“1200 pictures??? How is that even possible …?” You’ve said that to yourself after a shoot, right? There’s a certain sense of dread associated with it. “She’s a newborn; she didn’t even change poses!”

But it happens to all of us. You get into that cuteness zone where you can’t make a bad picture and you just find yourself making them over and over. It’s common with kids and weddings, and it’s totally normal.

But you can’t afford it

You can’t afford to get into that Cuteness Zone, though, because now you’ll have to edit all those pictures. You’ll have to do the global adjustments like white balance and tone, but you’ll also have to do local adjustments like eyes and lips. Get comfy, because you’ll be at your computer for the next three years.

The solution

Editing tools have ways of copying the adjustments from one photo and applying them to others. I’ve done this with Lightroom for years. This works really well for global adjustments when the exposure and white balance didn’t change from shot to shot. But it doesn’t work at all for the local stuff, nor if the exposure changed.

Fortunately, Luminar’s artificial intelligence tools can solve both the local and global adjustment problems. Even if the exposure changes, and even if the person moves from shot to shot, the AI tools recognize the changes and apply the right amount of adjustment based on what is in the picture. It’s amazing that it finds faces in every shot and adjusts the skin and eyes and things without any input.

Make adjustments to one …

Start by making changes to one photo. In this case, I’ve got this cute kid hamming it up in front of the camera. I adjusted the white balance and contrast and camera profile. Then I used the Portrait tools to enhance the eyes and skin, which are the things that would take forever using other apps. I also added a little vignette. Just make all the changes you normally would for a portrait.

… Sync to the rest

Now, select all the pictures you to which you want to apply these changes. Make sure the one that has the changes is highlighted in yellow by clicking on it. Then right-click and choose Adjustments > Sync Adjustments. That’s it. Luminar just applied those changes. And it did it while recognizing her face in all the pictures and making improvements.

Enabler?

Yeah, Luminar makes you a worse photographer because instead of waiting for the decisive moment, you can just keep shooting all the moments and not worry about finishing the pictures. Syncing adjustments across hundreds of pictures at once is the greatest time saver in the universe.

You might feel like Luminar is an enabler, letting you get away with bad habits … so be it. At least you got to enjoy the Cuteness Zone.

Portrait Tips come out each week, and you can see them all right here.