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Transform

Lesson 10 from: Photo Editing in Lightroom Classic for The Photo Enthusiast

Jared Platt

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Lesson Info

10. Transform

Learn how to fix perspective issues in your images with Lightroom Classic’s Transform tool. Specifically learn how to use Guided Upright tool to make perfect compositions with your architectural images and even with portraits.
Next Lesson: Vignettes and Grain

Lesson Info

Transform

So let's look at a completely different set of images because I want to talk about the transformation tool. Now let's quickly adjust this and I'm just going to do it with the auto button because that makes it pretty good right off the start, I want it to be a little bit cooler. Uh That looks about right, I'm going to add just a little bit more clarity and a little bit more texture to this and I think that's there, I like that. Alright so we're starting in a good position and now I want to go into the transform tool and in the transform tool I have a lot of different options, I can just do auto and it just does a pretty good job of doing it automatically or I can go I can level it. So if I click on level it's just going to try and level the photograph or I can do a vertical so it's going to try and fix any vertical convergences of lines, so if it sees a line that's converging on itself like this, it's going to try and fix it. So if I click on vertical it just tries to straighten it. Um ...

But then you also notice that this became the line that's straight and then this line seems seems to be bowing out a little bit and so it's not always perfectly accurate and then there's full which allows it to do whatever it wants to to this photograph and we click on that and it does a pretty decent job as well. However there is one that I love and it's called guided. So when I click on guided. Now I have this little tool that looks like a tic tac toe board, you can see it right here, put it up, it's right there, click on it. So with this little tic tac toe tool I go out to the photograph and I'm looking for two vertical lines and two horizontal lines. So first vertical line that I'm going to choose is this one on the left hand side. So that's the first major vertical line that I want to worry about and then the next one is going to be this one because they're close to the edge and we'll see them. So I want them to be absolutely parallel to the edges and to each other. So by doing that boom, it just straightened them out. Now the other thing that I need to worry about is the horizontal lines because now it went like this, but I might be to the left or to the right a little bit. And so I'm going to look at this line here, so right between these two pots, that's a line and then the other line that I want to worry about is right up here at the top of the building, so I'm just going to make sure that I get that line right and now I've got a perfectly straight building and if I go to the to the crop tool and I click outside the crop, like I'm going to crop it, I get these lines and you can see how accurate it was because now all of my lines are being drawn right next to that building, you can see on the left hand side, that crop line is perfect, you can see on the right hand side, that crop line is perfect, you can see right at the base of the door of that boy building in the middle, you can see that the base of the structure is level and you can also see that the roof line is level. And then when I look at the left and right hand side of that building itself, those are really, really, really close to being perfectly vertical as well. So now I'm just going to go into the crop tool and I'm going to crop it so that it is the way I don't want these windows to show. So I'm gonna pull those windows out just a little bit, I'm gonna pull out this little thing, whatever that is on there, that looks pretty good and I'm gonna hit close and that is a really structurally sound photographs. So uh the transform tool can be really, really helpful now keep in mind that the transform tool also works when you're dealing with people. So here's a person, this is a wedding that I shot and if I, I'm just going to work, it's a silhouette, I'm going to make it a black and white silhouette, I'm going to bring up the shadows just a little bit so that we see a hint of her and bring the blacks down just a little bit and add just a little bit of clarity so that we get some nice contrast on that veil and on the dress. So clarity is a great place to get contrast in that dress and that veil. So I'm gonna finish up the image, I like what I'm seeing here and now I want it to be square because it's all about these windows and her relationship to the windows and so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go into the transform tool again and click on my little tic tac toe tool and now I'm going to go up to the top, that's the first line, I see that's important and I'm following the top of those windows, then I'm going to go down to the bottom of the windows and I'm going to follow the bottom of the windows. Then I'm going to go to the left hand side and I'm gonna follow, I'm following these, not the windows themselves, but these two pillars here. So I'm gonna grab on this frame, come down like this and then I'm going to go to this frame and come down like this by doing that. I have just made every single one of those windows perfectly square and so just because I happen to be a little to the left or right or shooting up or down, it kind of ruins the photograph for me because it's all about these beautiful rectangles and her walking through those rectangles and now I've made each of those rectangles perfect. Now this photograph is so much better than it was simply because I took the time to go into the transform tool. So anytime you have shapes in your photograph that want to be parallel or perpendicular to the frame, make sure they are and you do that with the transform tool.

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Ratings and Reviews

Byron Sieber
 

Jared does an excellent job at taking a subject and breaking it down step by step. He includes great explanations along the way to help you understand why he is doing something. His results, which are great photos, speak for themselves.

Michael Grosso
 

Excellent overview of the features included in the most recent upgrade of Adobe Lightroom. Very practical applications are covered at a very good pace. Thank you!

user-814d7a
 

Excellent class with great detail on the new Masking tools! Thanks, Jared!

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