Free Preset for Lightroom Mobile and editing tutorial

Learn how to edit your photos and receive a free Preset for Lightroom Mobile, exclusive to my readers.

I never used to edit my photos – that was back in the day when I would use a disposable camera when I went on holiday.

I remember the excited feeling I would get anticipating the photos being developed, never quite remembering what photos I had taken. Waiting patiently for 1 hour whilst my holidays memories were immortalised.

Those were simpler times and let’s face it, they were great memories but the photos weren’t necessarily the greatest.

Nowadays you can take pretty epic photographs on your mobile phone at just a moments notice. But don’t stop there! You can also edit these photos on your phone in seconds. Creating stunning pictures you will want to share instantly on instagram.

And today I am going to show you how! Don’t forget to grab your free preset for Lightroom mobile.

Let’s Edit!

But editing photos- I get it. It sounds tiresome and time consuming. A little bit like too much hard work. Who cares if the horizon is wonky or the colours don’t pop.

What if I told you, you can edit your photos in seconds, literally. This isn’t just slapping on a preset but actually editing each individual aspect of your photo yourself.

Today I am going to show you how you can edit your own photos using the free Adobe Lightroom Mobile app.

Once you understand how this app works, it makes editing your photos so much fun.

Download the Adobe Lightroom Mobile App

So once you have downloaded the Adobe Lightroom Mobile App from the App Store, you can begin to import the photos that you want to edit.

If you have photos taken on your camera that you want to migrate onto your phone in seconds, then we recommend using an SD card reader for your phone. This is a LIFE CHANGER. We absolutely love how fast it makes editing photos from your camera on the go. Click here to get it.

Once the app is open you will find there are interactive tutorials you can check out to learn extra skills beyond this blog post. You can focus on landscapes, portraits, food or composition. Each lesson is suited to beginner and advanced photographers.

Now that you have your first photo loaded into the app notice there is a menu bar along the bottom of the screen. This is what you are going to use to edit your photograph.

You will notice that there are some features that have a white star in a blue circle next to them. These are paid features so I am going to exclude them from this lesson as I’m focussing on the free version of the app.

Cancun Mobile Lightroom Preset Ever the Wanderer

Features of the Lightroom Mobile App

Below are the features that you are going to want to use regularly when editing.

Crop

In the crop tool you can crop your photo (obviously) to set dimensions or a custom ratio. Try to keep in mind the rule of thirds so you have an even ratio of subject, foreground and background. The standard crop size for Instagram is 4 x 5.

You can straighten the photos here, so say goodbye to wonky horizons and you can even flip the photo from left to right. Perfect for those selfie photos you take on your phone where you have writing on something and it looks backwards like in a mirror.(or even just photos you take in a mirror). Now it will be completely legible.

Light

Here you can adjust Exposure, Contrast, Highlights, Shadows, Whites and Blacks.

When you adjust the Exposure by moving the circle from left to right you can see the photo gets darker or lighter. This is great if you just need to add a little bit of light or darkness to a photo. But if you want more more specific tweaks the following features will bring out a more detailed effect.

Contrast will make the photo either more hazy or increase the detail and black colours in the image. Play around with this until you have your desired effect.

I use Highlights and Shadows hand in hand. Normally I like to reduce the highlights in a photo to give more definition and move the shadow bar to the right. I find that adjusting shadows on a photo can instantly lift your photo out of darkness and gives it an instant pop of life.

Adjusting the Whites and Blacks, does exactly just that. If you want to increase the white colours in a photo just slide the bar to the right. If you want to adjust the black colours you slide the bar to the left. This is similar to Highlights and Shadows.

You will find that the more that you play around with these features, the easier it will be to edit each photo.

free preset for Lightroom — Screenshot of the app interface

Colour

Now this is where it gets exciting and is the reason that I first downloaded the app years ago. You can edit one specific colour in your photo.

Thats right – if you want to change the colour of your blue sky – you can just adjust the colour blue! Or if you want to change the colour of your skin to make you a little more tan then adjust the orange.

I will show you in more detail what is included in the Colour feature below:

You can adjust the Temperature of a photo by sliding the bar to the right to make it more orange and warmer. Or slide it to the left to make it more blue and feel cold.

Changing the Tint of a photo will either make it look more green or purple. Great for sunsets or lush green jungle kinds of photos.

Vibrance – this will either make the photo really flat or make the individual colours pop. It is less strong than changing the Saturation of a photo which just makes the intensity of the colours much stronger or disappear so it’s black and white.

This is the exciting part – click on Mix with the multicoloured circle on the righthand side and you will see all of the different separate colours that you can edit.

Click on the red circle and you will see that you can adjust the Hue, Saturation and Luminance of any red in your photo.

Hue will change the shade of red that you see making it either more pink or orange. Saturation will change the intensity of the red and Luminance will make it brighter or darker.

So for what ever colour you want to adjust in your photo, you can do so individually.

The main colours that I will change are:

Orange for skin tones – adjusting the saturation and luminance until you have reached the desired tone. Orange is also a really great colour to adjust for sunsets, along with the yellow and reds.

Blue and Aqua for water and the sky. I will usually change the hue, saturation and luminance until I have reached the shade I am looking for.

Green for grass, plants and trees. Usually adjusting the luminance or saturation.

Yellow for sandy beaches, blonde hair and greenery. If you increase luminance and decrease saturation of yellow tones in beaches it makes the sand look much whiter and the same goes for blonde hair. There are yellow tones in greenery so adjusting the yellow colour can change the way that green appears.

Effects

You will use the effects tool to make tweaks to the Texture and Clarity of a photo, plus some other cool tools.

When you change the Texture it will either make the photo have more, well texture or become smoother.

If you decrease the Clarity it will make the photo appear very smooth and if you increase clarity it will appear to have more detail. This is a similar effect to Texture just with more punch.

Be careful when adjusting these two as creating too much detail can make the photo quality appear worse.

You will also find Dehaze, Vignette and Grain tools here.

Dehaze will either make the photo appear more hazy or remove haze from photos. This is a great tool for photos that have too much sunlight and don’t look quite clear enough. It often over saturates the photo so make sure you adjust the saturation afterwards if need be.

Adding a Vignette to your photo will make the edges of your photo appear darker, making the subject in the middle appear lighter. This will focus the viewers eye more to the subject of the photo. You can also make the vignette lighter around the edges but I mainly use it for darkening.

Adding Grain to your photo will add a nice old school filmy look to your photos. You can adjust the size of the grain to change the impact it has.

Detail

In the Detail tool bar you will find the Sharpening tool, Noise Reduction and Colour Noise Reduction.

Adjusting the Sharpening on your photo is similar to clarity and texture. It will make the edges in your photo become clearer. This is a great tool if you have a blurry background and want to make the subject stand out a bit more.

The Noise Reduction tool and Colour Noise Reduction tool I hardly use but they basically smooth out any digital noise.

Creating your own Presets in Lightroom Mobile.

So when you have edited your photo to get the desired look, you can actually save these settings in the app. This means that you can apply these exact settings to the rest of your photos. These saved settings are called a preset.

By creating a preset you can give the same kind of aesthetic look to all of your photos.

You will find that not all photos will suit that one presets settings so you can make lots of different ones to suit different settings. E.g for sunsets, bright beaches, greenery, portraits, indoor photography etc.

To make a preset once you have edited your photo, just click on the three little dots in the top right corner in the app. Select create preset and save your preset with a name and into a new folder.

You can get inspiration from photo styles that you like and then practice recreating that effect in the app and then saving the settings.

Then once you start to take new photos you can just apply your preset and you will have edited it in seconds.

Alternatively you can purchase presets from other photographers and use those on your photos, but you can also easily make them yourself once you have spent time learning how to edit.

I have presets that I have created inspired from our travels around the world which are perfect for light and warm tones. Get them here if you want a quick and easy 1 click edit.