Basic Lightroom Edits for Instagram with LR5
Hello all,
As I've been working on making my Instagram more cohesive in terms of color and consistent quality, I'm starting to realize that I might as well put my Lightroom (LR) to use. I bought Lightroom 5 way back in 2014 to edit senior portrait sessions, and throughout photography classes have learned more and more about editing. While you might not have Lightroom, if you're a beginner photographer or just want high-quality post processing for photos, this is a must. I have the full Adobe CC (Students you can get this for $20/month), but the user interface tends to change a lot with Adobe software, so I've always just held on to this version of LR.
So let's get started! Below you'll see a before and after of a shot I recently posted on Instagram. I've boxed the important areas of each screenshot in green. This was shot on an iPhone 7, so there's no crazy difference in quality if you don't have a DSLR.
If you're new to Lightroom:
You'll want to import your photos by either dragging them from your desktop to LR or going to File > Import Photos and Video > Choose file
Once you import your photo, you'll begin in the Library tab. If you have imported multiple photos you'll need to select the photo you want to edit and navigate to the Develop tab
Once you're in the Develop tab it will look like this - your panel for editing appears on the right side.
Global Edits
Now let's get back to the unedited photo. There are several things wrong in my eyes. The exposure is too low, and the white wall in the back looks tannish/gray. This is my main issue.
First things first, we'll do some global edits - which are any edits that improve all aspects of the photo (as opposed to just certain areas).
I've increased the Exposure +0.95, just slightly, watching my skin tone to make sure that it doesn't end up looking too pale or off-colored. When you increase exposure overall you tend to lose a lot of the darker accents and tones, so also adjusting Contrast by +4 is also necessary.
Brushes
As you can see, I've selected the tool on the far right which is our brush tool. I mentioned earlier I disliked the way the wall looked in the back, and ultimately I needed it to be more of a consistent white, like my shirt in the photo. I used a Size 15 brush at 100% feather and flow to select this area (displayed in red), and then did adjustments in the light gray panel on the right.
The wall did not need to be brightened after our global edits, but because it is tan, I needed to counteract the yellow tones in order to make it a more pure white. I pulled the temperature down -16, just enough to match the pure white of my shirt. I also increased the contrast slightly.
Cropping
We are finally done editing our photo! The last thing I like to do is crop it to Instagram's vertical ratio, which is 4:5. Hold down the shift key to keep the ratio consistent.
Exporting
Now we're ready to export! I export it to a JPEG onto my desktop just to make it easy. Just go to File > Export. The export dialogue will show and it might look confusing. Just make sure your format is JPEG and the color space is sRGB. sRGB is optimized for websites and digital viewing. The quality is at 100 percent. You will see a difference if you start to export at lower qualities but the file will be smaller. I just prefer to export large and have Instagram resize it for me. My resolution is at 500 px per inch (PPI) which is something I had researched earlier on what would look best on social media.
So anyway, that's all of it! We're finally done. I sent the photo to my phone to post and then went into VSCO and applied the A6 filter around +7 or 8. Here's my photo on Instagram:
Hope you liked this post!
-Kaycee