Simple Lightroom Image Fixing Workflow
Whether it’s a photograph of mom that you’re sending to her or an image that you’re preparing to print, most photos can use some fixing before they’re ready to be shared or used.
Here’s a quick and easy Lightroom workflow that I apply to most every day images before sending them to family and friends, posting them to Flickr or my blog or printing them for a paper based photography project.
If you’re new to photo editing or to Lightroom, this step by step process should get you on the way to fixing your images.
Step 1
The first step to fixing an image is typically to straighten and crop it so that you remove any areas that you don’t want to include in the final image.
To help you apply the rule of thirds to your crop, in Lightroom the crop grid, by default, shows a ‘rule of thirds’ grid over your photo.
Place an object of interest in the photograph over the intersection between the gridlines or place the horizon or another strong horizontal line along one of the horizontal lines to achieve a pleasing composition.
Here I’ve cropped and sized the image to place the waterline along the top line of the grid.
Step 2
Adjust the Exposure by dragging on the Exposure slider. This image is a little underexposed and the histogram falls well short of reaching the far right of the chart area. Increasing the Exposure fixes this.
Step 3
To test to see if you need to use the Recovery slider to recover blown highlights, hold the Alt key (Option on the Mac) as you click on the Recovery slider handle. If you see light areas on the image, drag to the right to recover them.
Here I artificially increased the Exposure before doing this to show you what the image will look like if you need to use the Recovery slider. If you see something like this on your image and if it is nicely exposed, drag the Recovery slider to the right to remove/reduce these areas.
Step 4
Hold the Alt key (Option on the Mac) and drag the Black slider to the right until you see the smallest hint of black appearing in the image. You use this slider to ensure that your image has some blacks in it.
By now the histogram should extend to the very left and right of the chart area ensuring that your image has a good tonal range.
Step 5
If you have some areas that are clipped you will see white arrows in the histogram area. You can hold your mouse over these to see the clipped areas on the image. If areas are clipped you will have blown out highlights or plugged shadows which are generally undesirable.
Here I have over adjusted the Black Clipping slider so there are some plugged shadows that you can see colored blue on the image.
Step 6
You can use the White Balance tools to adjust the white balance in the image. Drag the Temp slider to the right to add warmth to the image or to the left to make it colder. Dragging to the right warms the image by adding peach/orange tones to it and dragging to the left cools the image by adding blue tones.
If you’re shooting in RAW or DNG then there will be a range of options available from the White Balance dropdown list.
Here I’ve added a lot of warmth to the image to show what is possible.
Step 7
You can also adjust Brightness and Contrast although I prefer to skip these adjustments and add some Clarity to adjust and sharpen the midtones and some Vibrance to boost the color in the undersatuated areas in the image.
From here I would sharpen the image and it’s ready to go.
In a future post I’ll explain the basics of sharpening in Lightroom. Make sure you subscribe to DPS to get this update.
20 Responses to “Simple Lightroom Image Fixing Workflow” - Add Yours
August 1st, 2009 at 2:31 am
Great workflow! Thank you.
As a new user to lightroom, and photo touchup in general, these tips are invaluable to me. Am I correct in thinking this is all available w/ JPG, or do I need to shoot RAW to use the adjustments provided? (My camera only shoots JPG, my borrowed DSLR shoots RAW, but I haven’t played with it much yet.)
August 1st, 2009 at 2:48 am
These guidelines work with JPEG although you’ll find your choices when adjusting the White Balance will be limited compared to RAW. In LR2 there are pre-sets available for sharpness, one for landscape and one for portraits. These work well in the majority of cases.
August 1st, 2009 at 2:54 am
Why do you not adjust the contrast? I find that almost all of my shots need a little contrast boost.
August 1st, 2009 at 3:37 am
This workflow works for any image in Lightroom – not just RAW – which makes it a great tool for folks who shoot JPEG only. In fact all these screenshots show a JPEG image being ‘fixed’ (check the overlay on the image as it shows the filename and the camera settings used).
August 1st, 2009 at 4:44 am
From step 7 “You can also adjust Brightness and Contrast although I prefer to skip these adjustments and add some Clarity to adjust and sharpen the midtones and some Vibrance to boost the color in the undersatuated areas in the image.”
Would you please do a blog post on using these two different methods. I think it would be interesting to see the different results. If you did that using the same photo you used for this post it would make for a nice follow up. Keep the great Lr hints and tips coming. I’m learning a lot from you!
August 1st, 2009 at 4:52 am
Right…that great big IMGP3692.JPG I missed!
Thanks again Helen, for a great tutorial!
August 1st, 2009 at 5:48 am
Thanks for the workflow! I’ve been looking to refine my workflow and have never been able to find a good workflow for cleaning up photos (other than Crop, ‘Auto Tone’, etc).
August 1st, 2009 at 6:04 am
Very clear, concise post on basic developing. I too am relatively new, and it’s easy for me to get bogged down trying to use “all” the features afforded me in LR2. Instead, this post reminded me that if I stick to the basics, it should take merely a minute or two to adjust a single photo.
One great feature of LR is that if I have a number of images from the same beach around the same time, I could use a sync for most of the settings you used, and process them all at once! What a great program- makes the whole “developing RAW on your own” prospect MUCH less prohibitive.
August 1st, 2009 at 9:12 am
Really good advice, although I knew the basics of histograms this really helped me use them to get a good balance to my under/over exposed shots. Before this it was trial and error and I could never quite get the to look right, but following your advice I’ve managed to salvage some really nice shots. Your tutorials are always of a high standard Helen and I appreciate the time you take to post them.
August 1st, 2009 at 2:58 pm
great article. i always forget that i can alt+click on the adjustment sliders.
August 4th, 2009 at 7:00 am
Great post, thank you! I think I must be blind or something – can’t see the black clipping slider. Which one is it?
August 4th, 2009 at 10:07 pm
Thanks for sharing this, much appreciated. I do have a question though – why do you not adjust white balance at the beginning? Everything I’ve read on workflows in LR has always adjusted that first, and it seems to make sense since it has such an effect on your colour. By no means am I doubting your workflow, just very curious on that issue.
Thanks.
August 7th, 2009 at 3:38 am
Are there any good image adjusting software that are free? This might not be relevant to this post, but i am wondering if it is possible to do similar manipulations with other programs. As a member of an amateur photography club, i can say that most of us cant afford LR2 or adobe PS.
August 7th, 2009 at 8:36 am
Nice tutorial and it will definitely help those trying to get started in LR. It might be helpful to briefly explain that LR works in the ProPhoto color space, whereas most people convert (at some point) to sRGB for printing, web viewing, etc. Since sRGB is a smaller color space, it is not wise to extend your ProPhoto histogram all the way to the left and right (especially the right) or it’s likely you’ll have blown / clipped areas when you convert to sRGB. I adjust exposure so it looks right to my eye (on my calibrated monitor), then take a glance at the histo to get some feedback there. I always leave some breathing room on the right (unless there’s an area that is supposed to be blown).
I don’t think I would use the alt-click method for adjusting recovery. Recovery removes contrast and too much will result in a very flat image, so I like to watch my image as I adjust the slider in order to understand the effect it’s having (something you can’t do if you’re holding the alt key). To see clipped areas, just click on the right-hand arrow at the top of the histogram, and they will show up in red. If too much contrast is removed with the recovery, I will instead create two exposures – one for my subject and one for the blown areas – then blend them together in Photoshop.
Another important aspect is the camera calibration (last section in LR). This has to be chosen first IME – before any other editing – as it can have a very dramatic impact on the image. I created a preset to set this to camera neutral when I import my images, although I occasionally change it to something else depending on the image.
August 7th, 2009 at 7:03 pm
Great workflow, very natural and logical. Just wanted to say that the very same workflow is possible and just as easy in Apple Aperture 2.0 (some of the sliders have different names though). So maybe the post could have a more open title (not so LR specific). And one can of course lift all the adjustments made on one photo and stamp those to another photo (or a group of them) in Aperture too.
August 8th, 2009 at 5:41 am
Picasa works pretty good and it’s free!
August 9th, 2009 at 4:52 am
To Sriram Narayanan – yes, I use Google’s free Picasa to do a quick & effective edit/tag/export workflow for a large government client. Many of the same steps outlined in this article are done with easy-to-find buttons in Picasa – here’s mine: Straighten, Crop, I’m Feeling Lucky, Sharpness, Tag (keywords). Originals are automatically saved to a hidden subfolder, and image searching is fast & easy (if you’ve accurately named & tagged your shots.) Give it a try, I think you’ll like it. Good luck.
August 14th, 2009 at 6:29 am
Thanks, Bret F, that was very helpful. I have used picasa, but mostly for uploading pictures, but i will try it and see.
August 20th, 2009 at 7:29 am
Nice basic info for Lightroom users. For professional photographers it’s a must have.
October 29th, 2009 at 3:02 pm
Great summary! The order makes perfect sense and it does give a handle on something that might appear daunting to a beginner. Starting with WB after Straightening and Cropping is definitely an option to consider as some commentators have noted.
Here is an idea for those who got these steps nailed down and can at least feel happy with the results of their initial photo adjustments: It is to work entirely on the histogram area with your mouse! Just move the mouse over the histogram from right to left and you get: Recovery, Exposure, Fill light, and Blacks. The goal is – in general – to have a full and balanced spectrum in the histogram. That should take care of the light!
Then take a look at the Colors…
Finally sharpness, and Voila!
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