Lightroom Tips

Tip – Choosing a new "Before" image

Happy Friday everyone. Here’s a quick tip for you when viewing before/afters in Lightroom. If you press the [Backslash] key in the Develop module, it toggles you between the original image (with absolutely no changes), and the photo as it looks now with your edits. But what if you don’t want your Before photo to be the original? For example, let’s say you did some Basic panel edits on a photo, and then you used the Adjustment Brush to do some more specific changes. Maybe you’d like to see the Before photo showing the Basic panel edits after they were applied, but before you started brushing. To do that, go to the History panel (in the left side Panels area), and scroll down until you find the step right before you started using the Adjustment Brush. Then, Right-click on that history state and choose Copy History Step Settings to Before. That now becomes your new Before photo when you press the key. Pretty neat huh?

That’s it for this week. Hope you have a great weekend and don’t forget to put your Christmas tree up if you haven’t already 🙂

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14 comments

  1. Steven 20 May, 2010 at 14:26 Reply

    Will doing this perminently post these changes to my imported image or will I still be able to go back to the imported image?

  2. Helene 12 December, 2009 at 15:57 Reply

    it’s my first time trying presets and I’m trying to download. How do you unzip the file?? Sorry for being a non-computer geek 🙂

  3. Charles 7 December, 2009 at 06:37 Reply

    Thanks for the tip !
    Do you know if there a way to have also the crop in the before / after view or that’s only for colors ?

  4. Kevin Zdyb 5 December, 2009 at 22:37 Reply

    Matt,
    I must say that you are hands down the best source for learning new things in Lightroom. Just when I think I have mastered it you keep showing me something that I never new about!!!
    Keep up the GREAT work,
    Kevin

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