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HSL Adjustments Are the Reason Your Colors Look Flat (And How to Fix That)
Editing Techniques

HSL Adjustments Are the Reason Your Colors Look Flat (And How to Fix That)

I had a portrait session last spring where everything was technically right. Good light, solid exposure, clean white balance. I opened the RAW file in Lightroom, ran my standard develop workflow, exported it, and the photo looked like a stock image from 2014. The skin tones had this faint orange cast, the background foliage was too yellow-green to read as lush, and the subject’s blue jacket looked almost gray. The histogram was fine.

How I Edit 200 Photos in 20 Minutes Using Lightroom's Batch Tools (Without Everything Looking the Same)
Lightroom Tutorials

How I Edit 200 Photos in 20 Minutes Using Lightroom's Batch Tools (Without Everything Looking the Same)

Last month I finished a 214-image shoot by midnight. I had the whole catalog exported by 12:47 AM. That’s not because I rushed, cut corners, or slapped one preset on everything and called it done. It’s because I’ve spent years building a batch editing system inside Lightroom Classic that actually respects the difference between a hero shot and a throwaway frame, and applies effort proportionally to both. Most photographers treat batch editing like a dirty shortcut.

The Lightroom Conference 2025 Is Coming — Here's Why I Clear My Calendar Every Year
Video Tutorials

The Lightroom Conference 2025 Is Coming — Here's Why I Clear My Calendar Every Year

I’ve been editing photos long enough to know the difference between training that moves the needle and training that just fills time. A few years back, I was grinding through a backlog of band press shots, trying to get a cohesive look across 200 frames shot in three different locations with two different lighting setups. I was technically doing everything right, and the results were still inconsistent. What I needed wasn’t another YouTube rabbit hole.

What This Year's Ocean Photography Winners Can Teach Us About Color Grading
News

What This Year's Ocean Photography Winners Can Teach Us About Color Grading

What This Year’s Ocean Photography Winners Can Teach Us About Color Grading The United Nations just crowned the champions of their World Oceans Day photography competition, and I’ve been absolutely mesmerized by what won. Not just because the images are stunning—though they absolutely are—but because they showcase some seriously thoughtful color grading decisions that we can all learn from. Competing in the Deep Blue This year’s edition introduced a fresh category called “Connecting Oceans,” which feels like the perfect evolution for a competition that’s grown increasingly competitive.

The RAW Pre-Processing Step I Kept Skipping (And Why I Finally Stopped)
Video Tutorials

The RAW Pre-Processing Step I Kept Skipping (And Why I Finally Stopped)

I have a problem with adding software to my workflow. Every new tool promises to be the one that finally fixes everything, and most of them end up collecting digital dust while I keep doing what I was already doing in Lightroom. So when photographers kept mentioning DxO PureRAW in the same breath as “game changer,” I filed it under “probably not for me” and moved on. Then I shot a series of landscape edits at high ISO last fall, and the noise reduction in Lightroom, even the AI-powered Denoise tool, left me wanting more.

The RAW Pre-Processing Step I Skipped (And What Happened When I Finally Tried It)
Video Tutorials

The RAW Pre-Processing Step I Skipped (And What Happened When I Finally Tried It)

I’ve been editing photos in Lightroom long enough that my workflow feels like muscle memory. Import, lens correction, exposure, color grade, export. Repeat. It works. But last month I was processing a batch of golden-hour landscape shots from a recent trip, and when I zoomed into the shadows at 100 percent, I saw the kind of luminance noise that makes you question your camera, your lens, and every life choice that led to that moment.

TourBox Dynamic Panel V2 Transforms Lightroom Into a Distraction-Free Editing Studio
News

TourBox Dynamic Panel V2 Transforms Lightroom Into a Distraction-Free Editing Studio

TourBox Dynamic Panel V2 Transforms Lightroom Into a Distraction-Free Editing Studio When I first heard about TourBox’s Dynamic Panel plugin last year, I thought it was solving a problem I didn’t know I had. But after spending time with the updated V2 version, I’ve completely changed my tune. This is genuinely one of the smartest approaches to Lightroom editing I’ve seen in years. The Full-Screen Dream We’ve All Wanted Let’s be honest: Lightroom’s interface can feel cramped sometimes.

The RAW Processing Step I Kept Skipping (And Why I Finally Stopped)
Video Tutorials

The RAW Processing Step I Kept Skipping (And Why I Finally Stopped)

I’ll be honest about something: I have been editing RAW files in Lightroom for years and quietly assuming that what came out of my camera was as good as it was going to get before I touched a single slider. Denoise in Lightroom, maybe some sharpening, call it done. That was the workflow. It worked well enough that I never questioned it. Then I started getting more serious about printing my landscape edits at larger sizes, and the cracks showed up fast.

Luminar Neo's Game-Changing Lightroom Import: What Editors Need to Know
News

Luminar Neo's Game-Changing Lightroom Import: What Editors Need to Know

Luminar Neo’s Game-Changing Lightroom Import: What Editors Need to Know The editing software landscape just got a little more interesting. Skylum dropped version 1.27.1 of Luminar Neo this week, and they’ve included a feature that’s been on many photographers’ wishlists: the ability to import your entire Lightroom library directly into their platform. I’ll be honest—when I first heard about this, my immediate reaction was “finally.” For years, switching from Adobe’s ecosystem has felt like abandoning your digital photo babies.

The Art of Editing Magazine Cover Photography: Lessons From a Mexico Shoot
News

The Art of Editing Magazine Cover Photography: Lessons From a Mexico Shoot

The Weight of the Cover Shot There’s something almost magical about magazine covers in our digital age. While Instagram stories vanish in 24 hours and TikToks blur together in endless feeds, a cover sits on a newsstand. It demands attention. It gets printed. It matters. Recently, I had the opportunity to photograph a major editorial cover featuring an athlete most people recognize. Shooting in Mexico, far from the magazine’s home base, I realized something fundamental about editorial work: the editing process isn’t just technical refinement—it’s storytelling at its finest.

How to Edit a Sunrise RAW File When the Light Does Too Much at Once
Video Tutorials

How to Edit a Sunrise RAW File When the Light Does Too Much at Once

I shot a sunrise last spring at Percy Priest Lake that should have been a knockout. Golden hour, mist on the water, the whole thing. But when I pulled the RAW files into Lightroom, they looked like someone had smeared petroleum jelly over the lens of my expectations. The highlights were blown, the shadows were murky, and the color felt like it couldn’t decide what it wanted to be. I knew the light had been beautiful.

Lightroom's New Masking Tools Finally Fix the Thing That Was Driving Me Crazy
Video Tutorials

Lightroom's New Masking Tools Finally Fix the Thing That Was Driving Me Crazy

I was editing a landscape shot last month, a wide scene with a ridgeline of bare winter trees cutting across a pale sky, and I hit the same wall I always hit. The sky mask looked clean in the flat preview. The moment I pushed the color grade, that mask edge turned into a glowing outline, like someone traced the trees with a highlighter. I’ve worked around this problem for years.