Composing in Lightroom
Adobe Lightroom offers several compositional guides to help you create well-balanced and visually appealing compositions. These guides can help you align elements, balance the frame, and achieve a more pleasing overall look to your photos. Below I explain some of the key compositional guides available and how to access them.
The composition guides are part of the Crop Tool in the Develop Module. After selecting the crop tool you can cycle through the different compositional guides by pressing the O key on your keyboard.
Rule of Thirds Grid
This guide divides the frame into a 3x3 grid, helping you align your subject along the gridlines or their intersections.
The rule of thirds is a basic principle in photography and visual design that divides an image into nine equal parts using two horizontal and two vertical lines. The idea is to place the most important elements in your composition along these lines or at their intersections. By doing this, the composition becomes balanced and visually appealing.
Golden Ratio Grid
This is similar to the Rule of Thirds grid but uses the golden ratio (approximately 1.618) for more aesthetically pleasing compositions.
Photographers, artists and designers use the golden ratio to create visually pleasing and harmonious proportions in their work. By using this ratio, the image is divided into aesthetically pleasing proportions, which many believed to be naturally appealing to the human eye. The golden ratio is widely used to create balanced and visually appealing compositions in photography, artwork and design.
Aspect Ratio Overlay
This guide simply helps you visualize different aspect ratios, aiding composing for your specific photo size.
When the crop tool is active you can choose which aspect ratios are displayed by going to Tools > Crop Guide Overlay > Choose Aspect Ratios and selecting your favourites. The guide can be switched between landscape and portrait by pressing SHIFT+O.
Grid Overlays
The two Grid overlays add a simple grid on the image, allowing you to align elements horizontally and vertically.
Diagonal Overlay
This guide adds diagonal lines to the frame, helping in aligning elements diagonally for dynamic compositions.
The Golden Spiral
Also known as the Fibonacci Spiral or Golden Ratio Spiral, is a compositional guide derived from the Fibonacci sequence. The Fibonacci sequence is a series of numbers where each number is the sum of the two preceding ones (0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, and so on).
In composition, this spiral is often used as a guideline for placing elements within an image. It's believed that this spiral and its proportions can create a visually appealing and balanced composition. Some artists and designers use it to position focal points or elements of interest within their work, aligning them along or near the curve of the spiral.
The guide can be rotated by pressing SHIFT+O.
Golden Triangle
The Golden Triangle draws diagonal lines from one corner of the frame to the opposite side, creating triangular areas of interest within the image. These lines intersect with the horizontal and vertical thirds, forming three triangular sections in the frame.
Placing subjects, objects, or points of interest within these areas can help draw the viewer's eye and create a sense of balance, harmony, and visual flow within the composition.
The guide can be rotated by pressing SHIFT+O.
Artistic composition
By utilizing these compositional guides in Adobe Lightroom, you can enhance the visual impact of your photographs and create more compelling compositions. Remember that these features are available in the Develop module of Lightroom, so make sure you're in the correct module to access these tools.
by Mark Playle - PhotographFrance.com
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