Photo Editing Tips with Intel AIO

I haven't shared any photo editing tips on my blog yet and I thought I would do a few posts showing my favorite programs I use and some of my favorite go to short-cuts. I decided to start out on Lightroom using my Intel AIO desktop.  Lightroom allows me to edit in batches so that I can go through a large quantity of photos quickly, so with work I usually start out in Lightroom.   

I've been shooting a lot of product and lifestyle photos lately and the majority of the time I'm shooting in natural light, but since it's usually product or one object I like my photos to look finished and clean almost as if I was using lighting. I decided to start out using this simple photo:

  

Here's the before and after:

#1 STRAIGHTEN & CROP:
First thing I always start out with in editing is straightening and cropping my image to a composition that I like.  As you can see in this RAW image, the edge of the table is showing on the right side and I needed to crop that out.

In Lightroom I use short cuts so that it makes editing go by super fast.

Press "R" to bring up the grid and with that you can straighten and crop your image.  On my Intel AIO desktop I am able to crop the photo by using my fingers on the touch screen which I love.  While cropping my image I always hold "Shift" so that I don't distort proportions, you never want to distort your proportions! 

(As seen in photo below).

#2 SPOT BRUSH:

The spot brush is always great while editing faces to erase blemishes but I use it a lot on my lifestyle & product shoots to get out little specks of dust, dirt or imperfections. Taking the extra time on a few specks really polishes up an image.  

For the short cut on Lightroom press "Q" to bring up the spot brush and remove blemishes.

I always zoom in on the photo to see details and blemishes that I might miss otherwise.  This Intel AIO desktop makes zooming super convenient.  

The little circles everywhere is everything I spotted out with the Q button, taking out dirt or imperfections on the leaf. 

#3 DODGING & BURNING:

One of my favorite features with Lightroom is their dodging and burning tool.  It's way better than what they have in Photoshop because you have more control of what you want to change.  You can select only exposure or only saturation etc, it's great for final touches on images.

Because I use a wider lens, it tends to leave a natural vignette on my images and I hate having a clean  edited photo with gray/black edges from the lens. 

Press "K" and select what you want to change, in this case I upped my exposure +20 and went around the edges of the photo to really have a perfectly white background. 

Hope these tips were helpful!
These are few of my favorite short cuts that I use on almost all of my images.  Next post I'll be focusing on how I edit my image with coloring/exposure as well as using Photoshop & Illustrator on my Intel AIO.

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