- Making Your RAW Photos Look More Like JPEGs
- Setting the White Balance
- Setting Your White Balance Live While Shooting Tethered
- Seeing Befores and Afters
- My Editing Your Images Cheat Sheet
- Controlling Overall Brightness Using the Exposure Slider
- Automatically Matching Exposures
- 60 Seconds on the Histogram (& Which Slider Controls Which Part)
- Auto Tone (Having Lightroom Do the Work for You)
- Dealing With Highlight Problems (Clipping)
- Opening Up the Shadows (Like "Fill Light" on a Slider)
- Setting Your White Point and Black Point
- Adding "Punch" to Your Images Using Clarity
- Making Your Colors More Vibrant
- Adding Contrast (and How to Use the Tone Curve)—This Is Important Stuff!
- Applying Changes Made to One Photo to Other Photos
- Auto Sync: Perfect for Editing a Bunch of Photos at Once
- Using the Library Module's Quick Develop Panel
- The "Previous" Button (and Why It Rocks!)
- Putting It All Together (Doing a Start-to-Finish Tweak)
- Lightroom Killer Tips > >
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
The “Previous” Button (and Why It Rocks!)
Let’s say you spent a few minutes tweaking an image and you have it just the way you want it. Without using Copy and Paste, you can apply those exact same settings to any photo from that shoot. It can be the next photo in the Filmstrip, or one of 20 thumbnails down the line, but if you try this one out a few times, you will fall in love with how much this can speed your workflow. Basically, you click on an image, click on the Previous button, and whatever you did to the previously selected image is applied to the image you’re on now.
Step One:
Here’s our original that needs some tweaking (in this case, I would just tweak the exposure a bit, add some clarity, and crop the photo in a bit tighter. Pretty standard stuff).
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Step Two:
In the Develop module, grab the Crop Overlay tool (R) and crop the image, so it’s a bit tighter in on our subject. Then, let’s increase the exposure a little bit by dragging the Exposure slider to the right to +0.30, then increase the Contrast to +25. Next, let’s lower the Highlights a bit (I dragged them down to –10), increase the Clarity to +18 (to bring out more detail in his skin), and lastly, desaturate his skin by dragging the Vibrance slider to the left to –23. Nothing earth shattering, just the typical little tweaks, but there are a few other images from this same shoot I’d like to have the same look.
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Step Three:
Now, down in the Filmstrip, click on the next photo you want to have this same look (cropping and all). If the photo you want to have that same look is the next photo over in the Filmstrip, you can just press the Right Arrow key on your keyboard to move to that next image. If it’s not, then click on any other image in the Filmstrip, like I did here where I clicked on the fourth image down from the one I was tweaking.
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Next, just click the Previous button (at the bottom of the right side Panels area), and this image gets those exact same changes (cropping and all) that you applied to the previous image. Now, you can scroll to another photo in the Filmstrip and do the same thing to any single selected photo.
Note: Remember, this applies the settings of whichever photo you clicked on last. If you click on a photo and decide not to click the Previous button, that now becomes your “previous photo,” because it’s the last photo you clicked on. So, to be able to use the Previous button, you’ll have to go back and click on any one of the photos you’ve already applied the changes to. That reloads the Previous button with your edits.
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