3 steps to have poppin' green & add pizazz to your photos

If you've taken a look around my blog, you'll know that I love two things, black & white photos & bright/contrast-y photos... 

Today, I will show you how to have fantabulous color, (especially green), in your photos using Adobe Lightroom. If you don't have Lightroom, download the free trial here. 

Lightroom changed my business completely. I would never edit another way. It makes it fast & easy... and did I mention fast? 

Let's get crackin'. 

Here we have a great bride & groom photo, one of my favs. It looks great as it is. But it just needs a little somethin' somethin'. I need that POP, the wow. Give me some dang green! 

I'm starting off today, as if you've never used Lightroom before, so if you are familiar with Lightroom skim till you get to the bottom portion of this post. :) 

• Find the file on your computer
• Import

Two sections to lightroom.

Section G- (grid I think, not even for sure), anyways that's pretty much view mode. Where you're going to look at what photos.

YOU CAN'T DO any editing in G mode. only in D mode (develop). D=EDITING

say it w/ me.

G = look at my photos

D = Edit those bad boys.

moving on. :) 

Once you import it, should look like this.

Double click image, that will make it larger, then click D.

Here's what I use almost everytime.

Fill Light, Exposure, Blacks, whatever color it has in it, contrast. DONE.

I like my shiz bright, bright and contrasty. 

Should look like this once you click D.

Take notice to the settings on the side.

*If the dress is too white for your liking, use your recover tool to bring back some of the details. :)

Shortcut magic - click Y to toggle between the before & after image to see the results instantly! 

So we would add a bit of fill, pop up that green, give it a boost with some blacks & HIT that shiz w/ some contrast. and BAM you have one goooooooooooood lookin' image right there.

Highlight it, click E to export it to the folder of your choice & you're all set! Painless & easy.

Another reason why I love lightroom... oh yeah you can sync the settings. So if you took 20 of the same image in the same light & location, just highlight the images, sync all & then you are all set! SPIFFY.

Below are the settings I used with this image. Feel free to save as the before photo & try it yourself.

Recovery - 25

Fill light - 41

Blacks - 22

Contrast - 43

Green - 100

Now, these don't have to necessarily be these settings. This is all to what you like. If you like your stuff more dark & contrasty. Then that's fab, you do that. Just experiment around with the sliders and you'll find what you like. 

When I first got Lightroom, I got a how to instructional book. HOLY CRAP. It was awful, seriously made me want to gouge my eyes out.

Here I just payed a fortune for this program, supposedly got a easy how to book and OH wait, I still didn't understand it.

So what did I do? I kept editing in Photoshop. It literally just took me one day where I was like I'm going to learn this program if it kills me. Sure enough, still alive - and I learned it. 

This program, I don't think is very easy to catch onto, but when  you do it will be like ONE gigantic light bulb and it will become second nature. Think of it like learning how to type. 

Go get your color on!

Brooke