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Brushing up
I keep seeing adverts for Lightroom Adjustment Brush Presets. Can I create my own customised brushes? Cathy Long
AYes, it’s really easy. I’d recommend you create your own set of reusable brushes for the specific types of photography and processing that you do, as opposed to spending money on sets someone else has created. There’s nothing wrong with them – but it’s much more satisfying and cheaper if you do it yourself!
First, think about the tasks you regularly do with an Adjustment Brush, such as lifting shadows, adding a saturation boost, or increasing contrast. To create your own Brush, select an Adjustment Brush in the Develop Module and make sure you have nothing already dialled in – click Effect to zero all the sliders if you do. Brush over the area you want to affect, then make the adjustments required using the sliders. When you are finished, instead of closing down the Adjustment Brush, go to the word Custom at the top of the panel and click on the dropdown. Follow the dropdown to Save Current Settings as New Preset. Click on it. In the dialog box that opens, give it a name that you’ll understand when you come to re-use the brush – for example, ‘Medium Contrast Boost’ or ‘Strong Shadows Lift’. This will create a Preset Brush, which can now always be selected from the dropdown menu. Next time you select it, you can brush over an area, and it will apply the changes exactly as you set them up..
This image of an elephant has been processed using a few Adjustment Brush presets I’ve set up in Lightroom. I brought out the skin texture with a preset I call Texture Lift (24 Texture and 15 Clarity). I brought the detail out of the belly area with Medium Shadows Lift (50 Shadows and 20 Exposure), before boosting the colour of the soil on its head with Medium Colour Boost (+10 Saturation and 17 Temperature).