Today, I’m sharing some  before and after examples of images that I edited in Adobe Lightroom Classic. I’ve been using Lightroom as my primary editing program for about a year now. It's a desktop program that also organises all your photos on your computer. It’s definitely my go-to program for punching up colours, making dull-looking shots vibrant, removing distracting objects and straightening skewed shots.

Those of you who can’t be bothered with lugging your computer out everytime you want to edit a photo, and would rather have an on-the-go available anywhere anytime approach, there’s Lightroom. For an app, it’s pretty amazing! 

Hopefully, you’ll  get an idea of just some of the things you can do with this Lightroom.  For each Lightroom before and after example, you can see the straight-out-of-camera RAW image alongside the final edit.

My big advice though, for curating eye-catching images, is to take the very best possible shot you can so that you need the least amount of editing. This will make the whole editing process so much easier. Check out my blog posts on Let’s Go Manual - Part One and Part Two to help with this.

And, finally - if you find yourself with too much time on your hands, I have one word - PHOTO EDITING! (yes, I know it’s two words!)

DARK AND MOODY FLORALS

lightroom edits:

• Decreased the exposure in the background (incleased blacks and decreased whites) to hide the unsightly leaks of light in the top right hand corner. Can you see them in the top left hand photo? I had to get rid of those, didn’t I? I guess I could have cropped them out, but I wanted a portrait pic with a bit of height.

• Cropped and straightened the images

• Increased exposure and saturation only on the flowers

• Increased the red hues to bring out the colour in the flowers

• Some sharpening to the flowers

• Increased clarity to the vase

LEAFY REFLECTIONS

lightroom edits:

• Corrected the white balance

• Increased the exposure

• Added some sharpening to the mirror and plant

• Cropped the image

MUSHROOM MADNESS

lightroom edits:

• Increased the exposure in the mushroom

• Increased sharpening and texture in the mushroom

• Added a hint of red hue to the gills and increased the vibrancy

• Decreased exposure in the background to highlight the subject (in the solo mushroom)

• Vignette applied to darken the edges

light and bright floral

lightroom edits:

• Corrected the white balance

• Increased the exposure

• Added a bit of orange hue to the flower

• Increased the saturation just a tad

a pair of pears

lightroom edits:

• Cropped the image slightly

• Increased exposure

• Increased the texture and the sharpening just a touch

• Spot edited the marks on the pear using the clone tool

sweets on show

lightroom edits:

• Used the selective tool to increased the exposure a tad on the main subject and the background leaves

• Increased the texture and the sharpening just a touch

• Added a bit of pink hue to the flower

rosy rosé

lightroom edits:

• Corrected the white balance

• Increased the exposure

• Cropped and straightened the image

• Increased the clarity in the glass

• Used the selective tool to increase the sharpening of the glass