Getting started in Radiant Photo opens up the door to quick and stunning edits powered by personalized AI. In this article I’m going to show you how to get started in Radiant Photo when you’re used to a Lightroom Classic workflow.
Radiant Photo plays nicely with all the other kids. It can be used as a stand-alone program delivering fully-finished photos quickly. Or, you can use it for specific problem-solving within your editing workflow.
Similarities and differences in Radiant Photo compared to Lightroom Classic
When you’re used to Lightroom Classic (LrC), Radiant Photo will be familiar in some ways. In both programs:
- You can start with basic edits in the Quick Edit (Radiant Photo) or Quick Develop (LrC)
- You progress to more advanced edits in Detailed Edit (Radiant Photo) or Develop (LrC)
- Changes to one photo can be synced across the filmstrip to batch process images
- You can save presets for your favorite settings to reuse over and over
Some of the major differences are:
- Radiant Photo has Smart Presets which detect the image content and adapt to the specific image
- You can save your own Smart Presets that use scene detection to suggest a best recipe for your photo, which you can then adjust and save for next time
- Radiant Photo is an editor, not a catalog, so edits are baked into a new exported file, not stored in Radiant Photo
- Radiant Photo separates presets into Smart Presets, Presets, and LOOKs: Smart Presets and Presets control development settings while LOOKs control color grading
- Location of some common adjustments are in different places from app to app
Because you can use Radiant Photo to solve photo problems quickly, it works well as part of a Lightroom Classic workflow. Here I’m using Radiant Photo to solve the problem of soft focus around the eyes of some lifestyle portraits. In the before/after photos that follow, the before photos are given basic edits in Lightroom Classic before sending to Radiant Photo to fix focus and enhance details.
Opening photos in Radiant Photo from Lightroom Classic
To start working with your photos in Radiant Photo from Lightroom Classic, the Edit In menu is your friend! Lightroom Classic hands off your original or a copy of it to Radiant Photo. When working with RAW files, you can only hand off a copy, which preserves your originals safely.
The first time you open a file from Lightroom Classic in Radiant Photo, you should create a new Edit in Radiant Photo preset for Lightroom Classic. This is a powerful way to choose what gets handed over to Radiant Photo.
Create a new Edit In template by going to:
Preferences > External Editing > Additional External Editor > Choose
Navigate to where your Radiant Photo app is stored (see here for where it’ll be on Windows and macOS). After selecting the app:
Preset > Save Current Settings as New Preset …
Give your preset a name (like Radiant Photo 16 bit TIF). I set the resolution to 300 dpi and choose 16 bit for best quality. When you next go to use your Edit In menu, the new preset will be ready to use.
Understanding where things are in Radiant Photo compared to Lightroom Classic
Radiant Photo will open with the file you’re just sent over, and immediately apply Smart Edits to make your photo radiant. For more on editing photos have a look at this article.
The key things to remember when coming from Lightroom Classic to editing in Radiant Photo is that you have control over the levels of editing separately.
First, start with the Quick Edit and Detailed Edit
First, in Quick Edit and Detailed Edit, you are essentially developing the photo negative. You are taking the RAW photo and making it into a beautiful, developed photo. This is quick and adaptable with the Smart Editing tools and the Smart Presets. The Presets are also there to use as needed (these are essentially like Presets in Lightroom Classic; they have no AI Scene detection).
Smart Presets in Radiant Photo have AI Scene detection and each collection of Smart Presets works as a group. Think of them like a recipe book and each recipe is for a different course of the meal. In other words, the Radiant Photo — Pro Smart Presets collection is one recipe book. The Radiant Photo — Subtle collection is another recipe book. You can only cook with one recipe book at a time. If you’re going to have French cuisine for entree and main, you’ll have French for dessert, too.
All the individual Smart Presets (Landscape, People, etc) are, then, recipes for different sets of ingredients. Photo has newborn babies in it? Then you need to cook the photo with the Newborn & Baby recipe. How you cook the photo depends on which recipe book you’ve chosen. The way one book cooks up Landscapes is different to how another book cooks up a Landscape!
The key thing is that your Smart Preset recipe book will cook up all the courses of your meal in a coherent way. So, your landscapes, people photos, and newborn photos will all match in style when developed.
Next, adjust the look of the photo with Radiant Photo Color Grade LOOKs
Next, after you have developed your photo, you can add some flavor to the image with LOOKs in the Color Grade panel. Continuing my recipe book analogy, these are like spices, sauces and dressings. No matter the recipe you’ve used: Add tomato sauce to your vegetable soup, if you must!
LOOKs are just like that. They apply independently to Smart Presets or Presets, so you can cook and then garnish separately. This is different to Lightroom where Presets cover everything from basic editing to color tone. LOOKs are a great way to add emotional impact to your photos.
Finally, finish things off with the familiar basic sliders
Alright, let’s abandon the cooking analogy now and get back to photos. Radiant Photo compared to Lightroom Classic has a different location for the familiar basic editing sliders. You’ll find Color Temp (aka white balance), Tint, Exposure, Contrast, Highlights, Shadows, Whites, Blacks, Vibrance and Saturation in the Color Grade panel.
Lightroom Classic puts all these as the first port of call in the Basic panel. However, in Radiant Photo, the smart tools come first. The goal of Radiant Photo is to get your photo 90-100% perfect without having to fiddle with the sliders.
If you do find that you need to tweak something, however, the sliders are in Color Grade:
Color Grade > Crosshair icon > Finishing Tools
Finishing photos in Lightroom Classic after editing in Radiant Photo
Hit the Save button in the top left to export your photo. Similar to Lightroom Classic’s Export tool, you can choose file type, where to save it, and what it’s called. If you’re heading back into Lightroom for any final finishing tasks, save it as a TIFF to preserve as much image quality as possible.
I choose to save my edited TIFF as a new file, which means I have three copies of the file:
- The original RAW file (already in Lightroom Classic)
- The TIFF file created with Lightroom adjustments, which was handed over to Radiant Photo when I started editing
- The finished TIFF file which has my Radiant Photo edits
I then import my edited TIFF back into Lightroom Classic for final processing and to keep my catalog complete.
Usually for me, final steps are exporting for client delivery or publishing on SlickPic. Depending on your workflow, Radiant Photo’s Save step might be the last step in your process.
Using Radiant Photo as part of your editing workflow
When you’re used to Lightroom Classic, Radiant Photo is a familiar workspace with some key differences. Knowing that presets are divided into Smart Presets, Presets and LOOKs is important to remember, as is where to find those familiar basics like Color Temp, Tint, Highlights and Shadows (remember, Color Grade > Finishing Tools is where you’ll find these).
Using Radiant Photo as a tool in your Lightroom Classic workflow is an effective way to solve photo problems quickly. It lets you take advantage of the advanced AI tools built in under the hood in Radiant Photo, while keeping everything connected in the familiar Creative Cloud ecosystem.