There’s a specific kind of frustration that comes from shooting a bracketed sequence at golden hour, getting home, and realizing you have to manually drag exposure sliders on eight nearly identical files just to compare them fairly. I’ve been there more times than I’d like to admit. Back when I was editing press shots for my band on a borrowed laptop, I developed some genuinely bad habits around bracketed editing, and some of those habits followed me into my professional workflow longer than they should have. So when I came across a Matt Kloskowski tutorial walking through five Lightroom tips most people miss, I sat up a little straighter. Two of them hit close enough to home that I wanted to break them down here in enough detail that you can use them today.

Watch the full tutorial on YouTube

Matt frames these as workflow tips rather than isolated keyboard tricks, which is exactly the right approach. Knowing that a shortcut exists is almost useless without understanding the moment in your editing session when it actually saves you. That context is what makes his breakdown worth your time, and it’s what I’m going to carry through here.

Step 1: Develop One Anchor Image From Your Bracket

Developed bracketed landscape photo open in Lightroom Develop module Developed bracketed landscape photo open in Lightroom Develop module Before Match Total Exposures can do anything useful, Lightroom needs one image it can use as a reference point. Pick the frame from your bracketed sequence that feels closest to a balanced exposure overall. It does not need to be perfect. You are not doing a full edit here. You are just getting the shadows, highlights, and overall brightness to a place that feels workable. Think of it as setting a benchmark, not finishing the photo. Make your basic adjustments in the Develop module and leave it selected.

Step 2: Command-Click (or Ctrl-Click) to Select the Rest of the Bracket

Multiple bracketed photos selected in Lightroom filmstrip Multiple bracketed photos selected in Lightroom filmstrip With your anchor image still selected, hold Command on a Mac or Ctrl on Windows and click each of the other bracketed frames in the filmstrip. You are building a multi-selection. The key detail here is that the image you developed first, the one you were already looking at, stays highlighted slightly brighter than the others in the filmstrip. Lightroom calls this the “most selected” photo, and it matters because that is the image Match Total Exposures will use as the exposure target. If you accidentally click away and lose your selection, go back to your developed image first, then re-select the others.

Step 3: Run Match Total Exposures From the Settings Menu

Settings menu open with Match Total Exposures highlighted Settings menu open with Match Total Exposures highlighted With all your bracketed frames selected and your anchor image acting as the most selected photo, navigate to the Settings menu at the top of the screen. You need to be in the Develop module for this option to appear. Scroll down and click “Match Total Exposures.” Watch the filmstrip. Lightroom reads the exposure metadata from each frame and applies compensating adjustments so that every image in the selection lands at roughly the same visual brightness as your anchor. Frames that were shot darker get lifted. Frames that were blown out get pulled back. The result is a lineup of images that are finally comparable side by side.

Step 4: Review the Matched Images and Pick Your Favorite Version

Filmstrip showing multiple bracketed images after exposure matching Filmstrip showing multiple bracketed images after exposure matching Now comes the payoff. Browse through your matched frames without the noise of wildly different exposure levels getting in the way. This is especially useful when you have been shooting moving water, where each frame captures a different moment in the motion. You are no longer choosing between “the dark one” and “the light one.” You are choosing between versions of the scene itself. Match Total Exposures is not magic. It will not recover detail that was never captured. An overexposed frame that clipped the highlights is still a clipped frame. But for the purpose of selecting the best image from a bracket, it levels the playing field enough to make a real decision.

Step 5: Size Your Adjustment Brush to Match What You’re Painting

Adjustment brush sized to match a tree branch in the photo Adjustment brush sized to match a tree branch in the photo Moving to Matt’s second tip: when you are using the Adjustment Brush to target something specific, like a stray branch at the edge of a frame or a patch of blown sky, the instinct is to carefully paint along the edges with a small brush. That takes time and often produces uneven results. Instead, set your Feather somewhere in the 30 to 40 percent range and then size your brush to approximately match the width of whatever you are targeting. You want the brush diameter to be close to the size of the object, maybe even slightly larger than it.

Step 6: Click Once, Then Shift-Click to Paint a Straight Line

Single click placed at top of tree branch in Develop module Single click placed at top of tree branch in Develop module Here is where the time savings actually happen. Click once at one end of the element you want to adjust. Then, without dragging, hold Shift and click at the other end. Lightroom draws a straight-line brush stroke between those two points, as if you had painted it by hand, but without any of the wobble or inconsistency. For anything with a reasonably straight or narrow profile, this technique cuts your masking time dramatically. Matt notes this works best on subjects with a defined edge. You would not use it to paint a sky or a face, but for architectural lines, poles, branches, and similar elements, it is one of those techniques that feels almost too convenient the first time it works.

A Note From My Own Workflow

I use Match Total Exposures almost exclusively at the selection stage, not the delivery stage. The adjustments it applies are functional, not finished. After I pick my frame, I clear those automated adjustments and start my actual edit from scratch, or I sync from a master edit I have already built. Treating it as a culling tool rather than an editing shortcut has helped me avoid the trap of building a final edit on top of Lightroom’s guesses about exposure. Your results may vary depending on how tightly you bracket, but keeping that distinction clear has saved me from some confusing half-finished edits.

The single most useful thing I took from Matt’s tutorial is the mindset behind it: Lightroom has tools designed to reduce repetitive decision-making, and most of us are ignoring them because they live in menus we scroll past. Match Total Exposures alone has changed how I approach bracket review. If you want to see both tips demonstrated visually with Matt’s original footage and workflow commentary, watch the full tutorial on YouTube. He covers three additional tips in the video that are worth your attention.