Tips to remove all the essentials in game adjustment brush in Lightroom  

This is going to sound, but not tire of saying: I love Lightroom and how easy and versatile it is to use. Why? Because features as simple and powerful as the Adjustment Brush tools. Do you know it?

If you’ve tried Lightroom, sure you know. Although you may not have been able to get all the juice that offers a seemingly simple tool. With today’s article looking precisely that. You can squeeze the most power adjustment brush through 3 simple tips. Here we go!

Things First: What is?

In case you have not had the chance to try it, I will say that he is a tool to make local adjustments to a particular region of the photograph. In the image on the right would be working on the couple on the right. Thus, compared to changing general settings through the various sliders, Lightroom provides the ability, through the Adjustment Brush (K), to select a particular area (pictured on the right two people) and above her specific settings (via the sliders).

Once filed functionality, now we go with the proper advice, okay?

Tip # 1: Basic Recommendations for Use

Color highlight greenFor the use of this tool is as efficient as possible, you need to pay attention and put into practice the following tips:

• You can enable it via the “K” key, instead of having to click the mouse on the icon. The keyboard shortcuts are basic in Lightroom, did they not know?

• Pressing the “O” key you will see the selected area highlighted with the adjustment brush. Pressing the “O” key again you can make the region no longer highlighted.

• The combination “Shift” + “O” you can switch the highlight color (Red, Green, White and Black), so you won’t have any problems viewing the region, regardless of color photography. In the top right image, it can be highlighted in green, instead of the traditional red.

• Clicking with the left mouse button area setting (additive mode) will increase. However, if clicking is down the “Alt” key will brush subtractive mode, eliminating the selection area.

• The brush size can be changed via the slider on the right, panel or via the mouse wheel (increasing the size if the movement is upward, or decreasing it if it is down)

Finally, let me give you a couple of not so operational recommendations, but very practical:

• Use values ​​of reduced flow, so you can have more control over the affected area and can go gradually increasing the intensity of the effect through successive passes.

• Unless you go to work on a very, very defined region, do not select “Auto Mask” option. This option usually results in too artificial results by marking edges as strict.

As first advice is not bad, do not you think?

Tip # 2: Take advantage of the presets

Through the adjustment brush you can choose as you please all parameters that affect on the selected area: Temperature, Tint, Exposure, Contrast, lighting, shadows, Focus, Noise…

Sometimes you will be good to have all this control and power settings set to the millimeter. However, there will be other times when you will avail of the fantastic presets available through the “Effect” option provided by Brush, choosing, among others, the following:

• Teeth Whitening
• Improved iris
• Overexpose
• Underexpose
• Smooth Skin

Also you can even define your own settings and save them as new presets to reuse at other times. You might come in handy, for example, desaturated, oversaturated, blurs, etc..

Tip # 3: Situations That May Result In Very Useful

I commented in the first paragraph of this article: This tool allows you to set specific settings for a particular region selected through the brush. What can help us define different settings? Well, to focus attention on the region or to carry out the known adjustment areas.

How we got to focus and work differently different parts of an image you see below with some examples, okay?

Increase the exposure of that area on which you want to focus (or reducing the exposure of the rest). The following image shows the exposure of the rest of the picture to focus on the child fell.

Increase the sharpness of the target area, or reducing those elements that do not matter. The following image sharpness person and dog in the foreground and background are out of focus, especially the stone wall, which was very close and just focus on the original appeared increased.

Saturating the accessory part of photography and keeping only the main object in color. The image you chose to desaturate the background to focus attention on the acrobatic play. You know, our eyes are looking for the color (they are used to a reality full of color).

Change the white balance in certain areas, especially those elements with very different temperatures. For example, people in the middle of a field of lush green grass. In this case we used a white balance for sky and sea, the nearest one for land and one for the rest of earth. As for this functionality to modify the color temperature and tint with the adjustment brush, unfortunately, if I’m not mistaken, is only available since version 4.