5 mind-blowing things you can do with video in Lightroom Classic

Colin Smith

Subscribe on YouTube:

A lot of people don’t realize that you can edit video in Lightroom. You can do so much more than that. This Lightroom Classic tutorial shows you lots of things you can do with video in Lightroom. First of all, you can organize all your video and color grade, use presets, trim and edit, even combine videos together and add music.

Here are the things that you will learn in this Lightroom 6/ CC tutorial.

1. How to color grade video in Lightroom
2. Use presets on video in Lightroom
3. How to make photos from video
4. How to trim videos
5. How to combine videos into a video edit in Lightroom.

I really hope you enjoyed this tutorial, here are the promised links and resources

Video in Lightroom – 5 Mind-blowing Things You Can Do

Just recently, I did 7 tips on Lightroom and a lot of people were surprised that you can do Color Grading on video in Lightroom. Well, you can actually do a lot more. You can even do full-fledged video editing. And in this tutorial, I’m going to show you exactly how. (I’m not saying that Lightroom should be used as an alternative to Premiere Pro  for editing, because it shouldn’t, you can also do a LOT of things with video in Photoshop)

1. Color Grading Video in Lightroom

The first thing I’m going to show you is how to apply a color grade to video.

With a video clip selected choose the Develop Module and notice what happens “video is not supported in Develop Module.”

Lightroom Develop module showing Video is not supported in Develop

Here’s a workaround:

Go to the Library and choose the video clip.

See this little gear at the bottom? Click to expand and show the options.

Gear icon on the Lightroom video playback bar

Click the Capture Frame button and a photograph will be created right next to the video (If you just imported the video, make sure you are in the “All photos” and not “previous Import” at the top of the library panel or you won’t see the image).

Capture Frame chosen from the video gear menu

With the photograph selected go to the Develop Module and apply all the adjustments you like. (Certain ones like lens correction and clarity won’t transfer across, but most will).

Captured photo frame shown beside the video clip in the filmstrip

 

Lightroom Basic panel with Temp +8, Contrast +60 and Clarity +23 on the frame

Go back to the Library panel

Select both the photo and the video, by holding don’t the Cmd/Ctrl key and clicking on the video. Click on Sync Settings and then click Synchronize.

Aerial video of two drag racing cars at Barona Dragstrip in Lightroom

Sync Settings button at the bottom of the Lightroom panel

Synchronize Settings dialog with white balance, tone and color options checked

All available settings from the photograph are now going to be copied over to the video.

Drag strip video before the color grade

To recap: We have just used a photo from the video to make adjustments and then passed them back to the video.

 

2. Applying Presets to Video in Lightroom

All right, let’s move on to the second thing. Creating a cinematic look that we can reuse.

Capture a frame, just like we did in the first tip and  go into the Develop Module. Let’s make a classic Cinematic look.

Drag strip video after syncing the photo's settings

Choose the Split tone  panel.

Add a yellow-orange  color in the highlights and a  teal color in the shadows.

You won’t see anything happen until you turn up the saturation a little bit in both the Shadows and highlights.

Split Toning sliders giving the drag strip frame a teal and orange grade

Choose the basic adjustments and crush the blacks a little bit and we’re also going to pull down the Vibrance just a little bit. Give it a touch of clarity and we have a cinematic look.

Basic panel crushing the blacks for a cinematic look

We’re going to save these settings as a preset and then we can use them again.

Go over to the Preset folder and click the + (plus) button and choose a folder (create a new one if you want to)  name the new preset, here I called it “Faded cine.” Click on Create. Done.

Presets panel plus button beside the Drone preset folder New Develop Preset dialog naming the preset faded cine in the Drone folder

Go back to the Library module and select a video.

Simply go up under the Saved Preset option, choose the folder we want, and click on a preset. It will be applied to the video and we are good to go! That easy.

Quick Develop Saved Preset menu applying faded cine to the video

If we want to remove the preset,  right-click and choose Develop Settings>Reset

 

3. Making a photo from video in Lightroom

We want to grab a still frame from video. The best and easiest way of doing this is actually from Lightroom, because it takes the actual frame from the video and not just a screen capture. (We have already done this in the the previous 2 tips).

So here we are; yes, this is the Batmobile. It was a wedding that I shot recently and the guy actually owns this now.

Batmobile parked on a lawn beside a white tent in a drone video

Find the frame we want. We move up to the frame and you can move up to the frame and you can move back and forth frame by frame there to find exactly the frame you want.

Capture Frame chosen at 0:57 in the Batmobile clip

Click on here and choose Capture Frame. Now, we’ve actually taken a photograph from that video frame.

Go into our Develop Module is to all the goodness we normally would. We can up the shadows a little bit, give it a punch of clarity; maybe bring that saturation down a little tad there. Give it a boost of contrast and let’s crop it a little bit. So let’s go down there. Boom and voila, now we’ve got a photograph there from the video.

Batmobile frame edited in the Lightroom Develop module

4. Trim video in Lightroom

All right, let’s look at another thing now. This is going to be our fourth thing that we can do here. Okay, this one is really going to blow your mind. What I’m going to do is I’m actually going to edit video. So, we’re going to trim this video and put it together into a video clip directly here within Lightroom.

Overhead drone video of a waterfall pouring into a jungle pool

All right, so maybe if you’re starting to think, “Wow, I don’t even realize you could do these kind of things,” I have a ton more. I have a video course. It’s called Lightroom for Digital Photographers. That’s at PhotoshopCAFE. Check the link at the bottom (also limited time special offer). It’s a 13-hour course. You might want to check that out. It’s full of stuff like this.

To set the in point, drag the left of the video timeline towards the right.

Video trim handle dragged on the timeline at 0:24

And then, let’s set the out point.  of the video (where it will end), Drag the handle on the right towards the left.

Trimmed waterfall clip with the out point set

The thumbnail will reflect the new duration (11 seconds). Don’t worry, you can bring back the video any time by sliding the handles back, nothing is lost or deleted, its just hidden.

Filmstrip thumbnails showing the trimmed clip durations 0:11 and 1:29

Here, I am trimming 2 more clips.

Coastal waterfall plunging into the ocean, a second clip being trimmed
Overhead drone clip of a dense green forest being trimmed

And now we’ve got those three clips right there.

5. Combining Videos in Lightroom

Now, we want to turn these into an actual video, so we’re going to put these in sequence right here all within Lightroom. It’s pretty amazing.

Select the videos that you want to assemble. Make sure you trim them like we did in the previous tip.

Filmstrip with the trimmed video clips selected

Go into the Slide Show module. (You guessed it, Slideshows support video)

In the bottom Instead of “All Film Strip”, we’re going to choose the “selected photos” and now, it’s only going to use the selected videos.

On the left top window you will see slide show  presets.  So you might see something like this…

Lightroom Slideshow module with the forest clip on the slide

Choose Crop to Fill under the template browser,

Template Browser with Crop To Fill chosen

Forest clip filling the whole slide

and turn off any of the overlays. So, if you have any text overlays or anything like that, we’re going to turn those off.

Slideshow Overlays panel with identity plate and watermark turned off

If you want to add music, we can actually do that. We can go in under music, click the + (plus) button and navigate to a song on your computer.

Slideshow Music panel showing No music selected

To test the slideshow, hit Preview. Now, we can watch as we play the slide show.

Preview and Play buttons at the bottom of the Slideshow module

Waterfall clip playing in the Lightroom slideshow preview

When you’re done you need to export it as a video. You choose Slide Show>Export Video slide show (choose the size) and you can export it as a video right there. And then, when you do that, you’ve got a video!

Slideshow menu with Export Video Slideshow highlighted

I hope you enjoyed this and find it useful!

Add a comment. Let’s get a discussion going and until next time, I’ll see you at the Cafe.

See you next week!

Colin


Follow along for more tips

Recommended for this tutorial

Learn Masks in Lightroom and Camera RAW

Make precise local adjustments in Lightroom and Camera Raw with every type of mask.

$59.99 · one-time purchase · instant download

Photoshop Vault: free Layer Blend Modes ebook, actions, brushes, presets and cheat sheets

Free for you

The Photoshop Vault

Get my free Layer Blending Modes ebook along with dozens of exclusive Photoshop goodies: actions, brushes, presets and cheat sheets.

You're on the list, so your free goodies are waiting for you in the Vault.

Get Free Photoshop Goodies Open the Vault

19 comments

  1. Kenton Cornelson

    Love it, much faster than using Photoshop and Camera Raw. However, does not appear to export 4K edited.

  2. Franco

    Hi, it appears that most sync settings are grayed out when trying to sync, as if you could only paste color grading settings but not clarity or sharpen adjustments?

    1. Colin Smith Author

      This is correct, only color and tone settings can be applied to video

  3. Heidi

    does the new version of lightroom cc still allow these edits? i can’t seem to go into develop mode or capture a screen.

    1. Colin Smith Author

      Yes, Lightroom Classic is the one you want to be using

  4. Andrew

    Yes, But how can I get Lightroom Classic to actually show my imported videos up the right way??? They all play upside down (even though every other app plays them the right way up) and neither Adobe or any forum has the solution to this obvious bug!!! If you can solve this you will be a bona fide genius!

  5. Ellen Tramley Seymour

    I have been trying this and was doing great with caturing the pics,but somehow when I am trying to play the video in slideshow it will only show the photos form the video,or won’t play the music. Any help would be appreciated.

  6. Beth Ann Mathews

    Thank you, Colin! This tutorial was excellent. I especially appreciate knowing how to trim and join video clips and export them.

  7. Gail Goldey

    The first tip is brilliant. Just got back from Africa with a bunch of not-so-perfect videos, most of which just need a touch of Develop. Thanks, Colin!

  8. Justin P Brown

    In LR6 I have applied some changes (basic tone, white balance, split tone, b&w) to a video that show when I play it in the library module, but they do not appear on the exported video. Is there something I have missed?

  9. Nicole Wanunu

    Hi I’m not sure how to get my downloaded presets to Lightroom. Can you please help me

    1. Colin Smith Author

      Look for my tutorial on Lightroom presets. You can see it under free tutorials, Lightroom

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Copy link