Be more productive, they say. Work smarter. Do five days’ work in the space of four! Now, we’re not suggesting that this article is going to shave two hours from your working day, but even if you find two tips out of these 50 that make a difference then we think that’s worth celebrating.
Never has been this subject been more topical, either. On the one hand, we have generative AI tools popping up all over the place that promise the world. Even if that world has six fingers and dresses the Pope in a white puffer jacket. And, as we will see, there are practical ways to take advantage right now.
On the other hand, companies such as Adobe and Microsoft are desperate to keep you subscribing to their software. To do so, they continually update their software with extra tools, many of which (as you will see) can shave a few minutes from a task. Or automate it all together.
So, take a read through our selection – including many from readers via the PC Pro Facebook page – and give them a try. And if you think we’ve missed something, email letters@pcpro.co.uk.
ADOBE LIGHTROOM CLASSIC
QUICKLY SELECT PEOPLE
Recent changes to Lightroom have made it much easier to do precise editing on portraits, without having to import the image into Photoshop.
If you’ve taken a portrait, it’s easy to select the person without having to brush around them first. Open the image in the Develop panel, and then select the Masking tools, which are found by clicking the circular icon under the histogram. You should see small circular thumbnails of any people in your image in the right-hand pane. Click on them and the red mask highlighter will appear over the person in the image.
That should open a sub-menu that allows you to mask only certain body parts, such as hair, teeth, face, skin or lips. Select the appropriate body part or the entire person, then click Create Mask. Now you can make isolated adjustments to exposure, colours, saturation and so forth until you have the desired effect.
BRIGHTEN SKIES WITH EASE
It’s not only people that are easier to select in recent versions of Lightroom. Skies are, too, making it a doddle to breathe life into listless vistas.
Once again, open your landscape image in Develop mode and click on the Masking tools. This time, select the Sky button from the right-hand pane. Once the sky’s been selected, you can adjust the temp, tint and hue settings until your dull grey sky is a more pleasing blue, for example.
The advantage of using the Sky mask tool rather than brushes is that the selection is accurate, even picking out the sky in the gaps between the bridge rails in our photo, meaning you don’t end up with parts of the image being wrongly coloured or having to spend ages fine-tuning the mask.
CONTENT-AWARE REMOVAL OF STRAY OBJECTS
Another way in which Lightroom now saves you from having to dip into Photoshop is by bringing its content-aware removal tools to the software.
If you have a stray crisp packet on a beach or a distracting interloper in a landscape, you can swiftly brush them out of history. In the
