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Basic Editing in Lightroom CC: Clone and Healing Brush

Lesson 14 from: Lightroom CC: Organizing Your Digital Photo Life

Jared Platt

Basic Editing in Lightroom CC: Clone and Healing Brush

Lesson 14 from: Lightroom CC: Organizing Your Digital Photo Life

Jared Platt

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Lesson Info

14. Basic Editing in Lightroom CC: Clone and Healing Brush

Lessons

Class Trailer
1

Class Introduction

02:25
2

Creative Cloud Construct

31:15
3

Lightroom Classic vs. Lightroom CC

11:16
4

Importing and Organization

10:06
5

Folder and Album Creation

03:08
6

Image Selection

25:17
7

Connectivity and Data

14:29
8

Finding Images in Lightroom CC

12:05

Lesson Info

Basic Editing in Lightroom CC: Clone and Healing Brush

The first tool we have here is the healing brush. Now the healing brush allows you to go in and spot things out. So, we actually, by the way, I'm just gonna say this right now. One of the things that they changed from Lightroom Classic to Lightroom CC, that you should know about, is that the Z key, which used to be zoom, which makes sense because it's Z, for zoom, is now pick, which used to be P, and now it's Z for, zat makes no sense. Right? I don't understand. So anyway, they moved P from pick, to P for zoom. Or Z for zoom, or Z for pick, actually. So there's no zoom. So, in order to zoom, you actually have to go and zoom in like this. And then you can go, and work out- there's no hotkey to zoom in, which is an oversight on their part, because, I just don't know. You can hit the Command, and then arrows, or I mean, the Command minus and plus, and that's what you'll zoom in with. But that's a two keystroke issue. It just makes no sense. So, anyway. Hopefully they will resurrect the Z ...

key to zoom. Hopefully. Or give me some other key that gives me a zoom, but. Okay, so, in the healing brush you have two options. You have Clone and Heal. Should be Heal most of the time, because Heal is a much more intelligent tool. The Clone tool literally just takes a patch of whatever over here, and places it over here. Whereas the healing tool, you just highlight an area that needs to be healed, and it looks around and tries to find the appropriate replacement for that thing. And so, I'm gonna go over here to these little patches of stuff in the grass that I want to get rid of. And I can scroll with my mousewheel, or, if you're on a smart mouse like this, just by scrolling up and down. You can also scroll by, change the size of your brush by using the bracket keys, or you can come over and slide it with the slider here. But I'm gonna make it nice and small, and then I'm gonna zoom in here, so that we can see what I'm doing. See there's just little flowers in there, and they look like, the don't look right. So, I'm gonna get rid of them. So, what we do is, we get our healing brush the size that we want it, and the feather that we want it. If you feather it too much, it'll have, it won't quite grab everything that you need, and it'll be, you'll start to see little soft flowers that are like 50 percent opacity coming through. And so, you wanna be somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 to 70 percent, or something like that. And then the opacity, you wanna be at 100 percent, for an operation like what we're doing. But don't do the feather at zero percent, because then you'll have these weird hard edges that you don't want. So, just find kind of a medium. You'll find what you like the best. And then I'm just gonna click and drag across those flowers. And it's going to choose something. Now it chose poorly, as to where it's choosing from. But I can grab the choice, and move it to the grass, and now it's gonna choose from the grass, more grass to place. So now if we zoom in there, you can see that I have no more flower there. So, now I'm gonna do that same thing on this one here. There. And then, I'm gonna look for other ones. So I can go and replace this one over here. And, let's just kind of zoom in here, and make sure. I don't like this big black spot in the grass, so I'm just gonna get rid of that. And then, the closer I can get it to the actual, because if it chooses a spot that is out of focus, and it puts it in an in-focus area, it'll look wrong. So the best way to deal with that is to either try and find a place really close to it, or you can also find a place that's over on the other side, but at the same focal plane. So the same amount of sharpness on that side as this side. So now when I zoom in there, you can see that it looks fairly normal. And now I can just zoom out, and you can't see that there's those little spots. So can go through and kind of nitpick that grass, and get rid of it. But the other place that you would work with the tool, with the healing tool, is on faces. So if I wanted to get rid of blemishes, or inconsistencies in skin, or something like that, then I can just move in here as close as possible to them, and I can see that there's little inconsistencies that I wanna get rid of. So I'll go into my healing brush, and again scroll down to the right size, and just simply click on them. And see how it's grabbing, and it's just removing those inconsistencies. And if you hit the spacebar, it turns into a hand, so you can move the canvas around. And I can get rid of all of these little inconsistencies in the skin. And it's not like they're horrible looking or anything, but they are a little inconsistent, so I can make this look perfect. And if i just click once, it'll just make a circle. But if I click and drag, it will create some kind of an anamorphic shape, whatever shape I create. So, I'm just kind of going around and clicking. Now, if you had someone that had, if you were photographing a senior portrait, like a high school senior, and they had a whole bunch of acne, or something like that, that's kind of a Photoshop thing. Then you'd go to Photoshop, work on it there, because this can take a little bit more time. But, if you don't need to leave the Raw space, then there's just no reason to. Like, for instance, these are not zits or anything, but there's probably too many. That one's probably one that you see on him, so I'm gonna leave that one. So as I look around at these, I'm just getting rid of the ones that you probably don't see in person. My rule for editing a person, is I have to, when I'm talking to you, if I see the thing, then I'll leave it, and I might mute it a little bit, but it's clearly you. If I see it in the flux of time. But most of the things, most of the blemishes we have, and most of the inconsistencies in our skin, we don't see those things, because we're looking at each others' eyes, and we're talking to each other, and we don't see those things in the flow of just normal conversation. So if I don't see it when I'm talking to you, I remove it. If I see it, and it's like a clearly ... My daughter has what she calls a polka dot, right here. It's a little flat beauty mark. It's a mole, I guess, but it's just flat, so it's just a little beauty mark. And it's right there, so she calls it her polka dot. So I never remove that in a photograph, because it's her polka dot. It's part of her. So I'm gonna leave that. But, if I don't see it, then I'll remove it. So I'm just going through and removing the ones that I don't really see as I'm looking at this person, photographing them. But I'm gonna leave the two, you see that? I'm gonna leave those, because those are more part of a character thing. So we can see that he has them. But, I might soften them. And the way that I would soften them, is I would click on them like this, and then, see how it removed them? Then I'm gonna, you can always take whatever you do, in a selective edit like this, and you can do it, and then negate it. Or change the effect. So there's the brush that I put down, and now I'm gonna take the opacity down to zero on that brush. So see how you still see that mark? And I'm gonna increase it until that mark is kind of softened up. So it's not quite 100 percent. It's not the full thing, it's just a partial version. So now, when you look at it, you see them, but they're not glaring at you. So it's just a really nice way to soften up something. Furthermore, if you wanna soften up, see how she's got a little shadow under her eyes? Remember, I wasn't lighting them up, and flashing, using flash, or anything like that, because I just stole my friend's camera and took a picture. So, I'm looking at her, and I'm thinking oh, I could soften up those little dark shadows under her eyes. So I again go back into the healing brush, and I'm going to keep the opacity at about 30 percent, and I'm gonna go in, and I'm gonna increase the size of my brush, so that it's about the same size as that little shadow, and I'm just gonna drag it under her eye like that. And then, I'm gonna move this thing so it's right on her cheek. And then I can go in and change the opacity on this. If I go to 100 percent, there will be no shadow, but she'll look a little odd. See that? It's almost like that eye doesn't have enough shape anymore. So instead, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna click on that, and I'm gonna go to about 30-ish percent. So now if you look at it, she still has that shadow under her eye, but it's nice and soft. And it's not quite as blue, because there's warmth from the skin put over the top of it. So it doesn't call much attention to itself. So then I'll do the same thing over here. Just grab right there, and go like that. And, move that to right there. So now that one, see how it's 30 percent. Because these brushes keep the same settings as you use them over and over. And so now, you have this nice soft look under her eyes, rather than that real hard shadow under her eyes. So, that's how we work with the healing brush. Now you can also use it as a clone brush, and it works exactly the same way, but it's not an intelligent tool. It just grabs a spot from over here, and puts it over there. So it's easier to be seen. You see it more. Once in a while, when your healing brush makes bad decisions, and starts grabbing stuff from, like if I was trying to heal something around here in the trees, and it kept grabbing the barn and throwing it in, and I couldn't get it to stop because it was too close to the barn, then I would turn into the clone brush, because it's exact copies. And that's how you would solve that.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with Purchase

Lightroom® CC Ecosystem PDF
Film Presets

Ratings and Reviews

JennMercille
 

This class blew my mind! As a full-time professional photographer, with a very complicated workflow (that is next to impossible to explain to my assistant) I cannot express how essential this class is to overhauling and simplifying my workflow. I am so excited to finally be able to split my workflow between multiple laptops and work stations WITHOUT having to build a server at my studio. I love that I now have a framework to start building a new organizational and backup system that I can easily train others on, and mobilize quickly. With all of the changes and improvements that Adobe is bringing to Lightroom CC & Classic, this class is integral to understanding and utilizing the program to its fullest potential! Jared Platt is a wonderful teacher and this class especially is perfect for novices and seasoned professionals alike!

a Creativelive Student
 

I was lucky enough to participate in-studio for this class. Jared is a great presenter and broke down the complicated Lightroom CC vs. Lightroom Classic changes. His conversational style of presenting kept things interesting and participants involved. This course was much more than just learning what the programs do. Jared walked through sample workflows to show when and why you would use the multitude of sliders and editing tools within the program. The course is worth every penny! Topics will remain pertinent well after newer versions of Lightroom CC and Classic are released.

agcphoto
 

I won't be able to watch all of this, but I purchased it anyway. Jared's ability to address the technical as well as the artistic aspects of Lightroom is unparalleled. He is one of my preferred presenters, especially for Lightroom. I especially appreciate how he has clarified the differences among the versions of Lightroom that are available. Thank you Jared!

Student Work

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