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Transform Tool

Lesson 11 from: Developing and Global Adjustments in Adobe Lightroom Classic

Jared Platt

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Lesson Info

11. Transform Tool

Next Lesson: Effects Panel

Lesson Info

Transform Tool

this one of my favorite tools, One of my very, very favorite tools. Um, and that is the transform tool. So the transform tool is super useful for people who are architectural photographers. Um, I'm gonna Okay, so this is what the image looks like on its own. And and if I turn this back on, you can see the change. So there's before there's after before, after this is something Several years ago, you had to go to photo shop to fix, but now it's inside a light room resident, and it's is such I find myself transforming and adjusting images to really square the edges up to make them even that much more better. And I It's fantastic. Like when you really pay attention to this, the frame edge and the edges inside the photograph and square them up and make them really nice and tight. It it makes the photograph what it is. I couldn't live without the transform tool now, but let me show you how it works, So I'm gonna I'm gonna reset the upright tool in a case like this. There are several ways to ...

do it, and I'll be honest with you. I I almost never use any tool except for the guided upright so you can do vertical level auto. So if you'd say level, it's just gonna try and level the photograph. If you say vertical, it's going to see vertical lines and try and make them square with the frame edge. If you say full, it's gonna try and square everything up in a lot of times full really screws up. Um, an auto is just auto is meant for you. Turn it on auto, so that if you ever included in a preset, just automatically tries to interpret and decide which one is the best tool to use. But what I'm going to do is guided because it's the most useful. I click on guided, and when I click on Guided that there's a little little hash tag right here, and when you click on it, it gives you a little, um, cursor with that weird hash tag on it. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go up here, and I need to find all of the vertical and horizontal horizontal lines that matter. So in this case, the vertical lines air these two pillars right next to me. So I'm gonna click on here, and I'm gonna drag down on this vertical line here and nothing happens because I only have one vertical line I need to have actually two vertical lines to do anything. So I'm gonna click on this one here and dragged down to here. See there and now you saw that they just straightened. So it it transformed the image to make sure that those two pillars are directly straight up and down. Now, I need to find a horizontal line that is critical to the success of the image, Not just any horizontal line. Usually you want to choose horizontal lines that are close to the frame edge. That's kind of the way you choose thes. And so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go, and I'm gonna choose this one way back here. That's a good horizontal like that is your horizon line. And so I'm gonna go and click on this floor, this baseboard there and it just shifted a little bit. It wasn't quite off, but a little bit and so But it maintained the vertical lines, and now it just morphed the image. So that now there's a straight horizontal line, and then the last thing I want to do If I really want to make this image perfect, I can then come up here into this area. And I could say I want this line here, this this swoop to be straight at the corners. And so I'm going to just grab each corner there and then I'm gonna come over to this corner here and they're So now I know that that is an absolutely symmetrical, perfect example of an architectural shot. It's perfect. And then I've got the lady here, which is my wife, Um, and she's reading some kind of historical document on the wall there. But I love the shot because it's so perfectly done. Um, anyway, so that is how we use the transform tool. Feel free to play around with it. You can do things by slider, and you can do things by auto. But my favorite thing is the guided upright. That's that's the coolest thing about the transform tool. Okay, so now Oh, and by the way, it works great, even with people. So when I'm working on people here, here's the transform tool again, and this is off. See, It was a little screwy that way, and and I was shooting from the side a little bit. And then when I turned on the guided, it adjusted everything and the people still look good. So it's it's rare that the transform tool or that yeah, that transform tool will actually ruin a person. It does a pretty good job. I mean, you would have to go drastic in order for it to stretch a person in a weird way, so it does, does a great job.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with Purchase

Workflow in Adobe Lightroom
Adobe Lightroom Mobile Cloud
Adobe Lightroom Image Pipeline System
Black & White Preset Collection
Color Art Pro Profiles

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