How To Edit Travel Photos In Lightroom WITHOUT PRESETS

Editing a travel landscape photo in Lightroom – Without using any presets.

Why would you want to know how to edit travel photos in Lightroom without presets? Or how to edit ANY photos in Lightroom without presets, for that matter? Lightroom Presets are all the rage right now. And for good reason – Presets are a tool that can be incredibly useful and helpful in saving you time and energy when you’re editing. They also can help you get a certain “look” inside of Lightroom that you might have no idea how to do on your own.

But editing without presets in Lightroom is crazy necessary.

Why? Because if you depend on presets but don’t know what is going on in the image to make it look that way, you’ll never be able to get the maximum potential out of each image. You won’t know which settings to finesse or how to get your photo to look AMAZING in Lightroom.

Like any tool, Lightroom Presets are at their best in the hands of someone who knows what they’re doing, and how to use them to their full potential.

The only way to learn what you’re doing is by editing photos in Lightroom without presets!

In this tutorial you’ll learn how to edit travel photos in Lightroom without presets. Seriously – NO PRESETS! This photography tutorial is perfect for any beginner with little or no experience in post production. easy, simple, and pretty!

Download The RAW Practice Photo Here!

[powerkit_collapsibles ]
[powerkit_collapsible title=”Video Transcript”]
hey guys Ryan here at signature edits
00:02
and today we are going to look at how to
00:03
get this image from here to here without
00:06
using any presets let’s do it
00:09
[Music]
00:17
all right so let’s launch in there’s a
00:20
few things we’re going to be doing today
00:22
we’re going to be working on the overall
00:24
color of this image and then we’re also
00:25
going to be adding a couple of different
00:27
effects one the most noticeable being
00:29
this beautiful sunrise that is going off
00:32
of the bridge here if you look very
00:33
closely you can see there is a little
00:35
bit of a light rain naturally in this
00:37
photo but even if it wasn’t there we
00:39
could still add it and I’m going to show
00:41
you how you can do that in Lightroom now
00:43
let’s get started with some basic color
00:45
we’re going to go up to the top and just
00:46
adjust our white balance that is the
00:48
first thing we do with our image because
00:49
it’s looking pretty cool next we’re
00:51
going to adjust our magenta just a
00:53
little bit I’m trying to get a nice
00:57
starting point so things are just
00:59
looking natural out of the gate I’m
01:00
going to add a little bit of contrast
01:01
here and then I can up my highlights a
01:05
little bit maybe down my shadows just a
01:07
little whites up if I want to I can
01:10
actually hold down the alt or option key
01:12
and drag the whites up until I see some
01:14
clipping happening basically I don’t
01:16
want to lose any detail in the image so
01:17
I’m just gonna take it until the whites
01:18
are white and that’s it and black same
01:21
thing I can take it down a little bit
01:23
but not too much because I don’t want
01:24
her black pants to be too to black we
01:26
want them to be a very dark gray because
01:28
nothing is really truly black in the
01:30
world
01:31
alright so moving on I can add a little
01:33
bit of clarity here and the slightest
01:37
bit of da’s up my vibrance and lower my
01:40
saturation a little bit that’s just a
01:42
nice little trick to kind of get the
01:44
color there without having things be too
01:46
saturated looking next we’re going to go
01:48
into our tone curve do a very slight
01:50
s-curve just up some contrast just a
01:53
little bit and then we’re going to go
01:57
into our HSL and this is where the money
01:59
starts to happen so I’m going to go over
02:01
top my hue here and take my oranges and
02:07
move them down just a little bit warm up
02:08
towards red yellows I’m going to do the
02:11
same thing you can see how that trees
02:13
kind of take on a fall tone when I do
02:15
this and then I’m going to hop over into
02:19
my luminance and I’m going to take her
02:21
skin on her arm is looking a little bit
02:22
dark and I can use this little
02:24
eyedropper click on our skin drag up and
02:27
that is showing me that that’s in the
02:29
oranges and the red so we’re going to
02:30
brighten those up
02:31
bit perfect that is looking pretty good
02:37
again it’s baby steps one thing at a
02:39
time not going to try and edit the whole
02:41
image with any one of these tools I’m
02:43
going to do it incrementally and little
02:44
by little it’s going to get that image
02:45
from where I want it where it was to
02:49
where I want it
02:50
so moving on my detail I can leave that
02:52
maybe out my sharpening just a little
02:54
bit because I’m a bit of a sucker for
02:56
good sharpening now holding down the alt
02:58
I can actually turn up my radius and
03:00
that will define basically which parts
03:02
of the image Lightroom is sharpening
03:04
radius is how radius is how strong the
03:09
edge needs to be before it actually gets
03:11
sharpened so if I drag it all the way up
03:13
you can see what’s getting sharpened
03:14
here are these really big strong edges
03:16
of the bridge and that’s what I want to
03:17
emphasize here noise reduction don’t
03:20
need that because our photo was taken at
03:21
ISO 100 moving down lens Corrections
03:24
sure we can turn those on turn my
03:28
vignette encasement transform that’s all
03:35
fine effects we’re going to leave that
03:38
alone except for maybe a little bit of
03:40
light grain here let’s zoom in just a
03:42
little and we can exaggerate our effect
03:46
for now my size down and just like that
03:50
so there’s before and there’s after just
03:52
very very subtle effect and finally my
03:56
camera calibration this is kind of the
03:57
secret moneymaker at the end here we can
04:00
take our shadows and just add a little
04:02
bit of magenta into there take our Reds
04:06
and move them ever so slightly towards
04:08
orange take our blues move them down
04:12
just a little bit and our greens you
04:17
know in this image I’m actually thinking
04:18
things are looking pretty good natural
04:20
like that when I dialed the Blues back
04:24
just a little okay so that is pretty
04:26
close to the way that I would like it to
04:28
be I’m going to add maybe a little bit
04:29
of saturation back into this image and
04:31
then we’re going to work on our
04:33
beautiful streak of light up here so how
04:35
do we do that well we go over to our
04:36
radial filter and it’s actually pretty
04:39
simple if you have the signature edits
04:40
pack comes with all of these pre-made
04:42
brushes one being a Sun flare
04:45
which we can actually just drag down
04:47
here and bam we’ve got a flare that we
04:49
can finesse but we’re going to make one
04:51
from scratch assuming you don’t have
04:52
that pack right now so I’m going to go
04:54
just up to exposure here add some
04:58
exposure some temperature some tint
05:01
lower my contrast because that’s what a
05:03
Sun flare does and then we’re going to
05:07
upper highlights a little bit up our
05:10
whites clarity is going to go down
05:12
because we’re losing sharpness whenever
05:14
a flare happens d haze just a little bit
05:17
and let’s just see how that looks for a
05:20
starting point and not too bad we’ll
05:23
dial that in okay so what I’m going to
05:24
do is drag this down to around here and
05:26
then if I grab this line up here I can
05:29
actually make the gradient from 100% to
05:32
0% I can make that smaller so that
05:35
there’s more of a defined line and grab
05:38
that middle line again and drag it back
05:40
down so I basically want it to be just
05:42
poking out here over the edge of the
05:45
bridge this corner right here now
05:47
obviously this looks pretty silly but
05:48
it’s helping us to be able to see
05:50
exactly where it is then we’re going to
05:52
refine it and make it more subtle so
05:54
what I’m going to do now is hit this
05:55
little brush thing and obviously the
05:57
sunray is coming over the bridge we
05:58
don’t want it on the bridge here so what
06:00
I’m going to do is hold down alt while
06:03
I’m on the brush that’s going to toggle
06:04
to my eraser and I’m actually just going
06:06
to erase this section of that gradient
06:11
filter just like that it’s already
06:14
looking closer now let’s dial it in a
06:16
little bit more things are looking
06:18
pretty red there we don’t need that I’m
06:20
going to take my contrast back up a
06:22
little bit exposure doesn’t need to be
06:24
so extreme that’s looking better and
06:28
maybe take my white balance down just a
06:32
little so it’s not quite so crazy my
06:35
whites could go back up a little and
06:40
sure maybe a little bit less clarity a
06:43
little bit warmer let’s see how we’re
06:47
looking that is pretty good not you
06:49
could go harder or more subtle depending
06:52
on your personal taste but I’m liking it
06:53
there what I might do is just duplicate
06:55
this
06:57
right the second one up to about here
07:00
and just have kind of a second flare
07:05
going on just to make it a little bit
07:07
more organic pull it everything way back
07:11
so it’s far more subtle there we go just
07:18
like that alright and that is how you
07:21
take this image from here to here in
07:24
Lightroom without using any presets now
07:26
presets are a great starting point they
07:28
can save you a ton of time obviously
07:29
this photo took me 10 minutes to edit by
07:32
myself if I were using a preset maybe it
07:34
would take me a minute or two minutes or
07:36
maybe thirty seconds if I have a great
07:38
preset and I’m just using my preset for
07:40
this lovely sunray as well now there’s
07:42
some other little things we could do to
07:44
finesse the image a little bit maybe we
07:45
could go down here and grab our add
07:47
texture brush which is basically just
07:48
some clarity some sharpness a little bit
07:50
of contrast and we could bring out some
07:52
texture here and if for whatever reason
07:55
we wanted our subject this girl to be
07:58
more in focus because she is out of
07:59
focus in the original photo we could
08:01
possibly take another brush here up our
08:05
clarity our sharpness and you know get
08:08
her back to where we’d like her to be
08:14
press o and I can see where my mask is
08:17
actually being painted
08:22
perfecto presto again to take that off
08:28
great so now she’s not all the way as
08:32
sharp as if she were actually sharpen
08:33
camera but that will do once we zoom
08:36
back out just like that our image is
08:41
done so that’s how you edit this image
08:42
without any presets inside a Lightroom
08:44
if you are a hands-on learner
08:46
I got you make sure you download the
08:47
image below you can practice with the
08:49
raw file in Lightroom on your own until
08:53
next time if this was helpful for you
08:54
please hit that like button don’t forget
08:56
to subscribe leave me a comment and I’ll
08:58
see you in the next one
08:59
[Music]
[/powerkit_collapsible]
[/powerkit_collapsibles]

In this tutorial you’ll learn how to edit travel photos in Lightroom without presets.

Seriously – NO PRESETS! This photography tutorial is perfect for any beginner with little or no experience in post production. easy, simple, and pretty!
The only way to learn what you’re doing is by editing photos in Lightroom without presets!

Download the RAW Practice File Here Now!
https://shop.signatureedits.com/travel-landscape-raw-practice-file