Posts

Blown Highlights Aren't a Death Sentence — Here's How I Actually Fix Them
Video Tutorials

Blown Highlights Aren't a Death Sentence — Here's How I Actually Fix Them

Last week I was editing a golden hour shot I’d been excited about since I pulled the memory card. Gorgeous light, perfect composition, the whole thing. Then I opened it in Lightroom and the sky was absolutely cooked. Not a little hot. Blown. The histogram was stacked against the right wall like it was trying to escape. My first instinct, same as it’s always been, was to reach for the Highlights slider, drag it left, and hope for the best.

Apple's Silent RAW Revolution: What iOS 18's Core Image Engine Means for Your Mobile Editing
News

Apple's Silent RAW Revolution: What iOS 18's Core Image Engine Means for Your Mobile Editing

Apple’s Silent RAW Revolution: What iOS 18’s Core Image Engine Means for Your Mobile Editing I’ve been watching Apple’s approach to computational photography for years, and I have to say—their latest move is genuinely impressive. While everyone’s obsessing over AI features and new cameras, Apple just quietly dropped one of the most important technical upgrades for mobile photographers: a complete overhaul of their RAW file processing engine. The Update Nobody’s Talking About Core Image RAW 9 doesn’t sound sexy.

Why Your Exported Photos Look Nothing Like Your Lightroom Edits (And How to Fix It)
Tutorials

Why Your Exported Photos Look Nothing Like Your Lightroom Edits (And How to Fix It)

I had a client email me once asking why the headshots I delivered looked “washed out and kind of gray” compared to the previews I’d sent over iMessage. I’d spent two hours on those edits. Warm shadows, lifted blacks, a custom preset I’d built around a Gillian Welch record. They looked perfect on my screen. On hers, they looked like they’d been run through a photocopy machine. The edit wasn’t broken.

How AI Color Grading is Reshaping Creative Workflows in 2024
News

How AI Color Grading is Reshaping Creative Workflows in 2024

The AI Revolution Hits Your Edit Suite I’ve been watching the intersection of artificial intelligence and creative tools pretty closely lately, and honestly? We’re at an inflection point. What used to require years of Lightroom mastery is becoming accessible to anyone willing to experiment with emerging technologies. The creative tools landscape just got more interesting. Advanced AI models are rolling out to mainstream users in ways that feel genuinely transformative—not just hype.

Stop Editing One Photo at a Time: A Real Workflow for Batch Editing in Lightroom
Workflow & Efficiency

Stop Editing One Photo at a Time: A Real Workflow for Batch Editing in Lightroom

Last Tuesday I had 847 photos from a single session sitting in Lightroom. Wedding, golden hour, outdoor ceremony, great light. The kind of shoot where everything goes right and you pay for it later in the culling process. My needle was playing through a Fleetwood Mac record and I had exactly four hours before delivery. I didn’t panic, because I’ve been here before. I batch edited the whole set in about ninety minutes and spent the remaining time on targeted fine-tuning.

Blown Highlights Aren't Dead — How I Learned to Stop Deleting and Start Recovering
Video Tutorials

Blown Highlights Aren't Dead — How I Learned to Stop Deleting and Start Recovering

Last week I was sorting through a set of golden hour shots from Percy Priest Lake and doing that thing photographers do where you hover over the delete key like you’re defusing a bomb. Sky completely blown. Foreground perfect. Classic high-contrast nightmare. My instinct, same as it’s been since I started editing, was to write those frames off and move on. Then I watched this. In this Mark Denney tutorial on recovering blown highlights, he makes an argument I’ve heard before but never fully trusted: that a clipped histogram doesn’t automatically mean a dead photo.

Double-Click Your Way Out of Lightroom Chaos (Scott Kelby's Fastest Reset Trick)
Video Tutorials

Double-Click Your Way Out of Lightroom Chaos (Scott Kelby's Fastest Reset Trick)

Last week I was deep into a portrait edit, chasing a warm film look I had in my head, and somewhere between pushing Dehaze too far and getting aggressive with the HSL panel, I lost the plot completely. The image looked like it had been processed by someone who had never seen a photograph before. We’ve all been there. The instinct is to hit Undo fifteen times or just reset the whole develop module and start over, but both options are slower than they need to be — and a full reset throws out the adjustments that were actually working.

Why Your Digital Photos Look Wrong (And How Film Emulation Actually Fixes It)
Color Grading

Why Your Digital Photos Look Wrong (And How Film Emulation Actually Fixes It)

There’s a photo on my hard drive from about eight years ago. My band needed press shots and nobody in our circle could afford a photographer, so I picked up a camera, read enough to be dangerous, and shot them myself. The images were technically fine. Sharp, well-exposed, clean. And they looked completely lifeless. I spent three days trying to figure out why a photo of four people standing in actual sunlight looked like a screenshot from a corporate training video.

Lightroom's Quietly Dropped Two Masking Features That Change Everything About Local Adjustments
Video Tutorials

Lightroom's Quietly Dropped Two Masking Features That Change Everything About Local Adjustments

Last month I was editing a shot from Percy Warner Park, golden hour light cutting through a dense tree line, the kind of image that looks effortless until you try to isolate the sky. I dropped a linear gradient over the top third, pulled down the highlights, and the result looked exactly like what it was: a hard-edged box sitting on top of my photo. The tree branches bleeding into the mask looked painted.

AI Just Walked the Red Carpet: What Dreams of Violets Means for Creative Professionals
News

AI Just Walked the Red Carpet: What Dreams of Violets Means for Creative Professionals

The Moment We’ve All Been Waiting For (Or Dreading) This June, something genuinely historic happens at the Tribeca Festival. A feature-length film called “Dreams of Violets” will premiere—and here’s the kicker: every single frame, every actor, every shadow and highlight was created entirely by artificial intelligence. No cameras. No location scouts. No 2 a.m. color grading sessions with cold coffee. I have to admit, when I first heard about this, my gut reaction was complicated.

Split Toning in Lightroom: How Two Colors Can Make or Break the Whole Mood of a Photo
Color Grading

Split Toning in Lightroom: How Two Colors Can Make or Break the Whole Mood of a Photo

I have a preset I built about three years ago called “Rumours.” Warm golden shadows, slightly cool highlights, the kind of look that makes a portrait feel like it was shot in a California living room in 1977. I named it after the Fleetwood Mac album because that’s the mood I was chasing when I built it. I’ve used it on maybe two dozen client galleries since then, and people consistently ask me how I got “that color.

Lightroom's Lens Blur Tool: Finally Getting That Bokeh Right in Post-Production
News

Lightroom's Lens Blur Tool: Finally Getting That Bokeh Right in Post-Production

Lightroom’s Lens Blur Tool: Finally Getting That Bokeh Right in Post-Production I’ve spent enough time in Lightroom to know which tools actually deliver and which ones are just taking up panel real estate. When Adobe introduced the Lens Blur feature to Lightroom Classic, I’ll admit I was skeptical. Can software really fake what a fast lens and proper aperture do in-camera? Turns out, the answer is more nuanced than a simple yes or no.