Lightroom is powerful portrait editing software: Three start-to-finish retouching tutorials

 

 

Lightroom is more than excellent photo cataloging and raw editing software, it is also a powerful photo editor. We have covered many Lightroom tutorials, but today we are going to focus solely on using Lightroom for portrait retouching. Retouching tutorials regularly focus on using Photoshop, but not everyone has access to Photoshop or feels comfortable using it. Lightroom, on the other hand, is generally much more user-friendly and in many cases, just as powerful as Photoshop.

Darlene Hildebrandt is the managing editor of Digital Photography School and has compiled a list of three Lightroom portrait tutorial videos including one that she made herself. Let’s look at the first video, which was made by Adam Lerner and focuses on a start to finish portrait edit in Lightroom.

The next video is from Ed Gregory, and it also adressed a start to finish portrait edit in Lightroom, although his style is very different from Adam Lerner’s and you might find that you prefer Gregory’s take.These first two videos help highlight how versatile Lightroom is for photo editing in general and for portrait retouching as well. With all the sliders that Lightroom has to offer, you can create final images with essentially any look you can imagine.

Finally, Darlene Hildebrandt has a video showing her portrait retouching workflow in Lightroom. She is a seasoned Lightroom user and she knows very efficient ways to use the software. Save for cases when she needs to use layers, Hildebrandt almost exclusively uses Lightroom for her portrait editing, including for skin, eye and lip retouching.

Portrait retouching is a personal process and it takes time to find your style, but the three video tutorials above are an excellent jumping off point and will provide you many tips and tricks for fully utilizing the power of Lightroom.

(Seen via Digital Photography School)