Click on any phrase to play the video from that point.
[♪♪]
[Lightroom for Travel Photography]
Whenever I´m capturing a photograph, I try to pay attention to what´s in the frame,
making sure there aren´t any blemishes or distractions that I might want to get rid of.
And whenever possible, I try to eliminate those distractions at the time I´m taking the picture.
Sometimes you might not notice those distractions until later,
and of course at times there is really not much you can do about the distractions.
For example, with this photograph of flowers on a lawn
I find that some of these dandelions in the grass are a little bit distracting.
In theory, I could have picked those flowers while I was there
but that might have gotten me in some trouble,
so I decided to leave them alone and clean them up after the fact.
Fortunately, the Spot Removal Tool in Lightroom
makes this sort of cleanup quite simple.
I´m in the Develop module, and I´ll go ahead and choose the Spot Removal Tool.
This is a brush tool, so I can adjust the brush size and the opacity.
Generally speaking, I work with the heal option rather than the clone option
because with heal the effect will be blended in to the surrounding area,
and that usually gives me a better result.
The size I´ll adjust while I´m working, and the opacity I´ll almost always leave at 100%.
The only time I would reduce opacity is if I´m trying to tone down a blemish
rather then remove it altogether.
So the setup here is quite simple.
I´ll move my mouse out over the image and I will adjust the brush size.
The left square bracket key will reduce the brush size,
and the right square bracket key will increase the brush size.
And then I can simply point to a blemish and click.
Lightroom will attempt to automatically determine an appropriate source area
of pixels that will be used to clean up the blemish I have identified.
But I can move that source to a different area.
Just to illustrate the concept, I´ll drag out over the flowers here.
And you can see that while the effect was blended in, I´m still getting flower texture
rather than grass texture in that area.
So I´ll bring this back to a more appropriate location.
I can also resize the area being cleaned up
simply by dragging on the circle that identifies that location.
I have my tool Overlay option set to Auto,
and so any time I move my mouse out away from the image, those circles will disappear,
and any time my mouse is over the image, I´ll be able to see them.
This makes it a little bit easier to evaluate the results.
I´ll go ahead and adjust my brush size
and click on the other blemish areas that I´d like to get rid of,
just the other dandelions over on this right portion of the grass.
I also find this bright spot--
I think that might be a small flower down towards the bottom right corner--
to be a little bit distracting, so I´ll get rid of that as well.
Of course there are many dandelions over toward the top left of the photo.
Those I don´t find quite so distracting as the ones that were a little bit larger
since they were closer to the camera over here on the right side of the photo.
However, I do find that dandelion way up toward the top to be a little distracting,
so I´ll get rid of that one as well.
Once you´re happy with your cleanup work, you can evaluate the final result
by turning off the Spot Removal Tool and then turning it back on.
This enables you to get more of a Before and After view
on the cleanup work that you have performed.
I think this image looks much better with those distractions removed.
And so I´m ready to move on to any other adjustments
that I might like to apply to this image.
But as you can see, cleaning up spots and blemishes in a photo
is very easy in Lightroom using the Spot Removal Tool.
[Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4]
