So we have Photoshop and Lightroom.

Why?

This is what I do in Photoshop. Basically cleaning and tidying.

I will explain in this post what I do, how I do it, and why I do it.

So to get the image into Photoshop, tight click on the image in Lightroom

Choose “Edit in Adobe Photoshop CC 2015” (why not 2016?)

After a little wait….

I press Ctrl 1 to zoom in

Press Home. This takes you top left in the image.

Then j for the spot healing brush

I then work down the photo at 100% magnification checking for spots, blemishes, defects, annoying things.

I am only cleaning up the image here. What am I looking for?

Gravel on car parks, leaves, chewing gum, debris on carpets, stuff on glass, anything that is detracting from the image. Just think of this as cleaning up the image, the same you would tidying up your house before a viewing, just tidying up.

Oh yes and sensor dust spots.

I move down the image using the page down key (unfortunately in Photoshop you have to go back up to the top and scroll across yourself – in Lightroom page down takes you all the way through the image).

You adjust the brush sizes using [ and ] bracket keys.

If the spot healing brush does not work, I select S for clone stamp tool

And if this doesn’t work, or if I know that content aware fill is going to do the job the best in which case I go straight to it, I press L for the lasso tool, draw around the defect, right click, select fill then press return.

That is pretty much it.

I also use these tools to fill in the edges where I have done a lens correction in Lightroom and have some white space.

When I’m done I press Ctrl 0 to get back to the full image, have a quick look, check round the edges then if I’m happy select Ctrl S and the image is saved in the stack as a tiff file in Lightroom, automatically put to the top of the stack. Clever eh?

Once back in Lightroom I might select eh spot removal tool, zoom and in check

And I do this for every commercial image. Without fail.

Sounds tedious? Long winded?

That is how you produce professional results. High quality, blemish free images. Every architectural photography shot has receveid this attention to detail.

And with the keyboard cuts I use it really speeds up your work. To recap they are

Ctrl 1 – zoom to 100% – that is close enough for me.

J – spot healing brush

S – Clone stamp tool

L – Lasso tool

Ctrl 0 – return to full screen

Ctrl S – save and return to Lightroom

These really are a lifesaver. And that is 90% of my Photoshop activity to be honest.

A few final points.

Content aware fill is awesome. That is my go to tool. I must create a shortcut for this. I will write a post all about this fantastic feature.

One final thing – make sure any changes made here look natural.

And definitely one final point. I don’t use layers for this work. I just open in Photoshop and save back to Lightroom. I have never had to go back to a commercial shot and undo any of these corrections.

Thanks for reading this post, and please pop back to my blog at

www.rickmcevoyphotograpy.co.uk/blog

tomorrow for another photography related post.

Probably not that Durdle Door image……

Definitely not about Photoshop……