I Let ChatGPT Edit My Photos in Lightroom

The photograph in the video above was edited from start to finish in Lightroom, and I didn't make a single one of the adjustments. ChatGPT did. It used my Lightroom, moved the sliders, made the masks and took the picture from a slightly underexposed raw file to a finished edit, in my style.

ChatGPT has been able to use your computer for a while now. You give it permission and it takes over the mouse and keyboard and works through a job the way you would, opening apps, clicking and typing, and you can see everything it does as it does it and stop it at any point. With the recent update to Astra it's taken a real step up, which got me wondering whether it could actually edit a photograph. I don't mean generate a new picture; I mean sit inside Lightroom and edit a raw file with the same tools I use, and learn to do it the way I would.

Teaching it my style

The first job was getting it to understand how I edit. In Lightroom I set up an album called My Seascape Style with 11 of my images in it. Some still have their adjustments visible, masks included, so it could see exactly what I'd done. Others have the edit baked in, because I'd sent them over to Photoshop for some heavy lifting and brought them back, so there's nothing in the panels to look at, only the finished picture.

I used GPT-6 Astra with the effort level set to high. Day to day I find medium is plenty, but for studying my edits I wanted it to do an extra good job, even though it takes longer.

Then I told it what I wanted, dictated rather than typed because it's quicker. Look at every image in the album, study the adjustments, the masking, the detail and the colour grading, and try to understand not only what I'd done but why. For the images with nothing visible in the panels, study the mood and the atmosphere and the tonality instead, and work out what I'd have done to get there.

As soon as I sent it, ChatGPT asked for permission to use Adobe Lightroom, and I allowed it for that conversation. From then on you can watch it working away on its own, opening images and panels and looking around.

Watching it work

What really interested me was how far it went. It dived into the masking and looked at how I'd masked the rocks in the foreground and the adjustments I'd used to bring them out, which is exactly the kind of fiddly detail I'd half expected it to skip.

It posts updates as it goes, and part way through it had noticed that I recover the highlights and open up the shadows, then bring the depth back with control over the black point and selective detail. It had even picked up that I use one film-style profile for the warmer, pastel pictures and a different one for the cooler surf shots.

The whole thing took 11 minutes and 30 seconds. At the end it said it had reviewed the adjustments across all 11 images, including 27 local masks, saved an image-by-image reference of my style, and, thankfully, left my images unchanged.

Handing it a raw file

For the edit itself I picked an unedited raw file from the Local tab in Lightroom, a seascape that was slightly underexposed, which felt like a fair test. I told it to edit the image in my style using everything available in Lightroom, including the masking, the colour grading and denoise, then sat back with my arms folded to prove I wasn't touching anything.

When it finished, it described what it had done as my pastel seascape treatment: pink and lavender grading, cool water, deep textured rocks and luminous foam. The edit included four separate masks, denoise, selective sharpening, a custom tone curve, subtle grain and a vignette, plus a horizon correction.

What it actually did

Going through the Edit panel, it had chosen a profile and made adjustments right through the Light section. In the curve it had done one of the things I love to do, which is lift the blacks so they aren't a deep zero black, and it did that on a point curve. It used the colour mixer, and in the colour grading it worked on the shadows and midtones as well as the blending and balance. It used denoise too, and it built all those masks.

Hand on heart, that's pretty much how I would have edited it. I wouldn't leave it exactly as it is, I'd go in and tweak a few things, but it got me about 90% of the way there in roughly 10 minutes.

Try it with your own photos

If you'd like to give this a go, the detailed prompt I used is free to download. Head over to the classroom in my free Photography Community on Skool and you'll find it under YouTube download files:

https://www.skool.com/photography-community/about

Where this leaves us

There's been a lot of resistance to letting AI edit our photographs, and for good reason. When it generates the picture for you the quality drops, at the moment anyway, and you can't go back in and adjust what it's done. This is very different; it's using my software to make the same manual adjustments I'd make to my own raw files, at full quality, and every one of them can still be changed.

It's not something I'd do myself, because editing is a big part of how I make a picture mine and I just love the process. However, if you're new to editing and don't know where to start, or you know what you want but not how to get there, this is a bit like having someone who's really good with Lightroom sit next to you and show you what they'd do. You can watch every move it makes and undo any of them, and I think there's real potential in that as a way of learning.

Capture to Print: One-Light Complete Portrait Workflow

For the past three months I've been touring with Wex Photo Video around the UK on their Summer Roadshow, showing how I take portraits with minimal kit in limited space. I came away with portraits I'm really happy with from every date, but there was one look in particular I was asked about more than any other, so I asked my friend Michael if he'd sit for me and we went outside with one small flash to make it again.

The video above goes through the whole thing, from the shoot, through every step of the edit in Lightroom and Photoshop, to a finished print. Here's an overview of what's in it.

One small flash, outdoors

The idea is simple. Before the flash comes into it at all, I set the camera so that it doesn't see any ambient light; take a picture and you get a black screen. That way the only light in the final shot is the light I put there.

Outdoors in bright sun that takes a bit more doing than it does in a store. I ended up at f/16, which was as far as the lens would go, around ISO 125 and 1/250th of a second, keeping within the flash sync speed rather than reaching for high speed sync or ND filters. I did wonder whether a 100 watt second light could cope with sun that bright, but it wasn't a problem.

The kit was:

• the Westcott FJ100 on power 9, so pretty much full power

• a 15 inch octa with the grid fitted

• a pistol grip handle to hold it steady

• the camera on a tripod

• a reflector just below chest level

The camera goes on a tripod so Michael has one fixed point to look at, rather than following me around as I move, and I trust the eye autofocus to nail the focus so I don't need to be right behind it.

How the light falls

I raise the light nice and high and get Michael to lean forward a little towards the camera. Because of the grid, the light doesn't go everywhere; it comes down and skips across the front of his face, and it doesn't spill onto the background, which I wanted to keep dark.

What I really like about it is that the light is so directional you get shadow either side of it, so it's almost like having a strip of light running down the front of the face. It's a look I definitely want to work more on.

The one thing that made the biggest difference was the reflector. Flat and horizontal, it did very little for the eyes. Lift the far end so it's angled up towards him and the light bounces back into his face, and suddenly there's plenty of detail in the eyes to work with.

The edit in Lightroom

Only one job happens in Lightroom, and that's the eyes. I use masking to select the iris and pupil, finesse the mask with the feather and edge sliders so it sits just inside the eyes, then lift the exposure slightly and add a little texture, clarity and a touch of dehaze. At 100% the difference with the mask on and off is night and day.

After that the image goes over to Photoshop, because that's where the heavy lifting gets done.

The heavy lifting in Photoshop

My rule of thumb here is to look at the image and fix whatever jumps out first. On this one it was the shine down the middle of Michael's nose, which I took out with the Remove Tool on a new layer, then lowered the opacity to around 50% to bring some of the natural shine back. After that I used the Spot Healing Brush on a blank layer to clean up the more obvious marks in the concrete wall behind him, which was sharper than I'd like because of shooting at f/16.

Most of the work is dodging and burning on a 50% grey layer set to Soft Light, with the Dodge Tool at 10% exposure and the Option key (Alt on Windows) held down to switch to the Burn Tool with the same settings. I brighten the highlights and darken the shadows either side of them, around the eyes, down the nose, the eyebrows and the mouth, and then the folds in his top. It sneaks up on you; you often don't see it until you turn the layer off. Working on a grey layer rather than the image itself also means that if you go too far, you can paint over it with 50% grey and it's gone.

From there it's a handful of smaller things:

• a loose lasso round the teeth and a Hue/Saturation adjustment on the yellows, lifting the lightness slightly so they're cleaner without looking like he's had them done

• my 2010 technique, two passes of Unsharp Mask on merged layers, amount and radius at 20 then 10 with the threshold at 0, each painted in through a black mask, the first over the middle of the face and the second over the eyes, nose and mouth

• a skin texture effect using Reduce Noise at full strength with everything else at zero

• a High Pass layer at a radius of 2, set to Hard Light and placed on top, to bring back the sharpness in the eyes, hair and skin detail that the texture effect softens

The 2010 technique is superb on close-up portraits; it makes the face look as if it's coming forward off the screen, and even more so in print.

Camera Raw and a finishing touch

In the Camera Raw filter I used Lens Blur to soften the concrete wall and give the picture a bit of fake depth of field, brushing blur in around the top of the head, the ears and the shoulders so it feels more like f/2.8 or f/4 than f/16. I still wanted to be able to just about see the wall, so it isn't blacked out completely.

A linear gradient with the exposure brought down takes the edge off the bright top he's wearing, which was pulling my eye, and a radial gradient in the middle of the face at +0.2 exposure adds a little light where it matters. I do that last one on pretty much every portrait.

The finishing touch is a warm colour grade from Optics by Boris FX, using the Titanic look in the Portrait colour section, brought down to 50% opacity.

Making the print

I print pretty much every image I'm happy with onto A4, and this one went onto Fotospeed Natural Soft Textured Bright White 315, a fine art matte paper and one I use most of the time, on the Canon PRO-300.

The steps are:

• duplicate and flatten the image

• resize to 10 inches on the long edge at 300ppi

• soft proof with the paper profile, comparing relative and perceptual rendering intents

• a slight brightening just for the print

• save as a TIFF in Adobe RGB

• print from Canon Professional Print & Layout, with Heavyweight Fine Art Paper as the media type, the paper's ICC profile, perceptual rendering intent and black point compensation on

For this picture perceptual was the clear choice. Relative blocked the blacks up quite a lot, whereas perceptual gave it more contrast, which suited it.

Straight out of the printer it was looking really good, and on a matte paper like this it only gets better once the ink has had time to dry and settle. You can just about see detail in the back wall, which is what I was after, and the 2010 technique does exactly what I hoped, bringing the face forward off the page.

Why I always print

Our screens are fantastic, but it's not until you have something physical in your hands that you can really study it and start noticing the things you missed while editing. I truly believe printing can help you get better as a photographer, and certainly better at retouching.

If you'd like to follow along with the video step by step, the raw file I used is free to download from the classroom in my Photography Community on Skool:

Removing People in Lightroom When You Don't Use Photoshop

Taking a person out of the middle of a group shot isn't something I'd do this way. If it were my picture I'd be in Photoshop, on layers, doing it properly by hand, because that's what I know and that's what gives me control over every last bit of it.

But that's me, and I've spent years getting comfortable in there. Plenty of people haven't, and don't want to, and have no particular reason to. So this post isn't really for photographers who already live in Photoshop. It's for everybody else.

Who this is actually for

If you edit in Lightroom and that's where you're happy, this is for you. If you don't have Photoshop installed and can't see the point in paying for something you'd open twice a year, this is for you as well. If you've had a go at layers and masks and found the whole thing off-putting, same again.

It doesn't have to be for professional work either. Most of the time it won't be. It's the family photo where somebody's stood in the middle who you'd rather wasn't, the holiday shot that would be lovely if it were just the four of you, the picture you want to get printed and stick on the wall. That's a perfectly good reason to want this, and there's no sense in learning a whole other application for it.

Why the Remove tool struggles here

Lightroom has Generative Remove built in and for everyday bits it's brilliant. A bin in the background, a stray sign, someone wandering through the far side of the frame, it deals with all of that without any fuss.

Ask it to take a whole person out of the middle of a group, though, and it tends to come unstuck. You get warped detail where the arms and hands were, limbs that seem to belong to nobody, and a strange empty space where the person was stood. Everybody else stays exactly where they were, which is really the giveaway. The gap is the problem, not the person.

Sending it over to Firefly

What you can do instead, without leaving your catalogue, is push the photo across to Adobe Firefly and let it rebuild that part of the frame.

It works like this.

• go to the Photo menu in Lightroom

• choose Generate in Firefly, then Edit photo

• pick your model in the panel at the bottom

• set the output quality to High

• write your prompt

• hit Generate

I tried a few models and GPT Image 2 gave me the most natural result of the lot. Worth trying a couple yourself, because they behave differently on the same picture.

The prompt is doing most of the work

This is the part that decides whether it works, so it's worth slowing down over.

A vague prompt gets you a vague result. Tell it to remove the person and that's all it'll do, which puts you straight back where you started with a hole in the middle of the photo. What you want is to describe the finished picture, not the job.

So ask for three things. Remove the person. Close the space between the people either side of them. Keep the original faces, clothing and background as they are. That last one is the bit most people leave out, and it's why results come back with faces that look subtly wrong and nobody quite able to say what's changed.

Say all three plainly, in a sentence or two, then generate.

Getting the resolution back

Firefly gives you a clean result, but a smaller one than you sent it. The original here was over 6000 pixels wide straight out of the camera, so there's one more step before you're done.

On the left hand toolbar there's an Upscale option. Take it up by 4x and you're back over 6000 pixels wide, which matches the original file. Hit Download, bring it back into your catalogue, and carry on editing it like any other frame.

That's it. No layers, no masks, no learning a second application.

What you're trading

I'd be doing this differently, and it's worth being honest about what that means. Doing it by hand in Photoshop gives you control over every pixel, and if the picture really matters, that control is the reason to learn it. Handing it to Firefly means accepting whatever it decides to give you, and sometimes that'll be a couple of goes before you get something you're happy with.

For a lot of pictures, though, that's a fine trade. You get the photo you wanted, in the software you already use, in about two minutes.

Have a watch of the video above if you'd rather see it happen than read about it. It goes quicker than it sounds.

Lightroom 9.5 - Why Render to DNG Changes Everything

Lightroom 9.5 has landed, and alongside the usual list of bug fixes, new camera and lens profiles and a few Windows performance tweaks, there are three additions that actually change how you work day to day.

One thing to get out of the way first. This update is for Lightroom Desktop. Classic had its own round of updates at the same time, but a couple of these features haven't made their way over to Classic yet, so if you're a Classic user, don't go looking for all of them.

Feather and Edge, for masks that don't bleed

The masking panel now has two new sliders, Feather and Edge.

If you use Camera Raw, or you've been running the pre-release builds, these will look familiar. They're just available to everyone now.

Worth being clear about what they do and what they don't. They don't make Lightroom any better at finding your subject. If Select Subject misses completely, these two sliders aren't going to rescue it. What they do is let you clean up the last few pixels along the edge of a selection, which is usually where the trouble is.

Turn on the mask overlay so you can actually see the boundary, then work the two sliders until the mask pulls tight against the edge. That's it. No more adjustments spilling over onto things you didn't want to touch.

On portraits it's the eyes, the lips and the skin masks, where a brightening adjustment has a habit of creeping onto the eyelid or the surrounding skin. On landscapes and architecture it's horizons, tree branches against a bright sky, and the edges of buildings, all the places a halo turns up if you're not careful.

Render to DNG, and why it's the interesting one

Right click any photo now and there's a new option in the menu: Render to DNG.

What it does is create a brand new file with all your current edits baked into the pixels, and it sits right alongside your original in the catalogue.

If you're a Photoshop person, think of it as a stamp visible layer. You get a flattened version to work on top of, and your original raw file is still sitting underneath it completely untouched, with every setting still live.

It says DNG, but it isn't raw

This is the bit worth slowing down for. Despite the .dng on the end, a rendered DNG is not a raw file. It's closer to a TIFF in a DNG wrapper.

Your original raw is the negative. It's holding all the hidden highlight and shadow data you can't see on screen but can pull back when you need to. The rendered DNG is the print. It has baked in whatever the picture looked like at the moment you rendered it, and anything you hadn't already recovered has gone.

So the rule is simple enough. Do your recovery on the raw. Pulling back a blown sky, lifting shadows that have gone dead, any serious white balance shift, all of that happens on the original file before you render anything. Once you've rendered, that detail isn't coming back.

What the rendered file is good for is adjusting rather than recovering. Contrast, fine tuning tone, stacking a heavy look on top. Things that work with what's already there rather than digging for what isn't.

Stacking presets without losing your edit

Here's where it earns its keep.

You know the problem. You spend twenty minutes dialling in exposure, tone curve and split toning, you get it exactly where you want it, and then you try a full look preset and it wipes the lot. Every slider you'd carefully set gets overwritten.

The way round it now is to finish your base edit on the raw file, right click and Render to DNG, then apply the preset to the new rendered file instead.

Because your edits are baked into the pixels of that rendered file, there are no sliders left for the preset to overwrite. It sits on top of your work rather than replacing it.

Just keep half an eye on the highlights when you're stacking, because a rendered file has less headroom than the raw did, and it'll clip sooner than you expect.

Crop and Expand

The Crop panel has been renamed Crop and Expand, and you can now drag the crop boundary outwards past the edge of the original frame. Handy for anything you framed a bit too tight.

When you expand, you get two ways to fill the new space.

Generative Expand uses AI to invent new content, which is what you want for a complicated background. It costs one credit on standard accounts, and it's free if you're on CC Pro.

Content-Aware Expand samples pixels from elsewhere in your own photo. It costs nothing on any plan, because it isn't generative, and for plain or repeating backgrounds it does the job perfectly well. Try that one first and save your credits for when you genuinely need them.

There's a catch with Generative Expand, though, and it's worth knowing about. When you run it, Lightroom flattens your existing AI edits, so any AI masking or Generative Remove you'd done gets locked in and you lose the ability to go back and tweak it.

Same fix as before. Do your AI edits and base adjustments on the raw, render to DNG, then drag the crop out and run the expand on the rendered file. Your master raw stays fully intact with the masks still live, and you've got a separate expanded version to export.

Everything else in 9.5

Beyond those three, there's a decent list of fixes and new support:

• masking sliders that wouldn't reset properly

• launch crashes caused by permission errors

• star rating glitches

• GPS data not pasting in local view

• smoother grid scrolling and faster window resizing on Windows

• new camera support for the GoPro Mission 1, GoPro Mission Pro and preliminary support for the Sony RX10 V

• new lens profiles including the Canon RF 7-14mm Fisheye, DJI Mavic 4 Pro, Sigma 85mm f/1.2 and a handful of macro lenses

So, next time you're editing

If a subject mask is bleeding onto something it shouldn't, reach for Feather and Edge.

If you want to try a preset over an edit you've already spent time on, render to DNG first.

And if you need a bit more room around a tight portrait, render to DNG, open Crop and Expand, and try Content-Aware before you spend a credit.

Render to DNG is the one I'd point at if you only look at one thing here. It's a small menu item that's easy to scroll past, and it quietly solves a problem plenty of us have been working around for years.

How Lightroom Shared Albums Impact Storage and Download Sizes

Something that catches a lot of people out is the difference between how Lightroom Desktop/Mobile handles your photos in the cloud versus what happens when you sync from Lightroom Classic.

They look similar on the surface but behave very differently, especially if you're using the Share and Invite web gallery feature.

Here's how it breaks down.

Uploading from Lightroom Desktop or Mobile

When you copy photos to the cloud using Lightroom Desktop or Mobile, you're uploading the original file, whether that's a RAW or a JPEG.

• Cloud storage: This counts against your Adobe storage allowance. Every file you add uses the same amount of space as the original. Upload 100 RAW files at 25MB each and you've used 2.5GB of your plan's storage, whether that's 20GB or 1TB.

• What your “client” downloads: A full-resolution JPEG. The pixel dimensions match your original, so a 24-megapixel file stays 24 megapixels. Adobe converts the RAW to JPEG for delivery, so a 24MB RAW might come down as a 4 to 8MB JPEG, but the detail is all there.

Official Adobe Reference: You can read the storage rules directly in the Adobe Help: Lightroom Cloud Storage FAQ. Look under the "How does storage work in Lightroom?" section, which details how original files consume your plan's space.

Syncing from Lightroom Classic

When you tick the Sync with Lightroom box on a Collection inside Classic, your original files stay on your hard drive. What goes up to the cloud is a Smart Preview.

• Cloud storage: This uses none of your allocated storage. Adobe syncs these Smart Previews completely free of charge, and they count for nothing against your 20GB or 1TB limit.

• What your “client” downloads: A reduced-resolution JPEG, capped at 2560 pixels on the longest edge. That's it. Because the cloud only holds the Smart Preview, that's all anyone can download.

Official Adobe Reference: This storage exception is outlined in the Adobe Help: Sync Lightroom Classic with Lightroom Ecosystem guide. Check the "Sync overview" and the "FAQ" at the bottom, which explicitly states that Smart Previews do not consume your cloud storage quota.

Quick Summary

If you're sharing a web gallery and have Allow Downloads switched on, what your viewer receives depends entirely on where the file came from:

• Lightroom Desktop or Mobile as the source: Uses your cloud storage. Viewer downloads a full-resolution JPEG.

• Lightroom Classic Collection as the source: Uses zero cloud storage. Viewer downloads a 2560px JPEG, maximum.

Official Adobe Reference: The download behavior for shared galleries is documented in the Adobe Help: Share Photos and Albums from Lightroom Web guide under the "Allow downloads" and "Shared Album Settings" toggles.

The practical takeaway is straightforward; if your “clients” need full-resolution files, upload via Lightroom Desktop or Mobile and keep an eye on your storage. If they just need to view images or grab web-sized copies, syncing from Classic is far more efficient and won't touch your storage allowance at all.

The Smart Way to Use Lightroom Shared Albums

My next project involves my local harbour and town, Lyme Regis in the southwest of the UK where I’ll be photographing the people who truly make the town what it is - the fishermen, cafe owners, restaurateurs, B&B hosts, ice cream sellers, and anyone else who steps in front of my camera.

Because a project like this has a lot of moving parts, I want the process to be completely frictionless. I need a seamless way for the people I photograph to access their portraits without chasing email addresses or risking sending files to the wrong person.

The perfect solution is the Share function in Lightroom. Whether you use Lightroom Desktop, Lightroom Classic, or Lightroom Mobile, this feature turns your cloud-synced albums into functional web galleries.

Here is exactly how to set it up and make it work for you.

1. Getting Your Images into the Cloud

To share an album, the images must be in the cloud so Lightroom can generate a web page.

• In Lightroom Desktop (Local Tab): If you keep files offline on hard drives, you can easily select a single image, multiple images (using Shift or Command/Control), or an entire folder. Right-click and choose Copy to Cloud. You can then add them to an existing folder or create a new album.

• In Lightroom Desktop (Cloud Tab): Simply click the + icon next to Albums and select Create Album. You can create an empty album and drop photos into it later.

• In Lightroom Classic: You work with Collections instead of albums. Create a new collection, give it a name, and ensure you check the box that says Sync with Lightroom.

Once synced, any collection from Classic or album from Desktop automatically populates across the entire cloud ecosystem, including Lightroom Mobile.

2. Managing Share Settings and Permissions

Once your album is in the cloud, right-click the album name in Lightroom Desktop and choose Share and Invite. This generates a dedicated web address for your gallery. Before sending it out, you can completely customize the experience.

• Link Access: Set the permissions to public or private depending on your audience.

• Settings & Interaction: You can allow viewers to download JPEG versions of the images, which is exactly how I handle the I Am Lyme project. You can also let them like and comment (which requires a free Adobe account) or toggle metadata and location visibility.

• Submitting Photos: There is an option to allow others to add photos to the album. This is brilliant if you are hosting a photo walk and want everyone to contribute their shots to a single gallery.

• Customization: You can alter how the page looks to visitors without changing your internal album settings. Change the display title, hide or show the author name, choose the layout grid (photo grid, column, or one-up), and switch between light and dark themes.

3. Sharing via Lightroom Mobile (and the QR Code Secret)

If you are out in the field like me, using Lightroom Mobile on your phone is the ultimate workflow hack.

Open your synced album on your mobile device, tap the Share icon in the upper right, and you will find the exact same options available on desktop.

The real magic here is the QR Code option. Lightroom Mobile can generate a unique QR code for that specific web gallery. You can show it directly on your screen for someone to scan, or download the QR code to your camera roll to print out. People can scan it, instantly view the gallery, and download their photos on the spot.

4. The Workaround for Pure Lightroom Classic Users

If you strictly use Lightroom Classic and prefer not to use Lightroom Mobile or the Desktop app, you can still easily use this feature.

Once you have created your collection and checked the Sync with Lightroom option, open your web browser and go to lightroom.adobe.com. Log in, find your synced collection under your albums, and click the Share icon on the right side. You will have full access to the web link and the QR code generator right from your browser.

Using shared albums keeps your client interaction simple, organized, and professional. Give it a try on your next project, and let me know if you have any questions in the comments below.

How to Edit and Export True HDR Photos in Lightroom

Mention HDR to most photographers, and they immediately picture the overprocessed, crunchy trend from 2010 or complex, multi-exposure bracketing. True HDR is different. It uses a single image to unlock the actual brightness and tonal capabilities of modern screens.

This step-by-step guide covers how to edit, export, and share true HDR images using Lightroom Mobile, Desktop, or Classic.

Step 1: Check Your Screen Compatibility

Before editing, you need to know if your device can actually display high dynamic range.

• Many modern screens (like iPhones, iPads, and MacBook Pros) support it, but standard monitors do not.

• If you view an HDR compatibility test page and see two distinct versions of the comparison images, your screen is ready for HDR editing.

Step 2: Edit Your Base Image (SDR)

Start by editing your photo exactly how you normally would. Tweak the exposure, contrast, and colours until you are completely happy with the standard dynamic range (SDR) version. Photos with naturally high contrast and bright highlight areas work best for this process.

Step 3: Enable the HDR Panel

• Locate and toggle the HDR button in the Lightroom edit panel.

• The image will instantly become brighter, and your histogram will expand to the right, showing extra sections. These sections represent the additional stops of light available exclusively for HDR displays.

Step 4: Control Your Highlights

To keep the image looking natural and intentional, you need to manage the extra brightness.

• Stick to the limit: Adobe sets a default HDR limit of around 2.3 stops. Keeping it here ensures your image translates well across different devices.

• Check for clipping: Hold your finger down on the screen while adjusting the exposure slider (or hold Alt/Option on desktop). The screen will turn yellow to show safe HDR highlights, and red if you push them too far.

• Visualize HDR: Toggle this feature on to see a colour-coded map of your highlights, helping you stay within safe tonal boundaries.

Step 5: Export with the Right Settings

To ensure Instagram and web browsers can read your HDR data, use these specific export settings:

• File Type: Select AVIF (or JXL).

• Color Space: Choose Display P3 (or HDR P3 on desktop).

• HDR Output: Ensure this toggle is turned ON.

Step 6: Post to Instagram Safely

When sharing your final image to social media, keep these two rules in mind to avoid rendering glitches:

• No stickers or text: Adding music to your post is fine, but do not overlay native Instagram text or stickers onto the image, as it breaks the HDR rendering.

• Use the Carousel Trick: Share both the standard SDR version and the new HDR version in a single carousel post. Allowing users to swipe between the two creates a massive, undeniable visual impact.

HDR in Photography: Dead, Dated, or Ready for a Comeback?

For years, HDR in photography has carried a bit of baggage.

Mention it to most photographers and they'll immediately picture those crunchy, overcooked images from the early 2010s. Glowing edges, strange colours, and a look that screamed "processing" louder than the actual subject. And honestly, fair enough. That version of HDR put a lot of people off, and for good reason.

The “HDR” Trend back in the early 2010s

But here's what's changed: HDR isn't what it used to be.

What we're talking about today is not that old exposure-blended, tone-mapped look that most of us learned to avoid. This is proper HDR editing, pulling more out of the image's dynamic range and displaying it on screens that can actually show it. It's less about creating a dramatic effect and more about giving the image room to breathe.

That distinction changes the conversation completely.

So what is HDR now?

At its simplest, HDR means high dynamic range; more tonal range than a standard dynamic range image can show. It’s not blending images together, it’s having the ability to really show what already exists in that file.

That sounds technical, but the practical version is straightforward. Think about a scene with a blazing sky, deep shadows, and subtle detail in between. In a standard SDR workflow, you end up squeezing all of that into a smaller box. You protect the highlights, lift the shadows, and find some kind of compromise.

With modern HDR editing, you're not forcing that compromise in the same way. You're working in a way that allows more brightness information to survive the edit, so when viewed on an HDR-capable screen, the image can look much closer to what the scene actually felt like.

That's the key difference.

This isn't about making everything loud. It's about giving the image more range.

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Check out this web page I put together to check if your display / device is capable of HDR.

Take a look on your computer, mobile and tablet device (if you have one)

🔗 LINK: hdrviewer.lovable.app

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Why the old HDR got a bad name

Let's be honest: old-school HDR deserved a fair amount of the criticism it got.

A lot of it was used as a shortcut to rescue badly exposed images, and the results were often heavy-handed. Software like Photomatix, which was the go-to tool for HDR processing back in those early days, made it incredibly easy to push things too far. Shadows were crushed, highlights flattened, and that distinctive grungy, over-cooked look became almost a signature of the era. At its worst, it was gimmicky. You knew exactly what you were looking at the moment you saw it.

Worth saying though: Photomatix is still around and still a perfectly viable option. Used with some restraint, it's capable of much more conservative, natural-looking results than its early reputation might suggest. But back then, subtlety wasn't really the point for a lot of people using it.

That's why many photographers developed a kind of instinctive resistance to anything labelled HDR.

But modern HDR is a different thing entirely.

It's not trying to shout at you. It's trying to reveal more subtlety. And when it's done well, most people won't even register that they're looking at an HDR image. They'll just think it looks rich, deep, and beautifully displayed.

Who is actually doing this?

More people than you might think.

The biggest shift is that the industry around HDR has finally started to catch up. More screens support it, editing software is building in proper HDR workflows, and image sharing is slowly becoming more compatible. That matters, because a workflow only becomes genuinely useful when you can see the result and actually share it.

Photographers are already experimenting with it in landscape work, cityscapes, interiors, sunsets, and any scene where the contrast is simply too much for a standard file to hold comfortably. It makes particular sense when the subject contains bright highlights that you want to keep bright, without the rest of the image falling apart around them.

So yes, people are doing it. Not everyone, and not for every image. But enough that it's moving from niche curiosity toward something more mainstream.

Why it matters now

This is where HDR becomes genuinely interesting from a photographer's point of view.

We've reached a point where many viewers already have HDR-capable phones, tablets, laptops, televisions, and monitors. The image you edit is no longer always limited to the old one-size-fits-all SDR world. Some people can actually see more of what you intended when you made it.

That opens up real creative possibilities.

A sunset can hold brighter light without clipping into mush. A window-lit interior can keep detail outside without destroying the atmosphere inside. A seascape can carry that glowing, luminous quality we often try to suggest with standard editing but don't always fully achieve.

In the right hands, HDR isn't flashy. It's expressive.

Where it fits in a workflow

The best way I think about HDR is this: it's another tool, not a replacement for everything else.

It won't suit every photograph. Some images are better left in a standard workflow, particularly if the scene is already well contained or if you want a classic, controlled look. HDR also won't make much difference if your audience is mostly viewing on SDR screens.

But for the right image, it can be brilliant.

The skill, then, isn't just learning how to switch HDR on. It's knowing when it adds value and when it doesn't. That's usually where good photography lives anyway. Not in using every feature available, but in using the right one at the right time.

Is HDR the future?

I think so, yes. Just not in the old dramatic sense.

We're not heading back to the days of overprocessed HDR everywhere. That era is done, and rightly so. But we are moving towards a more natural, more display-aware way of working, where HDR becomes a normal part of the photographic toolbox rather than a novelty.

How quickly that happens depends on a few things catching up together: displays, software, and sharing platforms. But the direction is clear.

More of the world is becoming HDR-capable, which means photographers will increasingly need to understand how to work with that reality, whether they choose to or not.

Final thoughts

HDR is not dead.

What's dead is the old caricature of it. The version that turned every photo into a neon soap opera. The modern version is far more interesting, far more useful, and far more in step with where technology is heading.

For photographers, the opportunity is simple: start paying attention now. Learn what modern HDR actually is, watch how it develops, and think about where it fits in your own work, because this feels less like a passing fad and more like a genuine shift in the way images are made and seen.

Lightroom Virtual Summit 2026

The Lightroom Virtual Summit is BACK running from 1st June to the 5th June 2026, including 45 classes (33hrs +) of Lightroom Education which you can watch completely for FREE!

🚨 Link for FREE PASS: https://glyndewis.krtra.com/t/e7YtyIDicEoQ

InstructorS

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All classes are free to watch for a 48 period once they go live, and there’s an optional VIP Pass available for purchase that gives you lifetime access to the recordings of all classes, instructor-provided class notes and exclusive bonuses (including additional videos).

Lightroom AI - You're using it in the WRONG ORDER

In Lightroom Classic, Desktop, and Camera Raw, a yellow warning icon often appears in the AI Edit Status panel. This happens when you perform edits out of the recommended "order of operations," signaling that certain AI-generated layers need to be updated or rerendered.

While you can still edit in any order, jumping around can lead to unpredictable results. For example, applying an adaptive color profile and then using the "Denoise" or "Remove" tool might cause the colors and highlights to shift once the AI is forced to update.

The Recommended Workflow: Prepare, Repair, Finesse

To maintain total control over how your image looks, it is best to follow this three-step sequence:

1. Prepare: Start with edits that affect the entire image, such as Denoise, Raw Details, Super Resolution, or HDR. This is the foundation of your edit.

2. Repair: Next, clean up the image by removing distractions. Use the Remove tool (with Generative AI) or Distraction Removal for things like reflections, dust spots, or unwanted objects.

3. Finesse (or Finish): Once the image is prepped and repaired, move on to creative adjustments, such as Adaptive Color Profiles or intricate masking.

Handling the AI Edit Status Warning

If the yellow icon appears, it is a reminder that your AI edits may no longer be perfectly synced with the current state of the image.

• Click to Update: Always click the icon and select "Update" before finishing your edit.

• Reassess: After updating, look closely at your image. Because the AI is rerendering, the results might look slightly different than before.

• Don't Just Export: If you try to export while the icon is yellow, a popup will warn you. Instead of clicking "Export" anyway, it is safer to cancel, update the edits manually, and ensure you are happy with the changes before saving the final file.

By following the Prepare, Repair, Finesse order, you ensure your editing remains predictable and that the final export looks exactly as you intended.