Lightroom is a popular photo editing software developed by Adobe Systems, which can turn your image into a refined one in just a few minutes.
This software is quite easy to use and gives you quick results which are extremely satisfying. The best thing about this software is that the edits in it are completely non-destructive. So, let’s learn how to retouch an image in Lightroom!
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Adjust the white balance
At first, find the necessary image in Grid Module. We are now retouching an image that shows the face of a woman. Now, press D key to Develop Module.
To adjust the white balance, set the value of temp as -50 and tint value to -24.
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Enhance the skin tone
After adjusting the white balance, we will now enhance the skin tone and hair color. To do this, we need the following changes in the Basic Panel:
- Exposure=0.70
- Contrast=-22
- Shadow=-59
- Highlights=-29
- White=-26
- Clarity=+22
- Blacks=-24
- Saturation=+7
- Vibrance=-19
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Reducing the noise
As most of the images are of the JPEG format, it is bound to contain some noise. The good news is we can reduce this noise by setting the following parameters in Lightroom software.
- Sharpening
- Amount=37
- Detail= 25
- Radius =1
- Masking= 0
- Noise reduction
- Luminance= 67
- Detail= 50
- Contrast =0
- Colour= 44
- Detail =50
After changing these parameters, you will get a picture that contains extremely less noise.
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Darken the background
Many times, the background distracts the viewers, and so we can darken it using simple steps in Lightroom, which are given below:
You need to switch to Lens Correction Panel and then to Manual Tab. Change Amount to -100 and Midpoint to 21.
After setting these parameters, the background will be darkened, and the viewers won’t get distracted.
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Soften the skin
This is a major task and consumes a lot of time. To soften the skin, we need to use Brush which can be activated using the ‘K’ key.
Next, in the panel that opens on the right side of the screen, make the ‘Clarity’ as 0. Now, start brushing the skin.
To check on which parts we have used the brush, we can turn on the mask. This will highlight the region in which the brush is used.
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Increase the clarity of the eyes
To retouch the image, we need to work on the eyes as well. To do so, we need to create a new brush using the ‘New’ button that is encircled in the image shown below. Set the clarity to +30 and saturation to +38. Apply the brush to the eyes, nose, and lips and see how beautiful they look.
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Enhance the Iris
Last but not the least, this is an important thing to do while you retouch an image. You need to create a new brush again as instructed in Step 6. Set the following parameters:
- Exposure= +0.45
- Clarity= +22
- Saturation= +40
Apply the brush carefully on the iris. After this step, the perfect retouched image is ready!
Like it was told at the beginning of the article, it was quite simple, wasn’t it? So, try it yourself and see how magically you can edit images that look perfect in every aspect!
