Okay guys, in this first lesson, I will now show you all the basics of Lightroom. So that you are familiar with the program and that you know how to import photos, how to edit them and how to export them. So I will not show you every function in Lightroom. But I will show you the functions you will need to edit your images properly. So, for this lesson, I chose the raw file to show you the different functions of Lightroom. And now we want to import this profile.

So I'm to import it. It's very simple. We just have to drag this raw file onto the Adobe Lightroom logo in the dock like this, and then Lightroom opens and there you will see a pop up window. And all you have to do now is just click Import here on the right. Okay. And now our raw file is imported into Lightroom.

You can see this here. We are now in the library module. Lightroom and he on the right you can see the histogram for example, you can see if your image is balanced right if it's exposure as right. As you can see here other the settings of your photo for example, how you chose the settings, for example, the ISO and the aperture, the shutter speed and so on. You see and I took this photo with the Sony A 6000 with the kit lens 16 to 50 millimeter. And now I will show you all the basic functions of Lightroom based on this image, so to edit an image in Lightroom, we just have to go to the develop module here on the top if it if your Lightroom does look not like my Lightroom you can try to click these little arrows here.

And then you can show and hide some more menus but we don't need them now. So you can hide everything here and blend it in again. But we just move on to the develop module. So, here we are on the drum just need some time to load the raw file. can see this here Okay, now the raw file is loaded completely. And to begin with here on the right here are all the settings you can make, you can adjust an image so this year on the right is the most important thing in Lightroom here are all the functions of Lightroom and First we have the treatment so we can decide whether we want to edit the image as a color image.

Or if we want to choose black and white then you see we have a black and white image. But um, for this lesson, I choose color to show you all the basic things of Lightroom. So it starts with the white balance as you know um, your camera. Always sets if you If you chose auto white balance tries to find the correct white balance of the scene based on different factors. And sometimes it Yeah, it is really suitable the white balance which the camera chose, but often the it's too blue or yellow is too warm. And then we have to adjust this for example here it was an evening situation.

So it was after the sunset the was a little bit red and orange in the sky. But in the raw file, we've lost this information so we don't see the colors here and we want to get them back to recover them. So for sunset photos, I often choose the white balance and shade. It makes the seat the things a bit warmer. And by the way, if you want to see a before and after comparison, you just have to press Y key on your keyboard. So we're pressing y You can see that before the after, it's a little bit more warm than on the left so you can already see and that these arrows moved a little bit.

If you press Y again, it hides again, though, and now we of course can adjust it manually so we can make it a bit more warmer or a bit more cold. Yeah, maybe like this and add a bit of magenta maybe. So okay, but I will show you more to this when we when we start the editing these five pictures as I told you in the introduction video, then we come back to the white balance thing again. So the next section of Lightroom is the tone section. This is also a really, really important section because you can hear you can make the basic adjustments are fewer and the basic corrections of your raw file. So for example, if the raw file is too dark, You can boost the exposure or you can bring the exposure down to dark of more like you want, by the way, and if you want to reset one, one function here, again, you just have to double click on the title on the left.

So if I want to reset you the exposure, I just double click on exposure and boom, it's reset, it's back to zero. So maybe on this image relief, the exposure because I think if I make it brighter, the scattered burn out and if I make a dark code will be more dark here, but I think it's quite well exposed. So it's good right exposed, you also see this in the histogram. Okay, the next next thing is contrast. I think this is self explaining, you can boost the contrast or lower the contrast. Okay?

And for this I will not change anything at the contrast maybe later, but now for now. I'm fine with that. And now There are four important points and Nigel the highlights, shadows, whites and blacks. These are really important for my landscape editing workflow, you will notice that in the next lessons as well that they are very important. So usually I bring down the highlights completely. So the highlights is the same like exposure, but it only affects the bright tones of an image.

So as you see, if I change the exposure, it affects the whole image, it affects the shadows here the doctrines and of course also the bright tones. But if I now change the highlights, it only lightens or brightens up the bright tones in a picture or it stacks them up. So I bring down the highlights to minus 100 for this image. And you see we have much monitors in the sky. Often I underexposed my photos to really capture a lot of details, but In this image, we have all the features are nothing is blown out. And now we can recover them and bring them back to life.

By adjust here, bring down the highlights, the shadows is exactly the opposite of the highlights. So it is the same light exposure, it changes the brightness, but now only have the dark tones. So if I bring it to the left in darkness, the dark tones more. And here on the right, you see the dark tones get brighter and much brighter. So usually I take something like 80 here and the shadows and bring down the highlights to minus 100. So that's the basic start of my workflow but more to this in the upcoming lessons.

Now we've lost a bit contrast as we brought up the highlights, brought up the shadows and made this things with the highlights. So to recover the contrast of course It could just add a bit contrast, but then it looks weird again. So here I'm really some very important functions, the whites and the blacks. If we adjust divides, we add contrast to the white tones. And if we adjust the blacks make them more dark and more black. So to see now, how far we have to move these arrows, I press and hold the Alt key on the keyboard.

So you have to notice that the Alt key in Lightroom is really magic. Often if you press the Alt key and different new you see here the tone for example, changes you can reset the whole section here by just pressing reset tone. So the alt is really magical in Lightroom. Just remember this by pressing and holding the Alt key and then moving the arrow at the whites. We see that if we move it too far, the Lightroom marks the the pieces of the picture which are blown out which are blown out So we, I move it, maybe 230, that nothing is burnt out. That's very important that way because I don't like to burn out things, it looks with them.

And so I push it to 30. And then the blacks exactly the same we hold and present, hold the Alt key and move the blacks until we see something black maybe like this. Okay, and always be free come at the contrast again, if we look at the before and after by pressing, why you see before and after. We have much more details we see now really the houses the trees, and we have much more detail in the sky as well. And we've brought back the contrast. So now, let's take care of the color.

But first, here's another very important function. It's a clarity in Lightroom and many people are doing the mistake of making the mistake that they are adding clarity like you No plus 100 so you off I often see these pictures in social media in Facebook and Instagram. And people yeah, they said they think clarity 100 while nice, but just look at this. This doesn't look natural this look, this looks weird. So I do exactly the opposite as most of the people do with the clarity, the clarity, most of the people plus I go minus 20 because I did the thing with the highlight the shadows, the whites and the blacks, and that it doesn't get this HDR this classic HDR Look, I go the opposite. I go like meaning minus 20 for example, minus 18, something like this, and then it doesn't get this, this drawing this HDR look.

So that's really important step. vibrance is also important. So the character does something like contrast As you've seen, but it only affects the mid tones at the shadow. had us for example, the fact that the doctrines, the clarity affects the mid tones and boosts the contrast in the mid tones. It's It's nearly the same than contrast, but only the mid tones. And many people also think that the pictures get sharper if they have clarity.

Of course they seem to be sharper but but in fact they aren't sharp. So we will care about shot sharpening at the end of this lesson and also in the next lessons. But for this clarity minus 20 is fine. And vibrance is a very important function in Lightroom to bring back the color so the raw files often are very different than you've seen it with your eyes the pictures of when I was there, this scenery, it was really they were really colors in the sky. But the camera captured this raw file with no color. So to bring back the colors, we need the vibrance function in Lightroom.

And now we just drag it to the right I mean not too much. Mega mastaba vibrance, maybe plus 57 plus 60 is fine here with this image. And there's a difference between saturation and vibrance at the first glance it seems that both of these functions are doing exactly the same. But in fact, vibrant adds color to a picture and saturation increases or decreases these colors. Some of vibrance, we bring more colors to the picture and with saturation, we boost them. That's the main difference.

If you compare them yeah, they it looks like they are doing the same but I hope you could understand the difference. So usually I go much higher with vibrance to add more colors to the picture and then I boost them again, with saturation just a bit just a bit more that it looks natural. So this guy, we bring more colors later and with local adjust But just wait some seconds then we will boost the sky as well. So now before after it looks much better, we have more details we have more color we have brought back the dynamic to this image. And now we can can go to the next section of Lightroom. By the way, if it looks other if it doesn't look like on my PC here, you can just hear these arrows and then the section will open or close.

So um for this because we don't need the tone curves, these curves you can adjust the contrast. For example, can ya also do many things but this is too complicated for my simple workflow. We don't need this chunk. So we will skip this section and we'll go right into the HSL color section of Lightroom. So this is the first part of the SEC this section. We can change the tone of the color.

So example the tone of the red tones here of the red color. It's hard to see on the video, but let's go to the next orange here you see now it's more green, the orange turn. Now it's more red. So both look weird. So let's make sure that we don't change too much things here in this first part of the section color in Lightroom. So just the bid maybe if you wanted a bit more red or a bit more orange or the yellow tones, a bit more orange, no problem, but don't overdo it here.

So next point is important saturation. I told you that we will increase the colors now in the sky, so it's mostly red and orange which we should increase and increase. So here we are. yellow, orange. A bit more. Okay.

Now you see we only increase the saturation of these colors, not of the whole image because you don't want to be more blue the image to be more Blue, we want the image to be natural and just to boost the colors in the sky but, and you can do this fine with local adjustments. So if you think for example, there's too much blue in the picture, no problem, go to saturation section here and lower the saturation only of the blue tones. So you see, it's very easy to change the colors, and to change only some colors of your picture. And so no problem at all with Lightroom. As an important part of the sections, the luminance, you can for example, darken simple colors up, for example, the blue tones, I think it looks much more dramatic. If we darken the map a little bit because you get much more drama in the sky here.

As you see. There, this doesn't look really well. So me just like this minus 30 minus 27. By the way, if you are if you move over, hover over the number here and then click and move your your mouse you can also adjust the arrow. And it's much more easier sometimes than adjusting the arrow here. So or you can also enter a number if you want no problem minus 30.

And at the top of the section here is a little, little thing. When we click this you can see what we've done with the settings in the section. So what the color corrections now do. Okay, you see the difference, we brought back back some, some colors here and load the solutions so wonderful. Now we can move on to an answer very important part one, which will, which I will use in all the editing examples in the upcoming lessons. So this is really important.

Now we can choose the tone for the highlights for the bright part of the image, so that we can color them that we can They bring more colors to the picture. And now it's difficult to choose the right tone. So he comes the Alt key plays a big role in that drum as I told you and then by pressing and holding the Alt key and now dragging the arrow to the left and to the right, you can see them how the color will affect the image if we boost saturation to 100% so maybe we add a bit of orange like this, and now we add just a bit saturation not too much, not too much, just like this, okay, and the shadows the same we press and hold the L key, select maybe a more bluish tone. Okay, and add a bit of saturation and this also brings back color to the image as it see for example, if you have really seen a bad weather day and you have no colors at all, you can bring back Colors With the Split Toning are very important function in Lightroom.

So, really important. Here balance, you can choose whether the shadows, or the highlights are more saturated. So something like this, you can balance it. And again, here's no right or wrong, it just it just must fit to your personal. Yeah, to your personal tastes, there's no right or wrong, so just do like you want to. Okay, maybe we can crop the photo first.

So here the top, there are some local adjustments in Lightroom. And here is the crop tool. So by clicking it, you can see that the crop mode and Lightroom opens. And now we have these lines here. So the rule of thirds, it's easier to to make the rule of thirds for example. And now we can crop the image just Making a bit more panoramic, for example.

So I like the panoramic look because it gives more dynamic to the image, maybe like this. And now we have to make sure that our horizons straight. So it's very important landscape photography that your pictures are legible that they are correctly leveled up. So we can do this with this tool, sorry. And with this tool here, I just taking it and now selecting a starting point at the horizon. So I want the bridge to be straight because the bridge reflects the horizon in a good way here and this image, so maybe like this, and now if I just release my mouse, boom, Adam rotates the image.

So now we can manually adjust it by just going outside until we see these arrows and can click and move upwards and downwards and rotated the image. So think something like this does look very well. Okay, then we kick down wonderful