Use Lightroom’s Amount Slider for Faster, Better Edits (VIDEO)
Today we’re featuring a two-minute tutorial that that will enable you to edit outdoor photographs faster than ever before while achieving outstanding results. It’s all about employing Lightroom’s often-overlooked Amount slider for getting the job done swiftly with precision, as compared to methods you’ve likely tried in the past.
Landscape photographer Scott Davenport is a regular contributor to Shutterbug, specializing in basic tutorials that deliver great results for shooters of all skills levels. In just about the time it takes to read this description you’ll learn how to utilize the power of this straightforward tool.
Davenport pulls up a seascape photo captured at sunset to illustrate everything you need to know. The image looks pretty good until you view his final transformation. As you’ll see, he’s already created masks for the large rock formations on the left side of the frame. He used these selections to cut Haze and increase Texture and Clarity.
Davenport zooms in on the shot, and you’ll agree that the preliminary adjustments he made are somewhat too strong. After fiddling around with several sliders to lessen the effects Davenport realized there’s a better approach. And that’s where Lightroom’s Amount slider comes to the rescue in a hurry. Depending upon the image at hand, and the look you desire, it’s easy to dial the effect back or push it even further.
It’s a no-brainer to watch what happens as you move the slider slowly and deliberately to the left or right until you see exactly what tickles your fancy. In short by employing this technique it’s really unnecessary to waste time messing around with all the individual sliders.
As Davenport says, “I just use the Amount slider to get the work done fast, and I don’t really know why I haven’t done this in the past.” Using a timesaving technique that fails to deliver great results is something most of us will quickly avoid, but in this case you get the best of both worlds.
After giving this a try we’re pretty sure you’ll want to add Davenport’s method to your Lightroom bag of tricks. Once you’re done watching head over to his instructional YouTube channel where there are a bunch more quick tips to learn.
And we don’t want you to miss the tutorial we posted from another photo-processing pro who explains why heavy-handed photo editing is worse that no editing at all. He then explains the subtle approach he employs to guarantee clean and realistic images every time.
