Skip to main content
Participant
September 17, 2019
Question

Headshot overlay

  • September 17, 2019
  • 2 replies
  • 598 views

I am a longtime user and would like to know if there is a way to create a crop overlay of a typical school day headshot as a guide to keep the headsizes the same when doing post production after a underclass photoshoot

    This topic has been closed for replies.

    2 replies

    Rob_Cullen
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    September 17, 2019

    Not sure if this answers your question! but-

    Lightroom has an "Onion Skin Overlay" (View Menu: Loupe Overlay > Layout Image) feature that can be used in the Develop module as a guide to cropping.

    Create for yourself (in Photoshop )  a template, (eg. an oval, or anything you desire)  with transparent background, and save as a .PNG file. (Suggest the same image ratio 4x3 etc, for the image as your camera files)

    When editing photos in the Develop module apply this PNG image as an 'Overlay' to be a guide to your crops of portraits. [Ctrl+Alt+Shift+O] (locate the PNG file). The only downside to this is that the overlay disappears when you select the crop tool, but it reappears when crop tool is closed- to be used again?.

      

     

    The PNG overlay can be any image- as long as it has transparency to see the image behind!

    HINT: The Layout Overlay can be used in Loupe view when shooting Tethered. So in a studio you could be checking your camera framing of the Loupe view images as you 'shoot'. 

     

    Regards. My System: Windows-11, Lightroom-Classic 15.1.1, Photoshop 27.3.1, ACR 18.1.1, Lightroom 9.0, Lr-iOS 10.4.0, Bridge 16.0.2 .
    JP Hess
    Inspiring
    September 17, 2019

    The crop setting is not one that can be chosen when defining a preset, unfortunately. And, as far as I know, the crop tool always defaults to the full-size image that was taken. I think about the simplest thing to do would be to adjust the first image and then move to the next and click on the Previous button. Doing so will apply the settings made to the previous image to the highlighted image, and that would include the crop setting. Of course, that would probably necessitate some adjustment being made to each image.