Photoshop How To

Some photographers have been slow to embrace Lightroom, while others gave it a try and went back to Photoshop. But this trend is changing as more and more shooters become aware of the powerful new tools Adobe has added to Lightroom in recent updates.

Instructor John Pedersen is a professional landscape photographer with a portfolio full of gorgeous images captured in the Pacific Northwest. Until recently he bounced back and forth between Photoshop and Lightroom, depending upon the task at hand. Then he discovered a new feature in Lightroom’s Healing tool that convinced him to make the switch.

The deal breaker is an upgrade called Content Aware Removal that makes Lightroom’s Healing tool similar in functionality to how it works in Photoshop. So these days when Pedersen opens an image that needs a bit of Healing, he no longer makes a time-consuming “round trip” from Lightroom to Photoshop and back.

As Pedersen says, “This tool provides intelligence to removing unwanted objects. Instead of sampling an existing area of the image, which can cause unwanted artifacts, it samples the surrounding pixels to create new information to repair the areas you select.” In this straightforward episode you learn how this works in barely 10 minutes.

Pedersen begins his demonstration of the step-by-step process in Lightroom’s Library module with a Golden Hour scene of Oregon’s iconic Face Rock just off the coast. He says, “One of the things I often do with beach photographs is clean up the sand.” Lightroom’s new-and-improved Healing tool is perfect for this task.

As you’ll see, this simple technique enables Pedersen to quickly make pristine seaside imagery by removing footprints, discarded junk, and other distracting elements that can ruin an otherwise great shot. While watching the video think about all the other uses for this simple method, from images of city bustling streets, sporting events, and just about any other outdoor photos you shoot.

What you’ll lean in this video will save you considerable time and effort when banishing distracting elements from photos. And perfect results are very easy to accomplish.

After watching this lesson head over to Pedersen’s instructional YouTube channel where you’ll find more helpful advice. And be sure to watch the earlier tutorial we posted, explaining a Lightroom trick that makes perfect HSL edits a breeze.