What Scott Kelby and Erik Kuna's Live Edits Taught Me About Trusting the Problem First

There is a specific kind of paralysis that hits when you open a raw file and the image could go in five different directions. I know this feeling well. Before I start any composite, the background plate has to be right, and “right” is rarely obvious from a flat, unedited raw. I have watched plenty of polished tutorials that show you a finished look and work backward. What I find more useful, and what I keep coming back to, is watching experienced editors make live decisions on images they have never seen before. That is the real skill: reading a photo cold and knowing where to push it.

In this KelbyOne tutorial, Scott Kelby and Erik Kuna do exactly that. The episode is part of their ongoing “How Would I Edit Your Photo?” series, where viewers submit unedited raw and JPEG files and the hosts process them on air in Lightroom, Photoshop, and whatever else the image demands. Watch the full tutorial on YouTube. What makes this format valuable is that you see the hesitation, the course corrections, and the reasoning out loud. That is the part most tutorials edit out.

The June Lightroom update had just dropped the day this episode was recorded, so the conversation also touches on new features Kelby was preparing to cover in a separate live webinar with Adobe’s Terry White. One of those features is something Kelby describes as something photographers have been waiting for across the entire history of the software. That context matters because the workflow they demonstrate here is current, not a legacy approach built around workarounds that have since been replaced.

Step 1: Assess the Raw File Before Touching a Single Slider

Unedited raw image open in Lightroom before any adjustments Before Kelby or Kuna reach for exposure or white balance, they look. This sounds obvious but it is the step most people skip. The question they are answering is not “how do I fix this” but “what is this photo trying to be?” A raw file fresh off a camera is a starting point, not a problem. Training yourself to see the latent image inside the flat file is the actual skill that separates editors who chase settings from editors who chase a result.

Spend thirty seconds asking: where is the light source, what is the subject doing, and what is the mood the photographer was after? Every slider decision that follows should be in service of that read.

Step 2: Establish the Tonal Foundation in Lightroom Classic

Lightroom Classic panel with exposure and tone sliders visible Kelby’s approach in Lightroom Classic starts with the broad strokes of exposure, then works toward contrast. The goal at this stage is not a finished look. It is a clean, balanced file that gives you room to push in either direction. He avoids overcooking the highlights early, which is a habit worth building if you plan to bring the image into Photoshop afterward. Crushed highlights in Lightroom are gone permanently. Pulled-back highlights give you something to work with in masking and compositing later.

Contrast comes next, but with restraint. The Tone Curve is more surgical than the Contrast slider, and for any image that is going to be composited or have elements placed into it, surgical is what you want. The histogram should breathe, not spike at either wall.

Step 3: Address Color with White Balance and HSL

HSL panel open with hue and saturation sliders adjusted Color grading in this workflow is not about making the image look dramatic. It is about making it look real. Kelby treats white balance as a corrective first, then evaluates whether a slight creative push serves the image. The HSL panel is where the specificity happens. Rather than warming or cooling the whole image, you can isolate individual hues, push the luminance of a sky without blowing the clouds, or drop the saturation of a distracting background color without affecting skin tone.

For compositing work specifically, I use this stage to match the color temperature of a background plate to whatever foreground subject I am planning to place into it. Getting that agreement at the raw stage saves you from chasing it with Color Balance layers in Photoshop, which always feels like patching a leak rather than designing a system.

Step 4: Use Lightroom’s Masking Tools for Local Adjustments

Lightroom masking panel with subject mask applied The masking tools in current versions of Lightroom are genuinely powerful, and this is one of the areas where the June update made a meaningful difference. Kelby demonstrates using subject and sky detection to apply targeted adjustments that would have required a trip to Photoshop in previous versions of the workflow. Brightening a face without touching the background, adding clarity to a subject’s eyes, pulling down a distracting sky independently of the foreground, all of this now lives inside Lightroom.

The practical benefit is speed, but the deeper benefit is non-destructive flexibility. If the client comes back three weeks later and wants the sky two stops brighter, you adjust the mask. You are not rasterizing and repainting. That matters whether you are a portrait photographer or someone like me who is using the base image as a layer inside a larger composite.

Step 5: Export with the End Use in Mind

Export dialog with format and resolution settings displayed Kelby and Kuna both treat export settings as intentional decisions, not defaults to click through. If the image is going to Photoshop for compositing, you export a full-resolution TIFF or PSD with maximum bit depth preserved. If it is going to print, the resolution and color profile follow the print lab’s specs. If it is web delivery, you think about sRGB and file size.

This step sounds administrative but it is where a lot of quality gets lost carelessly. I keep a set of saved export presets for each of my typical deliverables: compositing source, client proof, final web, and final print. The extra thirty seconds it took to build those presets has saved me from color profile mismatches and resolution disasters more times than I want to admit.

What I Would Do Differently for Composite Work

Kelby and Kuna are primarily working here with single-image photographic edits, which is the right frame for their audience. When I am using someone else’s raw file as a background plate for a composite, I take the Lightroom work a step further before export. I add a subtle lens blur to any background elements I know will be behind a subject, using depth-range masking to keep it natural. I also run a texture pass, because a background plate that is too clean reads as digital even when the lighting is perfect. My first published composite had a shadow traveling in the wrong direction, and nobody caught it but me. It still lives in a folder on my desktop labeled “look at this.” The texture and depth work I do now is directly traceable to the discipline of studying that mistake.

The single most important idea in this tutorial is one Kelby and Kuna model without stating it directly: every edit is a decision, not a default. The slider is not there to be moved because sliders get moved. It is there to serve a specific read of a specific image. Build that habit in Lightroom and it carries into every tool downstream.

Watch the full tutorial on YouTube and pay attention to the moments where Kelby pauses before reaching for a slider. That pause is the technique.