How to Use Lightroom Radial Filters – A Comprehensive Tutorial

In this video tutorial, you’ll learn when and how to use Lightroom Radial Filters to enhance your photos. If you need to correct or fix just a part of your photo and not have the adjustments apply to the entire photo, then Radial Filters might be the solution you need.

Lightroom has a number of local adjustment tools available for editing your photos (the Adjustment Brush and the Graduated Filter are the others besides the Radial Filter). Knowing which tools to use and when to use each is essential for efficient and effective photo editing.

What is a Radial Filter?

A Radial Filter, as the name implies, is one that you can apply to your photo in a circular or oval shape. You can use the one to adjust exposure, contrast, clarity, highlights, color, or any number of things in specific areas of your image.

You can have the desired adjustment apply to the area inside the Radial (circular) Filter or on the outside.

Why use a Radial Filter in Lightroom?

Radial Filters are great because they are so flexible and can be masked to apply just to specific areas and even further to just certain tones or even a color. You can also add to the mask area by painting extra areas in or out.

See the full before and after transformation of this image using Radial Filters.

You’ll also learn how to make color corrections including a complete change of color of a piece of clothing. I will demonstrate the feather slider and range masks and show you how they affect the areas where your Radial Filter is being applied. The feather amount and range masks are like fine-tuning your Radial Filter.

Watch and learn how to tweak your adjustment by using the radial filter brush (not to be confused with the general Lightroom adjustment brushes) so you can brush in or erase part of the filter.

Watch the tutorial on Radial FIlters now

Without any further ado, it’s time for you to watch the tutorial. I’ll provide a few more before and after examples and other resources for you below the video.

Learn how to use Lightroom Classic in my Lightroom for Photographers: The Complete Course. Even seasoned Lightroom users report that they’ve learned a ton of things there weren’t aware of. Check it out here.

Did you pick up any tips about the Radial Filter that you didn’t already know? If so, please tell me what you learned in the comment area below.

Here are a couple more before and after examples of what Radial Filters can do for your images. These ones are not as dramatic but you can see how this really handy tool can be used to control the lighting and direct attention to your subject.

NOTE: These images were all created in Havana Cuba. Thanks to my lovely model Ana, a professional ballerina with the National Ballet of Cuba.

Resources

If you want more Lightroom tips and tutorials CLICK HERE.

For additional learning about other methods of photo editing check out my Photoshop tips or if you’re not an Adobe user, my Luminar AI tutorials.

Read: The Upside-Down Trick – a Photography Hack to Help You Make Better Images

You can also use Luminar AI as a plug-in for both Photoshop and Lightroom. I use it my workflow and often hop from Lightroom to Luminar AI to do portrait editing – especially the new Portrait Bokeh AI tool! It’s amazing!

I also demonstrated the Portrait AI tools in Luminar AI including the new bokeh one in this video, take a watch.

You can also watch me edit subscriber images live each week on my YouTube channel CLICK HERE to set up a notice to remind you when it happens. You can ask questions and add comments in the chat as I work!

📌 SUBMIT YOUR PHOTOS HERE ❗️ To have your photos considered for LIVE photo editing, use this form.

You do not have to be an expert or have perfect photos – that’s the point! Send me one or two that you are having trouble processing, or if you aren’t doing any photo editing with your images yet – let me show you what’s possible and how to make them sing!

Cheers,