Julieanne Kost's Blog

• Shift + M selects the Radial Filter

• When you drag in the image area, the Radial Filter is scaled from center, Shift -drag will constrain to a circle

• Command (Mac) | Control (Win) -double-click in the image area to expand the Radial Filter to the visible image area.

• Command (Mac) | Control (Win) -double-click on an existing Radial Filter will expand it to the visible image area.

• Command + Option -drag (Mac) | Control + Alt -drag (Win) an existing Radial Filter will duplicate it.

• H” hides the interface

• Tap the Apostrophe key ( ‘ ) to toggle the Invert Mask option

• Double-click on an existing Radial Filter will apply the Radial filter and dismiss the tool.

In the LR 5 beta, we can now click-drag to create a Brush Spot.  As in previous versions a single click will create a circle spot and auto-find a source.

• Tap “Q” to access the Spot Removal tool.  Shift + Q toggles between Clone and Heal modes.

• Command -drag (Mac) | Control -drag (Win) creates a circle spot and allows you to drag to define the source.

• Command + Option -drag (Mac) | Control + Alt -drag  (Win) creates a circle spot that scales from the center.

• Command + Shift -drag(Mac) | Control  + Shift -drag (Win) creates a circle spot that scales from anchor.

• Holding down Shift (before starting to paint with the Spot Removal tool) constrains the brush stroke to horizontal or vertical.

• If you click to set a circle spot and then Shift + click in a different area Lightroom will connect the first spot with the new spot via a straight brush stroke (a great way to remove telephone lines).

• To enlarge a brush spot after drawing, use the Size slider in the Spot Removal  options panel.

• Backslash (/) – select new source for existing circle or brush spot.

• Tap “H” to hide the interface.

• Option -click  (Mac) | Alt  + (Win) -click  deletes a spot (the icon displays as a pair of scissors).

• Option -click  (Mac) | Alt  + (Win) -drag over multiple spots will batch-delete spots.

• Tap “A” to toggle the Visualize Spots feature (manual controls are found in the Toolbar)

Here are links to my top 3 features in the Lightroom 5 Beta!

Upright (Automatic perspective correction) - Discover how to automatically fix common problems such as tilted horizons as well as converging verticals in buildings using Lightroom’s new Upright controls for perspective correction.

The Advanced Healing Brush - Discover the new enhancements to Lightroom’s advanced Healing Brush including the ability to heal and clone non-circular brush spots as well as remove easy to miss sensor dust using the new Visualization slider.

The Radial Filter - Learn how easy it is to apply any and all of Lightroom’s existing local adjustments including dodging and burning, adding vignettes, selectively sharpening and more to one or more completely customizable, nondestructive, circular Radial filters – anywhere in  your image.

For additional information, check out the Lightroom Journal and the photoshop.com blog.

In Lightroom’s Develop module, when you choose Settings > Copy Settings or use the shortcut Command + Shift + C (Mac) | Control  + Shift + C (Win), Lightroom copies the setting that you select (in the subsequent Copy Settings dialog), to the clipboard and holds on to them. Therefore, as you move through your photo shoot, you can easily paste those setting to any additional image(s). This might be a great way, for example,  to paste a subset of attributes such as a vignette or color toning to images while moving through a shoot, and still be able to use Sync (or Auto Sync) to apply other modifications.

When applying a Post Crop Vignette in Lightroom and/or Camera Raw, don’t forget that you can use the Highlight slider to suppress the vignette from being added in the highlights of the image. This can help keep brighter values in the vignetted area from looking muddy.

Also, when cropping an image and adding a Post Crop vignette, I prefer to first use the Lens Correction panel to remove any vignetting caused by the lens. Removing the lens vignetting (especially if the image is cropped so that part of the lens vignette is cut off) will result in a more even looking Post Crop Vignette.

When you click in an image with the Spot Removal tool, Lightroom sets down the source spot (where you clicked) and automatically selects an area to sample from. If you click and drag with the Spot Removal tool, Lighroom sets down the source spot (where you clicked), but by keeping the mouse down and dragging, you are able to control the area (dragging to reposition) from which Lightroom selects its source information.

Don’t forget that you can use the Spot Removal tool in Lightroom and Camera Raw in either the Clone mode (where you will get an exact copy of the retouched area) or the Heal mode (where Lightroom automatically adjusts the tonality of the sampled information to evenly blend the retouched area). And both of these modes support variable opacity so that next time you’re using the Spot Removal tool to retouch an image (as opposed to removing dust from the sensor), you might want to try decreasing the opacity of the retouched spot so that you’re simply reducing a distracting element, not removing it.

Lightroom automatically saves the original file name in the metadata of the file. In the Metadata panel, (in the header area where you can choose from a number of different ways to display the panel), choose the “EXIF and IPTC” or “Location” display options and you will see the “Original Filename” filed.

In this episode of The Complete Picture (How and When to Rename Files in Lightroom ), Julieanne provides several suggestions for file naming conventions for creating templates for import, Batch Renaming, Export and Editing in Photoshop as well as recommendations for how and when to rename your files.

This is a pretty rare occurrence, but I occasionally find that I have multiple copies of the same folder of images in two locations. For example, I might need a copy of a folder of images to use in a demo, or I might have changed my mind as to which folder of images (the one on my internal or external drive) contains my “working” files, or maybe I’ve just plain gotten confused and have made duplicates for some unknown reason! Note: I just want to be clear, here I’m talking about an identical folder of images, that for whatever reason, appears in two different locations – not copies for redundant backup purposes.

Instead of deleting the unwanted folder from the Lightroom catalog – because that would remove the files from Collections, delete any virtual copies and, if I haven’t saved information to the files, discard metadata changes and develop settings, I simply Control -click (Mac) | Right Mouse -click (Win) on the Folder and choose Update Folder Location. Then, I navigate to the folder/images that I want Lightroom to work with and select it, enabling Lightroom to “keep track of” that set of images and forget about the others.

When you save a snapshot in the Develop module in Lightroom, that snapshot is automatically made available in every Virtual Copy of the image.

Command–Option–Up Arrow will toggle between the currently selected module and the previous module visited in Lightroom.

To apply a change to all images in a stack in Lightroom, the stack must first be expanded. Otherwise, changes will only be applied to the image on the top of the stack.

Below, the stack and adjacent image are selected and a one star rating is applied.

Expanding the stack reveals that only the image on the top of the stack (and the adjacent image) had the rating applied

To apply the one star rating to all of the images in the stack, first expand the stack and select the images.

The rating will now be applied to all selected images.

As you probably know, the Painter tool can be used to apply keywords. If you enter a keyword in the Painter tool, Lightroom knows that the Painter tool is “loaded” with that keyword – even after you have put away the tool. So, if you have a “default” keyword that you often apply, enter it in the Painter tool and then use Shift + K to apply that keyword without having to select the painter tool, or use the Keywording panel.

In this episode of The Complete Picture (Controlling Selective Color Changes in Lightroom), Julieanne demonstrates how to use Hue, Saturation, Luminance and the Adjustment Brush to selectively control color in Lighroom. Note: although this video was recorded in Lightroom, the same techniques are available in Adobe Camera Raw in Photoshop CS6.