Photoshop How To

Lightroom is a fantastic piece of software for editing and organizing your images. The only problem with it is that there's so much that this Adobe photography app can do, most photographers only end up using a small collection of its tools.

That's ok, says photographer and filmmaker Matti Haapoja who explains that you really only need to use one tool in Adobe Lightroom to do most of your edits. That one Lightroom tool is HSL and in the below video tutorial, Haapoja explains how you can get the most out it.

"One of the most powerful tools inside of Lightroom is the HSL section and it's this weird, kind of scary-looking area where there's a ton of different sliders, one after another, and it can feel a little bit intimidating but it's actually not so bad," he says. "HSL stands for Hue, Saturation and Luminance. HSL is all about colors and manipulating your image based on colors. The Hue is the shade or the tint or the tone of that color. The Saturation is how vibrant is that color or how strong it is. And the Luminance is how bright or how dark is that color. Basically, just changing the exposure of that color."

Haapoja goes on to explain in the video below how he uses HSL in two ways: for the look or color grade of an image and for color correction. Check it out and then go visit his YouTube channel for more tutorials.

Of course, there are other photographers who have other favorite Lightroom tools, so after you watch Haapoja's video, hit up this one from landscape photographer Mark Denney who says that Range Masks in Lightroom is the best tool for improving your landscape photos.