30 Lightroom Tips and Tricks for Faster Photo Editing

Landscape photographer Christian Möhrle of The Phlog Photography recently put together a handy compilation of his favorite tips and tricks for Adobe Lightroom Classic. Chances are good you’ll find at least one or two (and probably several more) little workflow tips that you didn’t know about.

Like it or not, Lightroom Classic is still the RAW editor that most photographers (sometimes grudgingly) use to edit their images. Obviously, if you’re a fan of Adobe alternatives like Capture One, Affinity Photo, or open source options like RAWTherapee or Darktable, this won’t apply to you, but if you do use Lightroom, Möhrle has done a great job covering a bunch of useful tips without wasting any of your time in the process.

There’s no long-winded intro, no use of ALL CAPS in the headline claiming that this is “The TRUTH about editing PHOTOS in Lightroom,” and no Squarespace sponsor break. Just a quick breakdown of 30 genuinely useful tips and tricks for editing your photos in Lightroom Classic.

Here’s a full list, with timestamps, in case you want to skip around and only check out the ones that you don’t already know about:

  1. Dragging the Histogram – 0:28
  2. Shift-Click Sliders – 0:55
  3. Mouse-dragging slider values – 1:03
  4. Bigger develop panel – 1:13
  5. Double-click sliders – 1:23
  6. Camera profiles – 1:43
  7. Camera profile opacity – 2:06
  8. Spot removal visualization – 2:22
  9. Straighten image – 3:00
  10. Different crop grids – 3:24
  11. Make clipping visible – 3:41
  12. Auto tone settings – 4:07
  13. Alt-click lights / darks – 4:20
  14. Soft / dreamy look – 4:50
  15. Shift-click sliders – 5:08
  16. Erase Brush – 5:25
  17. Luminance range mask – 5:58
  18. Color range mask – 6:43
  19. Adding glow – 7:21
  20. Adding haze – 7:56
  21. Adding color – 8:20
  22. Auto mask brush – 8:53
  23. Tone curve – 9:20
  24. Color adjustment – 10:00
  25. Autumn colors – 10:24
  26. Polarization effect – 10:41
  27. Alt-click split toning – 11:09
  28. Sharpening mask – 11:33
  29. Auto straighten photo – 12:05
  30. Calibration color grading – 12:28

Check out the full video up top to dive into all 30 tips for yourself and see them in action. And if you want to see more from Möhrle and The Phlog, you can find him on his website, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.

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