The other night I was reviewing some of the video tutorials from Lightroom Killer Tips and came across the Edgy Effect. Matt Kloskowski shows a technique he admittedly labels “outside the norm”, but it produces interesting results. Check out the full video here.

He starts by pushing the Exposure up a stop or more. Set the Recovery and Fill Light to 100, Blacks to about 50 and Saturation to -70. Clarity and Vibrance also get pumped to 100. (I know, this sounds totally whacked out!)

All of this will create some noise, which you can leave alone if you like. You can get rid of some of it with a Luminance setting of 25 and Color setting of 50. Reduce your Sharpening and Detail a bit too.

The final bit is to add a vignette around the corners. Start with your Lens Vignette at -50, then adjust to your liking. You’ll also want to revisit your Exposure and Blacks settings to bring back some snap. Now save this as a Preset so you can use it again.

Buildings, flowers, or any image without a lot of fine detail work best. Try some crazy corrections during your next editing session in Lightroom. You never know what you’ll get.