How are your Lightroom skills? Do you make your photos shine, or do you spoil them with your heavy-handed technique? Could you even tell the difference? Browse through any online photo-sharing site and you'll see the same mistakes made again and again: poor exposure, too much saturation, dodgy HDR, and more.

They're all easy to avoid, but only if you can recognize them in the first place. Let's take a look at 10 of the worst Lightroom mistakes you need to avoid.

This guide works for both Lightroom (previously known as Lightroom CC) and Lightroom Classic. We'll highlight any differences between the apps so that it doesn't matter which one you use.

1. Not Straightening the Horizon

There's no more obvious sign of a throwaway snapshot than a crooked horizon, and it should be the first thing you fix in Lightroom.

Straight lines look more pleasing, and sometimes straightening them is a simple matter of logic. As a general rule, you should always straighten the horizon in landscapes—especially if your shot features the sea, since the sea doesn't flow downhill.

straighten the horizon in lightroom

When there's no obvious horizon, like in an architectural shot or an indoor portrait, look for things like frames, shelves, roofs, and so on, and straighten them either horizontally or vertically.

  • In Lightroom Classic, select the Crop tool, then the Straighten Tool located alongside the Angle slider. Now draw a line on your image along the horizon. The image will rotate so that the horizon line is now completely straight. Note that the corners of the image will get cropped when you do this.
  • For Lightroom CC, just select Crop & Rotate and drag the Straighten slider. The Auto tool also does a good job here.

And what if you deliberately wanted askew angles? Make it so that it's obviously deliberate. Being one degree off looks like a mistake, while 15 degrees looks more like artful photo composition.

2. Ignoring the Histogram

You should always keep your monitor calibrated when you're processing your photos. If your monitor is set too bright or too dark it's very difficult to judge the correct exposure levels. That's especially true if you're only going by eye, as many users do.

The easy way to avoid this problem is to use the histogram for guidance. It'll show you if your shot is overexposed, underexposed, or if the highlights or shadows are being clipped.

It can also alert you to a poorly calibrated monitor. If the histogram indicates a balanced exposure, but your eyes are telling you to make the shot darker, it can be a sign that your monitor's brightness level is set too high.

how to read the histogram in lightroom

This is vital when you're planning on printing your photos. One of the most common complaints is that the prints come out too dark, and it's almost always a result of us having our monitors set too bright.

Ironically, it's easy to ignore the histogram in Lightroom CC because it's hidden by default. Go to View > Edit Panels > Histogram to turn it on. We'd recommend leaving it visible all the time.

3. Using Too Much Clarity

The Clarity slider is everyone's go-to tool for adding punch to an image. Clarity is a variation on the contrast tool that focuses on the midtones. It helps bring out detail and texture without affecting the image's highlight and shadow areas. The effect is similar to sharpening, and using too much Clarity is often confused with over-sharpening (which we'll come to later).

using too much clarity in lightroom

Clarity used to be a very blunt instrument that would create harsh edges and halo effects around objects. It has improved a lot in recent versions of Lightroom, but the effect of too much Clarity is still obvious from a mile off.

So while a little Clarity is almost always a good thing, steer clear of dragging it all the way to +100. Better yet, use the Masking option, select Brush, and adjust the Clarity level. You can now paint clarity into specific parts of the photo. You can use it to make a model's eyes pop, for instance, while applying it to their skin would only enhance any wrinkles or other blemishes.

4. Making the Skin Too Soft

Moving the Clarity slider too far to the right is bad, but so is sliding it too far to the left. Negative clarity is frequently used to smooth skin, but if you go too far you end up making your subject look like they were carved out of a block of wax.

The best way to do it in either version of Lightroom is to select Masking then click on People and wait for the software to automatically detect the faces in the image (it happens quickly for portraits).

Now click on a Person and select Face Skin from the list. Now zoom in and start dragging the Clarity slider to the left until you see wrinkles and other blemishes start to smooth over, but not so far that you lose all texture in the skin.

Above, you can see the difference. On the left, we have just enough softening. On the right, we have too much, and the effect is quite obvious.

5. Adding Too Much Color

Lightroom has two basic tools for working with color.

  • Saturation adjusts every color in the image by the same amount. It should be used very sparingly.
  • Vibrance adjusts colors based on how much of each color is already in the image, raising the vividness of the least saturated colors while leaving the most saturated ones alone.
too much vibrance and saturation in lightroom

You'll get better results by using Vibrance rather than Saturation as it's more controlled and understated. Yet it's still possible to go too far—it's just a small step along the slider from "bright and sunny" to "radioactive."

A simple trick to avoid overdoing it is to set the Vibrance slider to whatever level you think you're happy with, then immediately tone it down by 10 or 15 points. You'll barely notice the difference, and it certainly won't hurt your photo.

6. Making Bad HDRs

HDR photography is as popular as ever, especially now that smartphone cameras do it almost by default. High dynamic range increases the amount of detail in both the shadow and highlight areas of an image. It's particularly effective for high-contrast scenes that your camera would normally struggle to expose correctly.

But there's a right way and a wrong way to do it, and in Lightroom, it's very easy to get it wrong.

Pull down the Highlights slider, crank up the shadows, add some Clarity and Vibrance, and you might end up with something like this:

bad hdr in lightroom

Yeah, don't do that. If you like the HDR effect, take a bit of time to learn how to do it properly. The best method is to plan ahead and use exposure bracketing to create HDR images in-camera. You can produce some striking results while still managing to retain a natural look.

7. Over-Sharpening Your Photos

Every image from a digital camera needs sharpening. When you shoot in JPEG the camera software will sharpen the image automatically (although you may still need to add more in post). When shooting in RAW you need to add it when processing the photo.

Too much sharpening, however, is a bad thing. It produces harsh, ugly outlines, adds halos around the edge of objects, creates a painterly effect in detailed areas like foliage, and can also exacerbate noise in high ISO images.

avoid oversharpening photos in lightroom

There are three things you can do to improve your sharpening:

  • Zoom in to 200%. Sharpening is more powerful than it may appear, and the effect may not be immediately noticeable when zoomed out.
  • Use the Masking option. In Lightroom Classic, add some sharpening, then hold the Alt or Option key and drag the Masking slider to the right. The white bits will be sharpened, the black areas won't. This enables you to limit sharpening to only edges and textures while leaving alone smooth areas like the sky.
    use masking when sharpening in lightroom
  • Paint it in. In either version of Lightroom, select Masking > Brush. Set the Sharpening level, then start painting over the areas you want to sharpen. You can adjust the level again to increase or decrease the effect.

Sharpening cannot fix blurry images. If your camera missed focus, or if there's motion blur caused by slow shutter speeds, then no amount of sharpening will help. In fact, it will probably make it worse. Either embrace the softness or just delete the photo.

8. Overdoing the Effects

Lightroom has a lot of effects that can improve and enhance a photo, but use them in a heavy-handed way and they end up looking amateurish.

One prime example is the Vignette tool. You can use it to subtly draw the viewer's eye toward a particular part of the image, but it can also make your photo look like it was shot with a very cheap lens, or even like a still from an old silent movie.

overdoing the effects in lightroom

Unless you're deliberately going for the vintage look, set the Feather slider to around 80–100 and keep the Vignette or Amount lower than you'd expect. The effect is a lot stronger than it initially looks—around -10 to -20 is often enough.

A similar principle applies to the Linear Gradient too (or Graduated Filter as it used to be known). It's great for darkening or adding drama to bright skies, but it can go wrong. For a natural look make sure you use a larger, smooth gradient, rather than a shorter, more abrupt one that will look fake.

9. Creating Noise Through Over-Processing

One of the most unpleasant side effects of many of the above mistakes is that they can seriously degrade the quality of your photos. Lightening the exposure, lifting the shadows, increasing saturation, or even cropping too heavily can all cause noise to become prominent, even if there was no noise visible in the image to begin with.

You'll find things can go downhill fast when you're working with a JPEG or a high-ISO shot (or, worst of all, a high-ISO JPEG).

paint out noise in lightroom

If you do find yourself with an image that's noisier than you'd like you can try and tame it. Go to Masking > Brush and set a level of noise reduction, then paint over a part of the image where you want to minimize noise. You can then repeat the step, creating another mask but this time setting the noise reduction level to a lower or higher number.

This enables you to apply different levels of noise reduction to different parts of the image. For example, a clear blue sky can withstand very heavy noise reduction, while a smaller textured area should be treated more lightly so you don't lose detail.

But the best solution is to avoid creating noise in the first place.

10. Cropping to the Wrong Shape

Our final mistake mostly applies to those photos you're planning to print. It's tempting to freely crop an image to remove unwanted objects and to improve the framing. But it can bring unexpected problems.

crop photos to the right shape and size

When you're using online photo printing services and buying ready-made frames, you're limited to a set number of standard sizes and aspect ratios. Even printing and framing a seemingly standard 16-inch by 9-inch image can be a challenge.

Lightroom's Crop tool has a bunch of presets that correspond to the most common printing ratios, like 1 x 1, 10 x 8, and 7 x 5. Stick to these if you're intending to print.

Keep It Subtle to Avoid Lightroom Mistakes

It's easy to make mistakes in Lightroom. You become so focused on the job that you all sense of perspective, cranking the sliders higher and higher without realizing the real effect it's having on your photos.

Ideally, photo processing should be invisible. The more you do, the better it needs to be. By being aware of some of the pitfalls of Lightroom processing, you're now better placed to spot them and avoid them next time.