In his new class, Erik Kuna shares the camera maintenance routine he’s developed over 15 years of shooting in some seriously tough conditions. He’s performed more than 1,000 sensor cleanings without damaging a single sensor, so he knows a thing or two about doing it safely.

Erik shows you how to spot sensor dust, clean your sensor step by step, properly care for your lenses, and avoid everyday products that can actually damage your equipment.

It only takes a little time, and knowing how to do it correctly can help keep your gear working reliably for years.

Watch Erik tell you more about it below, then check it out here.

The post Camera Maintenance Essentials: The Twenty Minutes That Saves Your Gear with Erik Kuna appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.

From bald eagles and wolves to waterfalls, autumn scenes, and dramatic landscapes, the critiques offered plenty of opportunities to talk about what can be improved both in-camera and later in Lightroom. Scott, Erik, and Richard covered white balance, cropping, distracting backgrounds, harsh highlights, shutter speed, and using light to help separate wildlife from its surroundings.

The editing discussions also showed how relatively small adjustments can make a big difference. Pulling back bright areas, cleaning up distractions, warming or cooling white balance, and making a tighter crop can all help direct attention where you want it.

Richard also shared an important reminder for landscape and wildlife photographers: sometimes the best editing decision starts before you ever open Lightroom. Knowing when the light isn’t working, when to change your position, and when to simply wait can make all the difference.

Watch the replay below and pick up some great ideas for your next wildlife or landscape edit.

The post This Week on The Grid: Wildlife & Landscape Blind Photo Critiques appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.

In this new class, I take you through an edit from start to finish and show you the order I use the tools, which ones I reach for most, and which ones I usually skip. We’ll work with NoNoise AI, Resize AI, Brilliance AI, Sky Swap AI, Tack Sharp AI, and some of my favorite creative effects, including Bleach Bypass, LUTs, sun flares, and vignettes.

The goal is to give you a simple, repeatable workflow you can use whether Photo RAW MAX is your main editor or you use it alongside Lightroom and Photoshop.

And for a limited time, you can watch the entire class for free. Watch the quick promo below, then check it out here.

The post My Photo RAW Max 2026 ON1 Workflow appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.

Erik talked about why getting up early may be the cheapest crowd-removal tool you’ll ever find, planning your locations around the best light, and looking for that “magic minute” when everything comes together. He also shared how using a longer lens and telephoto compression can give familiar locations a completely different look.

Scott tackled the travel side of things, with real-world tips for dealing with jet lag, luggage, transportation, currency, and planning your shooting day. The goal is simple: spend less time dealing with travel headaches and more time making pictures.

Dylan also joined the show to demonstrate several creative effects in ON1 Photo RAW MAX 2026, including motion effects, double exposures, and depth-based lighting.

There’s plenty here to help you plan smarter, find better light, and come home with something more interesting than the same postcard shot everyone else gets.

Catch the replay below.

The post This Week on The Grid: Travel Photography Tips (and More!) appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.

In this new class, I break down the 10 things I think make the biggest difference. Some are technical, but most come down to how you work with the person in front of your camera. We’ll talk about building a genuine connection, choosing flattering light, getting natural skin tones, making smart lens and composition choices, and knowing when a little retouching helps without going too far.

Whether you’re photographing family, clients, or friends, these are the ideas I come back to every time I pick up the camera.

Watch the short promo below where I’ll tell you more about it, then get more info and watch the class here.

Hope you’ll check it out!

The post What Makes a Great Portrait? appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.

So this Wednesday, I’m doing a FREE live webinar where I’ll share some of the shortcuts, techniques, and lessons that can help you skip a lot of the frustration and start getting stronger images sooner.

If you’ve ever felt like you’re learning everything the hard way, this one’s for you.

It’s happening this Wednesday, August 12 at 2:00 PM EDT, and it’s completely free.

Check out the short preview below, then grab your spot here. I’d love to see you there!

The post Want to Get Better at Photography Faster? Join Me This Wednesday appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.

While every image received practical feedback, one lesson surfaced throughout the show: editing can’t completely overcome poor light. Scott repeatedly demonstrated how strong lighting choices in the field make every Lightroom adjustment more effective.

On the editing side, viewers got a look at several useful Lightroom and Photoshop techniques, including the new masking feather controls for smoother selections, isolating a subject to create a more pleasing background blur, subtle portrait refinements with Liquify, and a variety of approaches for rescuing challenging images without making them look overprocessed.

There were plenty of laughs mixed in, a quick burger update, and a reminder that the strongest travel photographs don’t simply document a location—they create an image that makes someone want to be there.

Watch the replay below and pick up a few new editing ideas for your next shoot.

The post This Week on The Grid: Blind Photo Critiques & Smarter Lightroom Edits appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.

In this guest post, KelbyOne instructor Dennis Dunbar shares a clever Photoshop technique for reusing the natural shadows already captured in your original images. It’s a simple workflow that can make your composites look more realistic with very little extra effort.

Steal That Shadow!

Making a convincing composite comes down to three things: matching perspective, color, and lighting. And nothing sells the lighting like a believable shadow. The problem is that adding shadows convincingly is hard. You’re essentially playing physicist—figuring out the right angle, the correct falloff, how the shadow interacts with the surface beneath it. Get any of that wrong and the whole image reads as fake. But sometimes you get lucky. Sometimes the shadow you need is already sitting right there in the original photo.

The Project 

Photographer Anthony Nex shot six colored razors—each one captured separately on a white background. He brought them to me to be composited into one seamless image. Selecting and masking each razor was straightforward. Positioning them to build the composition we were after was straightforward. The part that made or broke the image was the shadows.

As it turned out, the answer was already in the photos.

The Approach

Each razor had been shot with its natural shadow intact. All we needed to do was separate that shadow from the white background and bring it into the composite. The technique that makes this work is a Blending Mode—specifically Darken—combined with a Curves adjustment layer clipped to each shadow layer.

Here’s how the layers were structured: the six razors live in one layer group. Below that sits a Shadows group, where each shadow layer is simply a duplicate of its matching razor layer.

Why Darken Works

The Darken blending mode compares pixels between layers and keeps whichever is darker. Critically, pure white has no effect on the image at all—it just drops out. That’s the key to this whole technique.

Multiply works on a similar principle and is worth trying as well. When you’re experimenting, test both and see which gives you the cleaner result for your particular image.

Forcing the Background to White

Here’s the catch: a “white” background from a studio shot is rarely pure white. There’s almost always some gray in there—subtle, but enough to leave a muddy residue across your composite if you don’t deal with it.

The fix is a Curves adjustment layer clipped directly to each shadow layer. Drag the white Input slider to the left until those near-white values clip to pure white. Now when Darken evaluates those pixels, it sees white, ignores them, and only the actual shadow—and the razor itself—shows up in the composite.

I prefer Curves for this because I can see exactly what’s happening, but Levels will get you to the same place.

Cleaning the Edges

The last step is adding a layer mask to each shadow layer. Even with the Curves adjustment doing its job, shadow edges from a studio shot can have a slight boundary that doesn’t quite blend at the perimeter. A soft mask painted at the edges keeps everything looking natural and eliminates any telltale line where the layer ends.

It Works on Any Background

White on white is the easy case to imagine, but this technique isn’t limited to it. The same setup—Darken or Multiply blending, a clipped Curves layer pushing the background values to white, a soft edge mask—works against any color background.

To demonstrate, here’s the same composite placed against a blue background. The shadows read just as naturally. The Darken mode doesn’t know or care what color is underneath it; it’s only making a tonal comparison, pixel by pixel.

One note for non-white original backgrounds: add a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer (also clipped to the shadow layer) and desaturate fully before running the Curves step. You need the background to be neutral gray before you push it to white; otherwise you’ll get color contamination in your shadows.

The Takeaway

When a photographer shoots product on a plain background, that shadow is a gift—real light, real falloff, real contact with a real surface. No painted shadow is going to beat it. The next time you’re building a composite and the original shot includes a shadow, don’t throw it away. With the right blending mode and a clipped adjustment layer, you can put it right to work.

If you’d like to take your compositing skills even further, be sure to check out Dennis’ full KelbyOne class, How to Build Believable Composites in Photoshop.

You can purchase this class for just $39, or subscribe to KelbyOne and get access to this course plus our entire library for only $19.99 a month. Try it risk-free with our 100% money-back guarantee.

The post Steal That Shadow! A Simple Trick for More Believable Composites appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.

A few years ago, I taught this class at a conference in Los Angeles, and one of the Big Thinkers organizers happened to be in the audience. They told me afterward it was one of the most useful sessions they’d attended, and now they’ve invited me to bring it to their professional development event at Disney Springs.

This isn’t a session about creating flashy slides or memorizing a script. It’s about connecting with your audience, keeping people engaged, and delivering presentations with more confidence and less stress. Whether you’re speaking to a room full of people, leading a workshop, teaching a class, or giving presentations at work, I’ll be sharing the practical techniques I’ve learned from spending decades on stage.

I recorded the short video below to give you a preview of what I’ll be covering and why I think this session is different from most presentation training.

If you’re planning to attend the Big Thinkers Conference, I hope you’ll join me. I’d love to see you there.

You can learn more about the conference here.

The post I’m Teaching “How to Present Like a Pro” at the Big Thinkers Conference This Fall appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.

In this new class, Erik Kuna shows how to approach your iPhone the same way you would a traditional mirrorless camera, taking control of the decisions that go into creating the photograph instead of simply letting the phone figure everything out.

You’ll learn how to lock focus and exposure, choose the right lens instead of pinching to zoom, understand when ProRAW is worth the extra file size, and take control of Night mode, macro, and long exposures. Erik also shares useful shortcuts and walks through a straightforward editing workflow from Apple Photos to Lightroom Mobile.

If you already carry your iPhone everywhere, this class will help you get a whole lot more from the camera that’s always with you.

Watch it here!

You can purchase this class for just $39, or subscribe to KelbyOne and get access to this course plus our entire library for only $19.99 a month. Try it risk-free with our 100% money-back guarantee.

The post How to Treat Your iPhone as a Professional Mirrorless Camera with Erik Kuna appeared first on Lightroom Killer Tips.