DON’T Ignore This Powerful, New Adobe Feature (VIDEO)

Adobe just unloaded a boatful of innovative updates across their entire Lightroom and Photoshop ecosystem, and we’ll be bringing you all the details one at a time. But there’s one impressive capability, known as Variance, that seems to be flying under the radar and that’s what you’ll use learn how to use today so you don’t miss it later on.

We often turn to photographer Glyn Dewis for straightforward shooting tips, post-processing advice, and valuable insights into new software updates. In the next 11 minutes you’ll learn why he insists that “out of everything that was updated yesterday, I think that Variance is the most exciting.”

Dewis illustrates the concept with a graphic of green swatches of varying tones. He explains the initial process like this: “Let’s imagine that we want to make all of these swatches match the one in the middle.” This is super easy to do by opening the Filter menu, choosing Camera Raw Filters, using the Color Mixer panel, and following his instructions. You’ll note that Variance appears under Point Color.

In basic terms, moving the Variance slider left or right tells Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) how much difference you want between the color swatch you selected and the other swatches in the illustration. By doing it right “you now have one complete tone going across the entire document.”

So what does all this mean in practical terms? Dewis opens an interesting, moody portrait and demonstrates how the new Variance tool enables him to quickly remove the reddening in his subject’s cheeks.

Dewis walks you through the simple steps, and then he opens another portrait photo and does much the same—this time to balance his model’s uneven skin tones. It’s all quick and very effective, and you’ll definitely want to add Variance to your everyday post-processing workflow.

There are many more shooting and editing tips and techniques to be found on Glyn’s instructional YouTube, so be sure to pay a visit and explore.

And speaking of brand-new Adobe features, don’t miss the tutorial we featured earlier with another image-editing expert who demonstrate the power of Lightroom’s updated non-destructive Enhance tools for Denoise, Raw Details, and Super Resolution.