in Lightroom CC's Color panel. Select this photo in the sample files and then press E on the keyboard or click the Edit icon. Click the Color panel to open that panel. At the top of the Color panel you'll see several different controls that you can use to change the White Balance. You can try dragging the Temp slider which ranges from gold to blue and the Tint slider that ranges from magenta to green. Because this photo has a gold color cast, I'm going to drag the Temp slider away from gold and toward blue. You can see that's changing the overall color of the photo. And I might try the Tint slider as well, dragging that a bit toward green. If you're not getting the look you want with the Temp and Tint sliders you can try a color preset from the drop down-menu here. I'll select Auto and notice that that moved the Temp and Tint sliders for me. When you're working with a jpeg format file like this one there are only two choices in that drop down preset menu. As Shot which is the way the color looks straight out of the camera and Auto which is Lightroom CC's best guest about white balance. But if you're working with a raw file, you'll see a lot more color presets to choose from in this menu. That's because there is more latitude to adjust color balance in a raw file than in a jpeg in which the camera bakes in its own white balance settings. Let's reset all the sliders in the Color panel to As Shot because I want to show you another way that you can try to fix a color cast and that's by using this Eyedropper tool With the Eyedropper tool selected I'll move into the photo and I'll try to click on something I think should be neutral grey and color. And if there isn't anything grey in the photo you can try clicking on something you think should be white or black. I think the train platform is probably grey, so I'll try clicking there. And as you can see that has a dramatic effect on the white balance and it moved the Temp and Tint sliders. You can try clicking on different areas and notice that no matter where you click you get a slightly different look. There is no right answer about what the white balance should be. So just go with the result that you like best. And if you even like the initial color cast you're welcome to keep that. It's really your own creative decision. But as you can see, using the white balance tools can have a really dramatic effect on the color of a photo. So, if you have a photo that looks too gold or too blue or maybe too green or magenta give the white balance controls a try.

When you're working with a photo that needs more or less intensity in its colors you can use the Vibrance and/or the Saturation sliders in Lightroom CC's Color panel. If you're following along with the sample files select this photo and then press E on your keyboard or click the Edit icon. In the Color panel come down to Vibrance and Saturation. Let's take a look at Saturation first. Dragging the Saturation slider toward the left decreases the intensity of all the colors in a photo and dragging it to the right increases the intensity. Now let's say that I want the blue in this photo to be more intense. If I drag to the right until I like the color of the blue I find that the color of the model's skin and her red socks are becoming oversaturated. So, this is a case where you might want to use the Vibrance slider instead. Let's put the Saturation slider back to 0 by double clicking the circle on the Saturation slider and then we'll go to the Vibrance slider. Now here if I drag to the right I can get the blue to where I want it without over saturating the model's skin or her socks. And that's often the case because the Vibrance slider does a more subtle job of affecting color intensity. Increasing the Vibrance slider will have the greatest effect on colors that need saturation the most. And the Vibrance slider protects colors that are typically found in skin tones, so they don't become oversaturated. So now that you know the difference between Vibrance and Saturation give these sliders a try on your own photos or on some of the other sample photos too.