I SUCKED at Photo Editing Until I Learned This

A few videos back, I showed this amazing tip that a lot of people really love, so I am back with some more editing goodies. Tip one, true colors. But in case you missed it, look at the skin tone difference between these two unedited images here. Look at how much brighter and full of light the right image is, but the one on the left is what most people are gonna get when they're editing in Adobe Lightroom. Here's the kicker. It's the same file, but the colors are interpreted differently. And that's because by default, whenever you import raw images, Lightroom will use their own Adobe color profile and Adobe interprets color differently than what the camera manufacturers intended. So if you've ever wondered why your photos look different on your computer versus from the back of your camera screen, this is why. That explains it. I shot this image on a Sony and watch as I cycle through the different Sony profiles and when we get to portrait profile, oh, so much better. So here's the fix. If you're doing a batch of photos, change the profile on one first, then right click on it, develop settings, copy settings, check none, then check treatment and profile, copy, select all the photos, right click, develop settings and paste settings. But the better way for the future is to go to Lightroom Classic on the top left corner here, preferences, presets tab and change the raw default to camera settings and all future photos will have whatever camera profile you originally shot on. And remember this, you can't go wrong with Jason Vaughn. Tip two, eyes done hiding, now they shining. Now let me show you how I would take this photo one step further by adding a nice glow to the skin while retaining sharpness. We're gonna come into the masking tool here and give it one sec for Lightroom to analyze the image. And now when we select person, we have a bunch of options. I like to start off with the facial skin first, then come down to effects and texture and I like to knock it down to about minus 35 just to lessen any visible blemishes. And to make the skin glow, I like to use negative clarity, about minus 15. Now notice how as I drag it to negative 100, it is too much, but this should give you an idea of what the effect is doing. Now, it's important to never overdo it. Our goal with any editing is to make it feel as seamless as possible. So back to minus 15. Subtle difference, but it's there. However, here's something that not a lot of people do, which is making the eyes pop. We'll come up to the plus symbol here and while our masking tab is still active, choose person again, and this time select iris and pupils. Oppositely, I like to add in some texture and some clarity. I'll even add an exposure and or raise the shadows depending on what the image calls for. And if they have beautiful eyes, accentuate it. Add in some saturation and some luminance. And look at that, the eyes be beaming. Tip three, sweet dreams are made of this. So here's how to make your photos have that soft, dreamy effect. Remember negative clarity? Let's try out some street photography. We're gonna knock this down to minus 30, but of course, adjust to your own tastes. See how it's softening the light bulbs, making the highlights less harsh? Really gives it a mood here. But here's what most people would neglect to do after this part, which is to add back in some texture and dehazing to balance things out. We don't want everything to soften up like these buildings here. Just anything that's bright. Oh, look at that. Such a vibe. Tip four, crouching biker hidden distractions. What separates a picture from a photograph is that a picture is just a picture. A casual snap. But a photograph has intention. God, I sound like such a dick. I'm so sorry about that. But with millions of pictures being uploaded every day, you want your photograph to stand out amongst them. So it needs to be clear from a glance. So if we can't minimize distraction in camera, we're gonna minimize distraction in the edit. And no, Michael, it's not using generative AI to remove them. Now, I love this subject here in the light, but there are also too many other people in the shot. Rather than deleting them, I think they can really help add to the scene. In this case here, I would use a linear gradient mask on both the left and the right side of the shadow just to darken them out. And the cherry on top is that I'll also add a radial gradient on this whole light source here to make our subject pop even more. Boom! Tip five, 50 shades of RGB. Here's something that I've learned in the last couple of years that I'm still using to this day. And I captured this photo a few days ago. This is the before and this is the after. Loads of warm color tones now, but this electronic billboard is still too blue. A bit distracting. So I'm gonna go down to the point color tool here and I can pick out the blue first and desaturate it. And if there's another shade of blue, I can use the color picker again and just keep repeating until bam! We now have a more cohesive color palette. Color picker is a great tool to take out distracting colors in an image or even enhance certain colors by adding in saturation and luminance, making those specific colors brighter. As you can see here, I raised the saturation and luminance on the red go-kart. It's a little subtle, but it's there. The speed problem. Now, what if we're taking hundreds of images on a weekly basis? Maybe you're a wedding photographer, event photographer, or concept photographer. Anything to do with humans. That's a lot of photos to go through, especially if we have to create masks for every single photo. Well, let me show you something. Here we have a series of portraits in motion, almost a thousand images. And let's say I have to deliver these within the hour. So what I'm gonna do is open up Imagine, upload my Lightroom Classic catalog, and check a few of these settings. Don't worry, I'll go into all the details in just a sec. I just wanna show you how quick the results are first. It just finished uploading. I'm downloading the catalog back. And now, look at these images. Edited in a very consistent style with individual mask on the subject and soft skin effect already applied. All of this still inside of Lightroom Classic, looking good to go and ready for export. And that only took less than 15 minutes. Beyond presets. So Imagine is a companion tool to Lightroom Classic that helps you call and batch edit your photos in your own personalized style. It's very different from a preset because a preset simply applies the same settings across your photos. So if some of your photos weren't shot in the most optimal conditions for the preset to work, it's gonna look bad. You would still need to make a lot of tweaks. Whereas with Imagine, it's dynamically editing every photo individually in your style while maintaining consistency, even when you didn't shoot in the most optimal conditions. Would you still need to come in to make tweaks? You might, but with Imagine, it gets you much closer to the final edit faster than a preset. How style is learned. Now, how would it know your style? Here's where I'm gonna need you to listen with an open mind, but you're more than welcome to disagree by the end of it. Imagine is an AI tool. Surprise, surprise. And it will need a lot of photos that you've edited in a consistent style in order to train its AI model to learn to edit in your style. If you don't have a consistent style yet, Imagine will still be able to help you with that too. But it's not stealing your work and it's not stealing your data. Everything you upload, including your editing profile is still your own intellectual property and will not be sold without your consent. I'm gonna put an asterisk there because we're gonna be revisiting that soon. But it will not be used to train other AI models nor train generative AI models. Again, not without your consent. I'll have a link to their ethics statements here on the screen, as well as the description box and pin comment down below if you need more information. Building a profile. So here's where we can build out our profile. If you have a minimum of 2000 photos in the Lightroom Classic Catalog that are consistently edited, choose the option on the right here, Personal AI Profile. If you don't have 2000 photos readily available but you at least have a preset you've created or enjoy using, you can choose the left option here, give it a name, answer a quick survey on your preference, and you can try Imagine for free with up to 1500 edits by using my link down below. Now we can upload a catalog. I'm gonna select one star here to let Imagine know to only edit those photos. But of course, you can choose a different parameters like colors and flags. Choose a photography style. I'm gonna choose Events for this one. And here, we can choose if we want Imagine to apply any cropping or straightening for us, how much smoothening we typically want on the skin, et cetera. Now we just hit Edit and let it upload in the background. And all the processing will be done through Cloud. It doesn't rely on our computer, so we're free to do whatever we want while we wait. But within minutes, we'll get our results. Completely non-destructive, as in no edits that Imagine makes is permanent. We can still manually make any adjustments that we want. But this looks pretty good, eh? Finding your look. Now what if you don't have your own style yet? Imagine has a few free profiles that are actually pretty darn good. And I highly recommend going through this route. You can drop your photo in here really quickly just to see what it will look like before committing to the batch edit. And my favorite is School of Spirit because it keeps the color very natural and true to life, but still adding in some pop. I mean, just look at the raw versus the Imagine edit here. And there's a profile shop with other photographers' advanced styles that you can have Imagine edit with. And this is where the asterisk comes in. These experienced photographers consented to having their style sold, and they do make a percentage if you purchase their style. And when you make your own tweaks within their profiles, Imagine will train off of your habits. And then down the line, you will have developed your own style. So here are the photos that I've edited with my good friends, Taylor Jackson's M7 profile. Again, it's not a strict preset. It's almost like I hired him to edit the photos for me, except it's Imagine AI that did the Taylor Jackson edit for me, with his consent, of course. ♪ Thank you, Taylor Jackson for the- ♪ So the best way to maximize your 1500 trial edits, again, available with my link in the description box below, is to take a handful of your photos in various colors and lighting conditions and just see how Imagine could fit into your workflow. Guys, thank you so much for watching. We'll see you guys in the next video. Peace.