Part of the Adobe Creative Cloud, Lightroom is a tool that serves as a great complement to Photoshop. The question is, how do you make the most of it?
In addition to archiving your images, Lightroom also has a variety of editing features and processing effects, which can be used if you don’t feel like digging through your Photoshop project again. Furthermore, any edits you make in Lightroom are non-destructive, which means you can always undo them and return to your original image. In this walkthrough, we’ve shared how to blur in Lightroom, so you can put more emphasis on your image subject.
Blurring a Background
To begin, open Lightroom and select the photo you wish to blur. Press D to switch to the Develop Module. Next, click on the Adjustment Brush, located on the top right side of the screen.
A dialog box with various mask effect settings will appear just below the Adjustment Brush. Ensure the Sharpness setting is at -100, indicating the minimum amount of sharpness. Begin drawing on your background with the Adjustment Brush to start the blurring process.
If a Sharpness setting of -100 is too extreme for your liking, you can increase the setting and redraw over the overly blurred areas to regain some sharpness. Conversely, if you unintentionally blur a part of your subject, adjust your Sharpness setting to +100 and draw over the blurry sections to reverse the effect.
Blurring a Face
After mastering blurring in Lightroom, it becomes straightforward to apply blur effects to any part of your image, regardless of the area’s size. For instance, if you need to blur out a subject’s face for privacy reasons, the process is easy.
Start by selecting the Adjustment Brush and adjusting its size in the Brush panel or by using your mouse’s scroll wheel. For detailed tasks like blurring a face, the brush should be considerably smaller than when blurring a background. Ensure you set the Sharpness values below 0, ideally between -100 and -50. Paint over the entire face once or twice with the brush, check if the face is sufficiently blurred to become unrecognizable, and repeat the process if needed.
Cover image via XanderSt
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