The Ultimate Guide For How To Edit In Adobe Lightroom (End-To-End)

hi I'm Pat K A Travel Photographer and

Sony digital imaging Ambassador based in

Tokyo Japan and in this video I'm going

to take you through an endtoend workflow

of how I think about and approach my

editing in Adobe Lightroom so this is

actually a updated version of a video

that I did about 3 years ago but since

then a lot of things have changed like

my Lightroom editing masterclass being

released and thousands of students

really getting value out of it so what

I'm going to do in this video is teach

you the exact workflow steps that I

teach in my Lightroom editing master

class and if you enjoy the video and you

want even more then I'll have a link to

that in the description below if you

really want to pick it up and level up

your editing with over 11 hours of

content five of those being real world

portfolio level end to-end editing

sessions over a wide variety of

Photography categories all right so this

is the image that we are going to be

working on today it is a image of the

very famous Cho pagod and I shot it

during the Sakura season this year it

was shot on my Sony a7r Mark 5 with the

1635 G Master 2 these are the settings

up here in the top left that I used and

I shot this image purposefully under

under exposed so that I could retain the

maximum amount of highlight detail as

possible now before we get into any of

the serious Lightroom stuff an edit

always starts with the shot itself first

and what I mean by that is what you

shoot and how you shot it so I always

think back to you know the intention why

did I take this shot why was it

compelling enough in the field for me to

want to compose it like this you know

what was the main focus or the main

purpose of this shot in this case I took

hundreds of shots this morning but I

chose this Frame specifically because I

really like the way the light is falling

on you know this part of the Sakura in

the foreground but not all of the Sakura

I really enjoy how the shadow falls off

as well on the the side of the pagota

here too you know there's a nice

contrast between light and dark now my

objective here is really about how I can

bring out this this field of flowers

here in the foreground and make it

balanced amongst you know the Mount Fuji

in the background and the pagoto and

make them work harmoniously now the

first thing that I'm going to do is what

I call restoring and exposure and pretty

much the idea here is to reset the image

to a good Baseline to then start the

edit from so for me here the first thing

that I'm seeing is I actually shot this

in a little bit of a rush and so it's

not level so that's the first thing

we're going to do here we're going to

bring up the crop tool and we're just

going to change the rotation just

slightly just so that Mount Fuji seems

more level than it seems right now uh

something like that look looks good to

me May bit too

much yep that looks okay the next thing

we are going to do is lens Corrections

so over here on the right in the develop

module you'll actually notice that lens

Corrections and then transforms come

before the basic tone panel and that's

because I've reorganized all of the

panels based on the order of operations

that I edit in and you can do this for

yourself if you just right click on any

one of these titles here and you go

customize develop panel and then you can

go and grab these handles here and then

shift them around to your liking so for

me the very first thing is lens

Corrections always do lens Corrections

just to reset the image and get what

it's supposed to be from there I will do

transforms here this image doesn't

require a whole lot of transforming

especially since the way that I shot it

was quite flat but if I had shut it like

you know just a little bit higher up or

a little bit further down then ideally

we would be using this transform uh

vertical uh slider here so if we press R

for crop we can actually bring up the

crops ahead of time and then we can go

and change and have a look and compare

and see how straight what I'm looking at

here is this the top part of the pagota

how straight that is versus this line

here in this instance I'm going to try

and straighten this out as much as I

can uh something

around here looks good to

me not too

much and then we'll press enter and

we'll also constrain the crop and tick

that just because this next step is what

I typically do to landscape shots to

make things feel a little bit more

exciting than they perhaps might be in

real life so what I'm going to do is use

the aspect slider here and what you can

see is when I slide this to the right it

kind of gets squished in and when I

slide this to the left it kind of

flattens out right so what I'll do here

reset this back to zero is actually go

right and squeeze it a little bit and

this has the effect of making Mount Fuji

just seem a little bit taller and a

little more Grand than it might actually

be to the naked eye in real life but I

like the exaggeration and especially for

a tutorial like this being able to show

you these tools is most certainly uh my

objective okay so from here we are going

to be doing exposure so remember this is

all about having a good basine to start

the edit from so what we're doing here

is we are looking at the histogram in

the top right and what we're first

trying to see is is there any clipped

portions of the histogram is any portion

too far in the bottom here or too far in

the top here and if that's the case then

we would actually grab those portions

and then drag them out kind of like this

and in this instance you know it's

actually pretty good I shot this

underexposed on purpose so that I could

save as much detail as possible but what

we're going to do in this instance we're

going to drag the blacks up just a

little bit and then the Shadows up just

a little bit as well just so that we

have a little bit more visible

foreground work with and the the Shadows

are a little bit more easier to work

with later on when we eventually go and

do contrast so the next thing I

typically do is look out for highlights

so if there's any highlights that aren't

blown or are blown I will go and adjust

those here what I tend to do in most of

my images regardless of if the image has

blown out scenes or not is I typically

actually go down in highlights just a

smidge just to retain some of the

Highlight detail especially if you're

looking at you know Mount Fuji here and

then I bring up the whites to balance

that so that I can have both the detail

of the highlights and some really bright

whites so I generally like a a kind of

contrasty image but as a baseline

setting you know I'm trying to get it to

the point where like this is a good

start this is a good base to tone to

start with so now we've got a good base

tone to start with and we've got all of

our image corrected in terms of the

orientation and some of the transforms

uh and even some of the aspects as well

now the next step we're going to do is

contrast so why contrast next why

contrast after doing you know your reset

or your basic tone well contrast and

adding contrast I'd like to do first

because contrast introduces increased

saturation and perceived sharpness so

darker luminance values in color

typically invoke a look of richness and

depth to a color and that is achieved by

increasing contrast most of the time and

then on the sharpness side of things the

differences between dark pixels and

light pixels right next to each other

create a perceived sense of sharpness in

our eyes it is this this lightness and

darkness that looks like a line that

makes our eyes or tricks our eyes into

perceiving it as more sharp so when

we're increasing the contrast we're also

increasing the perceived sharpness as

well even if that isn't necessarily true

now contrast is controlled most commonly

by the tone curve down here you might

have seen this one before and the tone

curve has a few different options this

is my favorite this is called the point

curve and then it also has this one

which is more of a on Rails experience

and then the red green and blue point

curves respectively I like this one

because it controls all three of these

parameters at once and it provides me

with the most amount of flexibility I go

into much more detail in tone curve in

the master classes that I teach as well

as some uh videos that I've done in the

past on the turn curve as well here on

YouTube so I'll leave a link to those in

the description down below but basically

what I do is I try to create what's

called an S curve so I do that by first

starting out with three dots here like

so and then this kind of region is your

shadows and your blacks region this kind

of region here is your highlight and

your white region and it's basically

just as simple as going Boop and

lowering that down and then Boop and

then raising that up that introduces

contrast in this instance I feel that

the Shadows are just a little bit too

dark um so I'm actually going to slide

this over just a little bit and raise

this up a little bit and then I'm going

to add another Point here kind of

following this kind of area and then

just bringing that down just a smidge

very fine kind of

detail and then in terms of the

highlights I think I'm going to crank

the highlights a little bit higher just

in general just to add a little bit more

brightness to the image because I like

really bright brights on my edits we can

also press this I here and that shows

us the before and the after in terms of

contrast so whereas the before when we

were resetting and restoring the image

it actually ended up looking quite flat

now it has a lot more punch to it and of

course this kind of punch and color

changes will look different from Monitor

to Monitor so as you're watching this

YouTube video you know if you are

watching it on your phone uh that may

look different to if you were watching

it on your desktop for example and

obviously it is again different to what

I'm seeing on my monitor as well all

right so now that we've done contrast we

are up to color so due to our contrast

we were able to inject just a little bit

of saturation especially around these

red kind of edges of the pagota here

through contrast alone so now we are

doing specifically color so with color

we are looking at five main controls we

are looking at white balance we're

looking at Global Vibrance and

saturation we are looking at calibration

if you're using Lightroom classic which

this one is the we then have the hsl and

then we have color grading I typically

do that in that order and we will start

with white balance first because white

balance is one of those things where

especially if you are shooting raw the

changes that you get to white balance in

terms of color are effectively what's

called well I call it free which is to

say that the changes that you make don't

degrade the image you can push white

balance back and forth without things

falling apart without banding without

most of the time things looking a bit

weird so I tend to start with white

balance first and then I move into

calibration so we will go and do white

balance just to see if there's any kind

of changes or moods we can look at first

and in this instance I can you know go

for a little bit more of a a warm look

so Slide the slider to the right here

and this uh kind of gives it a more

morning Vibe or I can slide it to the

left and this gives it a more you know

blue cooler perhaps earlier morning kind

of vibe like when the sun just gets up

kind of thing and then we have the tint

for more magenta or more green in this

instance I mean this is all to taste

right color is completely subjective uh

and completely up to you for me we're

going to go with a little bit more of a

warm feeling image just to you know it's

a sunrise shot so I want to accentuate

that just a little bit so a little bit

of warmth on the temperature up here and

a little bit of magenta as well just to

bring a little bit of that purple in and

that will also have the effect of

coloring our Sakura down here in the

foreground a little bit as well

The Next Step that I typically do is

calibration on Lightroom if the image

calls for it so calibration is quite

complex and I use it in a very I would

say creative way and and not the way

that's originally intended by Lightroom

for it to be used um I've done a

gigantic video on the calibration tool

specifically in the past so I will refer

you to to that but typically I use

calibration for color Harmony basically

combining certain colors together so

that an image only has a few colors

instead of many many different colors

this is a technique that I use in in my

own like visual aesthetic and in this

image it doesn't really require any

calibration as far as I can tell I mean

or at least as far as I want to do you

know it looks pretty harmonious we've

got some purples we've got some Reds

some yellows some

oranges no greens really typically and

that's kind of what I'm looking for when

it comes to color Harmony and

harmonizing all of the palette and then

we've got a very pale kind of blue here

so I don't think this

particular image requires calibration so

in this instance we will skip

it what we have next is the color mixer

or the hsl slider so we can actually go

into each one of these uh sliders here

and we can start changing things up for

me I like my Red's really deep red so I

typically leave my Reds in the middle

and then I'll actually go and bring down

the luminance on that a little bit just

so that the Reds feel more

Lush for me the oranges here are okay I

think we're going to just slide them

slightly to the right to make them a

little bit more yellow and then the

yellows we're just playing around we're

seeing where the yellows occur in the

image and I think a little bit more

towards the orange will turn the

yellows from there the greens uh not a

lot of greens going on here which is

great which is why we don't need to use

the calibration so we'll leave that and

then Aquas typically found in some

portions of the early sky but in this

instance not a lot either so we'll leave

that and then Blues which will be the

sky which has a lot of changes and in

this instance I'm going to go for a

little bit more of a greenish kind of

look so I'm going to add a slight bit of

a aqua to the blues here we're going to

go into the purples which should be a

little bit of the background yes it is

so we're going to align this instead of

making it more purple because you can

see it's actually affecting a lot of

Mount Fuji here we're going to push it

up towards more Blues so that we can

harmonize the purple and the blue

together as one color grouping so rather

than having it like very purple and it

stands out from the sky we're going to

have it as more blue and it kind of

melds into the sky and gives us a easier

color palette to digest from here we'll

check out what the magenta does and in

this case it's not a lot we do have a

little bit of the detail here in the the

Sakura for the magenta but it's not

enough to make a huge difference and in

later sections we will actually Target

that specifically so that we can then

bring it out and pop that

out from here what I typically do is I I

play around with the

saturation I like a kind of neutral

saturation I like to push it as far as I

can whilst remaining neutral that's just

my preference some people like to really

go ham on on the saturation and some

people like a really subdued kind of

look again personal preference for me

there's not a lot of work here to do the

Reds are pretty good again this is a a

sunrise kind of shot so I'm going to

make it a little bit more saturated

because during the sunrise a lot of

colors are very saturated orange I feel

is actually just a little bit too

saturated so I'm going to pull that back

just a little bit and then

yellows uh yellows is okay going to pull

that a smidge back I remember there not

being much green so I'm going to

actually just reduce that down just so

that we can get rid of all the green all

together and then I remember they're not

being in much Aqua either so I'm going

to do the same in terms of

saturation I kind of like the saturation

values here but what I'm going to do in

instead is actually use the luminance so

with the luminance I'm going to bring it

down and that's going to darken the blue

color and make it look more saturated

make it look more Rich so in this case

this is what it

does as we can see here so if we go all

the way you know obviously that's way

too much uh but if we go you know just a

little bit of the way now we can kind of

get saturation for free effectively even

though it's not free there is a little

bit of degration when you go really far

down starting to fall apart just a

little bit uh but we're going to go

about here and I think that's that looks

nice to

me yep that's good in terms of

saturation uh purples so that's going to

control Fuji in the

back and to me we are going to just

deset that just a little bit so that we

can have it more gray and so it looks

more like a mountain to me to me

mountains are black and white or like

Shades of Gray and and not specifically

colors so that's what I'm going to do uh

magenta we are probably going to leave

that we can see if we crank this up all

the way there are magenta highlights in

all of the soccer in the bottom so H it

looks a little bit weird to me so I am

going to just leave this for now and

then we're going to locally adjust this

after now the next one is color grading

and color grading is super super easy to

go overboard with color grading

effectively think of it like it adding

colors on top of your initial colors

that you've set so this is really to

give it a a very stylized look very

specific look so if you have something

in my by all means do it um in this

instance what I'm going to do is

actually put a little bit of highlights

in terms of warmth

into this slider here then we can kind

of drag it up and down to see the effect

definitely don't want that much uh just

something

subtle something like a

three

cool and then try and cool this down and

see what that looks like in the shadows

again not too much we want more of a

blue here and then maybe

a six so very or five very small kind of

increments here what I'm doing is I'm

introducing a little bit more blue and a

little bit more orange into the scene

and those two are contrasting colors so

in my opinion that makes the image and

the general color palette look a lot

more interesting because complimentary

colors are typically very visually

appealing and Visually attractive so

that's why I do it in this way you don't

have to do it if you don't want to you

know again it's all it's all preference

from there we go back up to to the basic

panel and we are looking at Vibrance and

saturation Vibrance is like a kind of

quote unquote smart way of pushing more

saturation values into the image without

it breaking down so it is an intelligent

slider Lightroom actually picks the

portions of the image that it thinks are

the most pertinent to that particular

image and then increases that rather

than the saturation slider just

increasing saturation values across the

board globally so in this instance we're

going to have a play around and see if I

can crank this Vibrance just a little

bit and see what happens that's

definitely way too much so maybe

something around here that looks good to

me and then

saturation back forth back forth I think

we're good around maybe a plus two or

something like that something very

strong you know all right so now that

we've got our pretty much our basee

grade done so we've got the colors we've

got the contrast you know we've got the

exposure we've got all the

transforms now it's time to do presents

and effects so presents and effects are

really about making the image or the

subjects pop and presence is

specifically around you know it's

changing the perceived sharpness of your

image and I use it as an attempt to to

draw attention to things that are

important in the image or I use it as an

effect to make the image look softer or

harder you know depending on what I'm

trying to go for in the image so what I

will typically use is the presentence

slider and so I will always start with

Clarity um I know a lot of people go ham

on the clarity slider nowadays either

going way to the right and really like

popping things out and making things

super contrasty super sharp or they're

going really Ham on the left and then

making things look really dreamy losing

all that detail uh and making things

look soft and glowy for me I like to

lean more on the soft side but not so

much that you can tell I want things to

be natural and I want things to again I

want to push it as far as I can whilst

still making it look organic and natural

so usually I'm at about 20 to maybe 30

depending on the image for this image

I'm going to go for a

23 and this is enough for me to like

soften up the details here and soften up

the details here and make things start

to look a little dreamy but I can also

see that some of the texture and the

detail is lost so what I typically do is

when I go minus Clarity I'll go positive

texture so little bit of positive

texture here and honestly you won't be

able to see this on the YouTube

compression because YouTube will just

destroy any of the fine details but what

I can see here and what I'm doing here

is if I zoom into the socer here is you

know right here the texture slider is at

zero if I increase this you can kind of

see all of the super fine details start

to pop out that is what texture slider

does so in order to balance the loss of

detail from the clarity from the

negative Clarity I'll drag the texture

slider just up a wee bit and then we can

get a soft glowy look whilst retaining

all of that detail at this point

sharpening is also pretty important as

well uh this is usually the stage that I

do it at or the detail and so what I

typically do to start with is I go to

the masking slider here and then I hold

alt or control and that will show you

exactly where the sharpening values are

going to occur and so typically you want

to do this on you know your your hard

subjects in the image so I'm going to go

all the way up until the end until just

the outlines of my main subjects

are

white like

so and then I'm going to increase the

sharpening values of up here we can use

this little preview box to kind of see

what it looks like so I'm going to focus

in on Mount Fuji here and

then just increase that just a little

bit get some of that detail that fine

detail back as well and I think that

should be all good okay up next is

masking so masking is uh probably my

favorite part of the process and masking

is using all of these tools up here in

the top right to do what's called well

what I call shaping light so effectively

you want to shape portions of the image

what we used to call dodging and burning

back in the day to really pop out the

details where you want them to pop out

so in this instance what I'm going to do

is I'm going to set up a linear gradient

and I want to try and Target a lot of

the Shadow portions here and bring those

up so that the foreground really starts

to sing so I will grab this like that

I'll make sure that it's got a long

feather on it so you can see this this

portion here is quite

long and that means that the the overall

effect when it Trails off will be a lot

smoother if you go really close like

this that means you'll be able to see

the lines where it starts to stop and so

this is about like Feathering it off so

for me I'm going to go you know

something like this and I'm going to

increase the Shadows specifically on

this portion so if I crank this all the

way up you can see everything and this

looks to me a little bit funny cuz this

is not how light behaves in the real

world so we're going to di this back uh

and then we're just going to up this

just a little bit

more importantly what I'm trying to do

is Target the Sakura here and the Sakura

are going to be on the Highlight portion

of the sliders so I'm going to grab

those push those up a little bit and

then off those highlights those parts

that are white I'm also going to

increase too and so

now we've got a little bit more of

a accentuated

uh foreground here it looks kind of nice

and then we're going to go down to the

effects portion here and then we're

going to increase the clarity on that

just a little bit so I know that before

we used minus Clarity globally so that

globally we can have some kind of like

you know

softish image but where it matters where

the foreground is I'm going to you know

accentuate it just a a little bit more

with positive

Clarity so I think that looks pretty

good what I'm going to do is this

portion here in the bottom right is not

that important to the overall image so

I'm going to add another linear gradient

with a very high kind of

feather drag this down here like

that and then I'm going to decrease the

Shadows here

and this has the effect of not drawing

so much attention to itself which is

extremely important this is what I'm

trying to achieve I'm trying to make you

as the viewer look at this image and be

like wow this is a fantastic foreground

field of flowers and then the Pagoda and

Mount Fuji in the background what a

visually stunning thing this bottom

right section does nothing to enhance

that feeling and so removing it well not

removing it but making it darker in

terms of Shadows kind of removes it from

the attention that someone might be you

know when they're looking at the image

now from there what I'm going to do is

grab a brush so I'm going to go create

new mask and then

brush and I want to accentuate all of

these really warm portions of light

where the sun has touched it and and I

can be pretty rough here um you can also

Target this specifically with luminance

but I'm going to do it the old school

way and what I'm going to do is up the

whites just a little bit give it a

little bit of warmth on the white

balance and then a little bit of

saturation as well and then we're going

to give it a pretty high feather and a

pretty high flow as well and I'm going

to effectively just brush it in

so this is again very

subtle and I don't know whether the

YouTube compression will uh will show

this or not but basically wherever

is touched by the sun is where I am

targeting

specifically now again this is a a

portion where you don't want to go

overboard on this because if you say do

you know plus two exposure you can you

can tell straight away so this is what

it looks like yeah so just make sure

that you are not having such a a drastic

change on your tonal values because

you'll be able to see them and it will

stand out in a bad way so just a little

bit of restraint on that is is super

super important all right now what I

typically like to do next and this is a

very stylistic choice but I do this for

the majority of my my images is I I like

to do what what I call a contrast

sandwich so I've already done this with

the bottom right here but what I'm going

to do is grab another linear gradient

and drag down from the very very top

again very

strong feather here I'll uh put this all

the way up to the top here and then I'm

going to drag the exposure down a little

bit and then the highlights down to just

a wee bit and then actually might drag

this

yep cool something like

that very subtle but what this does is

it kind of creates a custom vignette and

that focuses your attention to the

middle of this image so instead of it

being just like a blank kind of Sky it's

it's dark which means visually when a

viewer looks at it it's not important

and other parts of the image are

important so it's a very subtle thing

but I I like to do that as well and then

the final thing we'll do is we will try

and bring out Mount Fuji just a little

bit so we'll have it in the center and

we'll bring up our brush again or we can

just press K on the

keyboard and in the settings we

will add some

clarity and a little bit of

texture and we'll start to paint in

Mount Fuji

so do something like

this again this is so difficult to tell

on YouTube

compression but I can see it on my

screen

here and again it should be subtle

because again if I you know if I do this

you can see exactly where it is uh but

the intention is to just bring it out

just a little bit more so in this

example we'll just crank it just a

little bit more something like

that and that starts to give Mount Fuji

a little bit more shape and then we can

even whack some dehaze in here because

uh that is what it is haze so we had

dehazing the image and that just brings

a little bit

more contrast and a little bit more

Darkness to Mount Fuji and makes it look

a little bit like it stands out

more so I'm just going to brush some of

that out here as

well something like

that and now it looks like it really

stands out so we've got three elements

here that all stand out the pagota I

mean it just does the job on its own

it's it's perfect as it is but we've got

the Sakura and that really stands out

we've got Mount Fuji in the back you

know we've got the pagot everything's

kind of luring you into the middle of

the frame you know we've got the

contrast sandwich going on here as well

and that's pretty much it so this is the

after and this is the before after

before after

before now from there it's about

exporting the image to wherever you want

and if you want to export the image to

say Instagram then I've got an entire

video on the best Instagram export

settings available for Adobe Lightroom

which I will also leave a link to in the

description as well all right what did

you think honestly this IM image doesn't

need that much work done to it so I

actually pushed it more than perhaps I

typically would because I like going for

a little bit more of a natural look but

hey I hope it was interesting to you to

see what my workflow is as a

professional photographer now if you

really enjoyed that video and you want

to really level up your editing check

out my Lightroom editing masterclass

over pk.com

Lightroom otherwise I'll see you in the

next video but until in get out there

and make something that matters peace