5 creative Tips on how to use the Adjustment Brush in Lightroom and Camera Raw
We all know how massive Adobe Photoshop is, which makes it a super powerful tool to edit our images!
Whether you’re a graphic designer, a fashion blogger, a media designer, or maybe a landscape photographer, it has the right tools for all of us!
However, it doesn’t have to be super complicated and advanced all the time. You can achieve excellent results on your own photos with some simple techniques already.
Adobe Lightroom and Camera Raw offer us great tools to process our images. It doesn’t matter if you want to work on the Raw file or later on in Adobe Photoshop using the Camera Raw filter, you have many ways to get the job done.
In this article, I want to cover some cool tips on how to use the brush tool inside Adobe Camera Raw.
It also applies to Lightroom as they both use the same editing engine. I really love this tool, which makes it easy for me to write down my favorite ways to use it, so let’s get started, guys!
How does the brush tool work
First, let’s talk about how the tool actually works. It’s super easy to use as you only need to click on the brush icon inside Camera Raw/Lightroom to get started.
There are certain refinements you can make to get the most out of your adjustments, though.
Right from the start, it’s essential to choose the right feathering and flow to edit your image. I personally like to keep the flow on 50 and use close to 100 as my feather.
This makes sure that you won’t see any weird edging problems caused by hard brush strokes.
It’s easy to adjust the size of your brush as you only need to right-click, and then you’re able to make it smaller or bigger.
The tool also enables you to remove the adjustment in certain areas if you demand, which is a powerful feature, in my opinion.
Simply alt-click, and you’ll see a little “erase” appearing at the right top, and now you’re able to remove the adjustment wherever you want.
You can work back in worth this way, but make sure to use a fresh brush if you plan to add any new adjustments to another area of your photo.
The brush inside Lightroom/Camera Raw doesn’t work like in Photoshop as it basically is “just” another way to add a local adjustment, same as the radial filter and the graduated filter.
All the edits you make will affect the whole mask, so it’s crucial to use multiple brushes, as I mentioned above.
If you want to see where the brush applied your editing, simply click on the “mask” box and pick a color that is not common in your file, which makes it easier to detect.
How to create and use a precise mask
Speaking of masking, let me now show you how to use the brush precisely to edit only specific areas of your photographs.
It’s crucial to use a soft/feathered brush as I stated above, but there is also another way to make your adjustments even more effective, and that’s by ticking the “refine mask” box.
Adobe’s AI will now help you to prevent your edits affecting areas that have different tonal values than the one you started editing.
This makes it quite easy to adjust only a specific dark rock in your bright foreground or also a mountain/ridge, which is separated nicely from the background.
You can always re-adjust the mask by using the technique I mentioned earlier.
Try out how it works best for you and how it benefits your image as every file is unique. It could make sense to use a harder brush if you have a clear foreground/background separation as a softer one will quickly feather out the adjustment in parts where you might not want it to be.
Again a combination of multiple brushes is needed if you intend to affect different parts of your image with individual editing steps.
How to add dimension to your image
The brush tool makes it possible to edit locally with just some simple steps, and so it’s not hard to create an appealing image already in the Raw processing.
One cool way to add dimension to your photo is by using individual brushes to emphasize various areas of your frame.
The first two screenshots above are a perfect example of how to make individual subjects stand out to add more depth.
I partially brightened the waves to guide the viewer's eyes towards the wonderful milky-way in the background.
At the same time, I brought out the texture of the rock to make it stand out more from the dark foreground.
The other two screenshots also state how easy it is to add depth with just some simple brush strokes.
I again partially brightened only a specific part of my image, in this case, the beautiful golden trees, and at the same time, I added more contrast to the rocks with a new brush to create a 3d effect.
This technique can be applied to almost every single image, and it mainly benefits scenes during the golden hour as the late/early sun naturally lights up only certain parts of the frame.
It’s tough to “fake” this effect inside Lightroom/Camera Raw, but it’s most certainly possible to emphasize further what’s already there.
Check out the video to see how I use the brush
How to add a bright point of interest
The brush tool makes it super easy to add little tweaks to your shots with just a quick brushstroke. Adding a bright point is one of these steps which can be done super fast and easy.
I personally like to enhance a small part in the sky where light is breaking through the clouds to cast some extra drama.
Simply choose a soft brush and lift the exposure by like 0.50 stops to get a nice brightening effect. Depending on the color of the light, I also like to add warmth and some saturation.
Some extra whites will enhance it even more, and the last adjustment I love to make is adding haze by lowering the dehaze slider.
Once that’s done, paint over the area you want to emphasize, and that’s it. If you think it’s too strong, you can always lower the sliders later on.
Sometimes I add an extra brush by choosing a new one with a bit more exposure and negative dehaze, but that - as always - depends on the image.
It’s a super simple step that helps to make your pictures more attractive, in my opinion. This only makes sense when you already have a light source in the sky as faking it will quickly look weird and unnatural.
How to paint with color
Another super cool method to add extra interest to your image is to add color with your brush tool.
You can either enhance the sky or the foreground. In my sample image, I want to emphasize the beautiful golden fog lying in the Tuscan valley.
To start this process, simply pick the brush tool with a soft feathering. Now click on the color sampler and choose one which is already prominent in the frame but without overdoing it.
You can always lower the saturation if it was too much, though. I now recommend painting over the parts which are already quite colorful to emphasize them further.
Sometimes it also makes sense to add some brightness by increasing the whites to get the extra kick.
This technique works on every image, which already has a prominent color in it. It’s essential to keep practicing to find out when it benefits a scene and when it doesn’t.
How to sharpen and denoise locally
Lastly, I also want to mention a simple way to sharpen/denoise a particular part in your file. First, pick another brush and then have a look at the settings where it says “denoise,” “sharpen,” and so on.
Simply select an amount and paint over the area you want to adjust. It’s super easy!
Local denoise makes sense when some parts of your shot - mostly waves/water - start to show some noise because of previous heavy edits.
Local sharpening is perfect when you want to squeeze out extra details of a prominent foreground subject.
As always, it’s crucial to try things out and only choose a low opacity as it can also hurt your image when you overdo things.
Alright, guys, I hope you liked my tips about how to use the brush tool and learned something new to use in your own photo editing workflow!
I personally love these techniques a lot.
Of course, it’s super important to combine this technique with other available tools inside Lightroom or Camera Raw.
Check out my articles “how to use the graduated filter” and also “how to use the radial filter” to find out more about it.
Feel free to contact me at any time if you have questions. I’m always there to help!
Cheers,
Daniel Gastager