How to prepare your image for sharpening so you can make a good adjustment
To sharpen an image, first make sure that the main image is visible at a 1:1 ratio in size so you can see the resulting sharpening effect more clearly.
To control what appears in the Preview window, click the indicator in the top left of the Detail panel and click an area of the image to preview. Choose a good position on the image as a preview – something that needs to be good and sharp.
You can also click on the image in the Preview – click once to see the preview filled with the image and again to zoom into the image.
Drag the image in the Preview window to see different parts of it.
Split Toning a Black and White Image – learn how to make the Highlights and Shadows Different Colors
Split Toning applies one color to the highlights and another to the shadows in an image.
Good color choices when applying a split tone are colors that are opposite each other on the color wheel such as magenta and green, blue and yellow, or red and cyan – although you can choose any combination you like.
To apply the split tone effect, drag on the Hue slider or click the color picker to choose a color to use for the Highlights and then choose something else to use for the Shadows.
Adjust the Saturation of the colors as desired.
Balance allows you to fine tune how the colors are applied to the image – drag to the left to adjust the balance towards the shadow color and drag to the right to add more of the highlight color.
How to use the Targeted Adjustment Tool to get a better Black and White Image
In the Black & White mix dialog is a Targeted Adjustment Tool (TAT).
You can use this TAT to craft your own black and white image.
To do this, select the TAT and drag up or down on an area of the image to lighten or darken the color under the TAT. This is often easier than dragging on the color sliders to adjust your black and white image.
The TAT is handy for crafting a black and white image to look the way you want it to look.
Learn how to use the color sliders to get a great Black and White image
You can convert any image into black and white by pressing the letter V or select B&W. However, you can also craft your own black and white image to get a better result than you get with the default settings if you drag on the color sliders in the Black & White Mix panel.
Each slider controls one of the underlying colors in the image. Drag to the right to lighten a color in the black and white or to the left to darken it.
Using the sliders, you can get a crafted black and white image that looks the way you want it to look.
Sliders for which there is not corresponding color in the underlying image will have no effect or little effect when you drag on them.
Lightroom has two types of collections: regular Collections and Smart Collections. Smart Collections are live and they are created as a result of filtering your photos according to rules that you write. You cannot add an image to a Smart Collection by dragging and dropping it into the collection. You can’t remove an image from a Smart Collection just because you don’t want it in there – it can only be removed if it fails to meet the criteria you set up for the collection.
Smart collections are a handy way to create collections and to manage your photos and here I’ll show you how to make use of them.
Shipped Smart Collections
There are a few Smart Collections which ship with Lightroom. To find these, click the Collections panel in Lightroom and click on the Smart Collection Set. Click the Smart collection called Without Keywords. As its name suggests, this collection shows you all the images in your Lightroom catalog that do not have keywords associated with them.
If you’re like me you’ll want to close this one pretty quickly – it can be scary to see just how many images aren’t keyworded!
You can learn more about this collection by right clicking its name and choose Edit Smart Collection. You’ll see that the Smart Collection is configured to contain all those images for which the Keywords property is empty.
There are other collections which are shipped with Lightroom including Recently Modified which is a collection of images that have been edited recently.
You can, if desired, change the Recently Modified Smart Collection to span a different number of days. Click this collection , right click and choose Edit Smart Collection. You can see that the collection criteria is set to be Edit Date > Is in the last
When you do so, Lightroom checks the images in your catalog to determine which images meet this criteria and it displays these in this Smart Collection.
Make your own Smart Collections
In addition to those shipped with Lightroom you can create your own Smart Collections. For example, if you color your images red meaning a certain thing you can create a Smart Collection that contains all the images which are colored red.
To do this, click to open the Collections panel, click the plus symbol and choose Create Smart Collection. Type a name for it such as Red Images, click Inside a Collection Set and choose to add it to the Smart Collections set. From the options below select Label color is red.
Click Create to create the collection – it will contain all images in your collection which have the red label color associated with them.
Remove an Image from a Smart Collection
The only way you can remove an image from a Smart Collection is to configure it so it no longer meets the criteria for the Smart Collection. For example an image will no longer appear in the Without Keywords collection if you add a keyword to it.
You can remove an image from the Red Images collection if you remove or change its color label. When it no longer has the red color label associated with it, it will no longer appear in the collection.
Similarly, if you apply the red color label to an image in Lightroom it will be automatically added to the Red Images Smart Collection.
One of the benefits of Smart Collections is that they’re continually updated by Lightroom. So Lightroom ensures that all the images which match the criteria you use to define the Smart Collection are in that collection.
How Smart Collections differ from Regular Collections
Smart Collections behave differently to Regular Collections in a few key ways. One difference is that you cannot arrange images in a Smart Collection into your own custom order.
The collection order can only be set to one of the Lightroom default Sort Order options; Capture Time, Edit Order, Edit Time, Edit Count, Rating, Pick, Label Text, Label Color, File Name, File Extension, File Type and Aspect Ratio. Regular collections, on the other hand, can be sorted into User Order which is useful for slideshows and web pages for example.
You also cannot set a Smart Collection as the Target Collection because you cannot add images to a Smart Collection manually. It can only be added if it matches the criteria which describes that collection.
Over to you .. Do you use Smart Collections in Lightroom and, if so, how do you use them? Do you use the shipped collections or make your own?
Quickly Converting your Image to Black and White with this shortcut key
The simplest way to convert an image to black and white is to press the letter V. This is a toggle so press it once to turn the image into black and white and again to make it a color image.
You can also convert an image to black and white by clicking the B&W option in the HSL/Color/B&W panel.
If Auto is enable click it to get a black and white conversion tailored to the needs of the image.
And, if the sliders are already all at different values you can reset them all to zero by holding Alt (Option on the Mac) and then click the ‘Reset black and white mix” option. Choose which is the best starting point for your conversion and progress from there.
If Auto is enabled, click it to get a black and white mix appropriate to the image.
How to use the Color sliders to change color and remove color casts
When an image has a colorcast or a color that you’re wanting to play down in it, select the Color option in the HSL/Color/B&W panel. Here you can select the color to minimize the impact of and reduce its impact by dragging on the Saturation slider to reduce its saturation. Drag to the right on the Luminance slider to lighten the color.
This tool also allows you to take one color and alter its hue. So, for example you can target yellow and drag it towards green or towards orange by dragging on the Yellow Hue slider. In this way, any color in the image can be adjusted to one of its adjacent colors.
Change the Tone Curve to allow it to behave as a draggable Point Curve
In Lightroom, you can make the Tone Curve behave as a Point Curve clicking the Click to edit the Point Curve indicator at the foot of the Tone Curve panel.
When a tone curve is set to be a point curve you can drag on any point on the curve to adjust the tones in the image at that correspond to that point on the curve.
With the point curve selected, click on the Targeted Adjustment Tool in the top of the Point Curve dialog and drag on the image to lighten or darken the image at that point. Drag upwards to lighten, down to darken.
To delete a point on the curve, hold your mouse over the point, right click (Command + Click on the Mac), and select Delete Control Point.
Using the Tone Curve, you have the choice of preset settings: Linear, Medium Contrast or Strong Contrast. Use these as a starting point for adjusting the image.
Select the starting point then drag the Highlights and Lights sliders to the right to lighten these areas. Drag to the left on the Darks slider to darken the Darks. To bring detail out of the shadows, drag to the right on the Shadows slider.
When you’re printing, you’ll want a good range of tones across your image from the blackest of blacks to the lightest of lights. Use the Blacks adjustment slider to ensure that you will have some black tones.
To see the blacks in the image, hold the Alt key (Option on the Mac) as you drag on the Blacks slider and stop when you see the first few colored pixels appear on the screen
