Sometimes I partner with a photographer and they take photos for me, but lately with my hectic schedule, I’ve been using my own camera and just have had my friends and other bloggers shoot me. This means that I’ve had to master the art of editing my own photos. Editing a set of photos usually only takes me 15-20 minutes since I’ve nailed it down to a science. Here is my quick and easy Lightroom Tutorial with a few simple steps to ensure that your photos will pop!
LIGHTROOM TUTORIAL FOR FASHION BLOGGERS
1. Adjust Your Exposure as Needed
First things first, head over to your “Develop” tab in Lightroom and make sure the “Basic” panel is open (Windows > Panels > Basic). You’re going to live in this panel for the rest of this tutorial. First thing I do is adjust my exposure as needed. If your photo is looking a little dark, slide the scale up. If your photo is too bright, bump it down. Be sure not to bump it up too far up or down, or else your photo might start to appear a bit grainy.
2. Adjust Highlights
9 times out of 10, I’ll go ahead and bump up the highlights in my blog photos. Keep an eye on your image when you’re doing this and be careful that nothing gets too “blown out”.
3. Bump Up The Shadows
This step really depends on your skin tone. Since my skin is super dark, I always have to adjust the shadows since the white balance is usually off in my photos. I do this to get my skin to look a bit more what it actually looks like IRL. Again, if you’re more on the pale side, you can probably skip this step, but it never hurts to play around with this setting.
4. Adjust your whites and blacks
Are you kind of getting the gist of this? You’re basically adjusting sliders. So, so easy, anyone can do this! I usually bump up my whites and I darken my blacks a little (that’s right, this is the first element you’ll actually slide down versus slide up). This just gives my photo a bit more contrast and pop.
5. Adjust the Vibrance
99.9% of the time, I use vibrance instead of saturation to give my photos a bit of a color pop. Saturation tends to make my skin appear more red than it is, so that’s why I tend to avoid that! Slide it up to give your photos more color, or if you like a faded look, slide it down. #easy
6. Adjust the Tone Curve (Optional)
This is a totally optional step, but this is how I get my photos to have a slighly faded look. Scroll down to your Tone Curve section. Place one point right in the middle of the line and place a second point to split up the line. Take the third point that is already at the bottom left of the tone curve box and slide it up to the point I did in the image below. Boom! Theres a slight film-like quality to your photos.
And look at that, you my friend are D-O-N-E.
Lightroom Tutorial – Before:
Lightroom Tutorial – After:
What else do you want to know about blogging? Hope you enjoyed this Lightroom tutorial! Leave a comment and let me know what you’d like to see in future posts!
![THE BEST PLACES TO CATCH SPRING BLOOMS IN @visitpasadena 🌸
After an extremely wet winter, I’m looking for all the spring blooms here in SoCal! Pasadena is only 20 minutes from Downtown Los Angeles, and is packed with some of the most stunning botanical gardens in the area — and definitely should be on your list to visit this spring!
Gardens to Visit in Pasadena This Spring (SAVE this post for later!)
🌸 @descansogardens — look out for Cherry Blossoms in their Japanese Garden, stroll through the Rose Garden and don’t miss the lilacs!
🌸 @nortonsimon — you could spend hours viewing the art here both indoors and outdoors in their Sculpture Garden
🌸 @arlingtonpasadena — a free, three-acre garden that’s home to an orange grove & Yoko Ono’s Wish Tree art installation
🌸 @thehuntingtonlibrary — you won’t want to miss their Cactus Garden, the Conservatory, the Japanese Garden, and the Chinese Garden
🌸 @langhampasadena — enjoy afternoon tea here & take a stroll through their Japanese Garden for Cherry Blossoms!
My fellow SoCal friends — anywhere else I should check out for spring blooms this year? Let me know! 📸 by @foodphotographer [ad]](https://www.aliciatenise.com/wp-content/plugins/instagram-feed/img/placeholder.png)
I’ve been using Paint.net cause it’s free, but I think you just talked me into jumping on the Lightroom bandwagon! Thanks for the tips!
xo, Whitney and Blaire
Peaches In A Pod
This is honestly so helpful, because I have lightroom but have no idea how to use it! The tutorial you put together is really easy to understand!
Lightroom is my favorite – it’s got such an easy interface compared to photoshop and the results are the same! This tutorial is so helpful!
Such a great tutorial! Love lightroom!
http://www.kayleighskloset.com
When I first started doing photography I learnt everything about photo editing software from blog posts like this. Thank you for sharing your tips and tricks! I’ve bookmarked this to come back to when I need it!
Jessica Grace
Wow! What a great difference! I need to start doing this routine.
Mikayla | A Seersucker State of Mind.
Thanks for the tips! I definitely needed these even though I’m not really a fashion blogger. But I always love to see the backgrounds faded out a bit and I never knew how to make it happen!
This is an awesome and simple tutorial! I have a similar editing process on photoshop – haven’t used lightroom before! Do you reckon that it’s a better way to batch edit photos? Definitely bookmarking this!
Alessandra | The PumpUp Blog
This is a really simple and straight forward tutorial.
I need to try Lightroom because I would love my photos to be a little more professionally edited looking.
xoxo, Jenny || Breakfast at Lillys
Thanks so much for the great tips! I’ll be sure to keep these in mind!
Cassie
My Pop of Color
I import all of my photos with the Auto Tune preset, and then adjust the sliders up/down depending on what I like/don’t like about the photo. Try it out! HUGE time saver. ALSO, if you edit one photo and then select all, there’s a sync button which will sync all your photos to those same adjustments 😉
Josh | The Kentucky Gent
http://thekentuckygent.com
Thank you so much for this tutorial. You definitely made it a lot easier to use and understand
Felice Raina // The Kiss Of Joy xoxo
This is so great! Thank you SO much! This seriously was so helpful! You’re a #girlboss!
So great! Love Lightroom… it’s the only thing I use!
Lauren
The Fashionista’s Diary
This is awesome!!! Thank you thank you for sharing! I am always looking for tips!
Nicole // Chronicling Home
Great tutorial, the before and after is such a noticeable difference. I also love lightroom!
Yes, all of your pictures look so good! Love how simple it is to do all of that in Lightroom.
Jadore l Jadoregrace
Such a great tutorial! Your pictures always look amazing!
xo Ashley
This is so helpful! I really want to get Lightroom!
Really great tutorial, so easy to follow! I really want to get Lightroom now!
xx, The Southwestern Prepster
I am SO thankful for this post, because I had no idea what Lightroom even was. I have access to it through work and haven’t been taking advantage of it. Saving these tips and putting them to work next week! Thank you!!
XX, SS || A Little Seersucker Sass
This is SUCH a great tutorial, Alicia! I’ve been told over and over again that Lightroom is the way to go, so this might bump me into purchasing it!
Coming Up Roses
Very helpful! Please always keep in touch, I would love to hear from you!
Follow me @qingsstyle on Instagram and Twitter!
Qing’s Style
great post dear, thanks for sharing! 🙂
xoxo, shaine
Bad Habits