Local edits are adjustments that affect only a portion of an image.įor example, if you open an image and move the exposure slider up a bit, that’s a global edit as you move the slider up, every pixel in the photo will get a little bit brighter at the same rate.

Global edits are adjustments that change the entire image as a whole. Photo editors use the terms local editing and global editing to describe where and how they make adjustments to an image. These tools will give you complete control over your edits and adjustments and will allow you to get the absolute most out of your photos. By the time we’re through, you’ll be able to apply edits to specific areas of an image (like the subject or the background), specific tonal ranges (like the highlights, midtones, or shadows), or even specific colors (like the blues in a sky or the reds and oranges in skin). And we removed some distracting shadows below the subject to help simplify the frame.Īll of the tools we’re going to cover allow editors to carefully pick and choose parts of a photo to adjust. We made the subject a bit brighter while adding some sharpness and contrast to draw more attention to them.

We added a dark-to-light gradient to the sky, without affecting the palm tree or the subject. If you look closely, you can see that we made a lot of adjustments, each to a particular part of the photo. Here is the before and after of the adjustments we made to our example image. This would allow you to get the most amount of detail out of the background, while still making sure the subject is the center of attention.

For example, if you’re working with an outdoor portrait, you might want to make certain edits to only the subject, and certain edits to only the background. So what separates basic adjustments from the more advanced tools and features we’re covering today?Īs you get more familiar with Lightroom Classic, and with photo editing in general, you’ll find yourself wanting to make changes to specific areas of an image rather than the entire image as a whole. We began the editing process in the last episode, covering some of the basic adjustments you can make in Lightroom.

Lightroom classic tutorials youtube