I am some kind of a “people person” – and that in it self is a huge contradiction, considering I am also a bit introvert. So everything is clashing already.

But still, I really really enjoy shooting people – with my camera of course!
The process of getting the right look on their faces, to selection and finally editing … i simply love it.

And that first part, getting the right look, can be pretty hard. I really work my ass off – especially on the “inside”.
But that’s not what I want to tell you all about … I want to share with you the “hassle” of editing portraits in Lightroom.

Hassle or no hassle?

Really it’s not a hassle per say … it’s more a process of repeating the same steps over and over again. Especially when after a wedding shoot where I return with anything from 600 to maybe 1100 shots … and you just know, that even after you’re done selecting the good ones – the ones you’ll end up delivering – a lot of them will require more or less the same kind of edits over and over again.
So to me it’s all about structure and then –of course – using the tools to my advantage.
The first step is finding “your look”. How do you want your images to look like. Do they need a specific grade (mine often do). Are you already aware of something you need to remove in most images etc.

After finding your look, you have a couple of options:

• f you have a lot of time on your hands … go and repeat those edits to the remaining 50 images :D
• or … you could go either the SYNC or the PRESET way.

Myself I’m more a PRESET-kind-a-guy … So I always turn my looks into a PRESET (learn about that here) because that way, I always have that PRESET available to me for further images, in other catalogues.
But once you’re happy with the look of your PRESET … you could sync that across your images.

One tool to rule them all

Now comes the fun, but sometimes tedious part, where we introduce, gradients, cloning, radial filters … and most importantly, brushes. If you know me, you’ll know I uses brushes a lot .. like I wrote about last year.
But it’s just a great tool, and definitely my go-to-tool when-ever I need to "fix" someting in an image.

Since I wrote a piece about this already last year, I thought I’d show the steps in two short videos this year.
Both videos are from the same wedding shoot, where I start from scratch and end up with the final result
And In glorious high-speed.

So … grab some popcorn and get settled