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Editing Essentials: How to Develop Your Photos in Lightroom 2

Jan 14, 2009

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Using the Library Module’s Quick Develop Panel

There’s a version of the Develop module’s Basic panel right within the Library module, called the Quick Develop panel, and the idea here is that you’d be able to make some quick, simple edits right there in the Library module, without having to jump over to the Develop module. The problem is, the Quick Develop panel stinks. Okay, it doesn’t necessarily stink, it’s just hard to use, because there are no sliders—there are buttons you click instead (which makes it frustrating to get just the right amount)—but for just a quick edit, it’s okay (you can see I’m biting my tongue here, right?)

Step One:

The Quick Develop panel (shown here) is found in the Library module, under the Histogram panel at the top of the right side Panels area. Although it doesn’t have the White Balance Selector tool, outside of that, it has pretty much the same controls as the Develop module’s Basic panel (including the Recovery, Fill Light, Clarity, and Vibrance controls). Also, if you press-and-hold the Option (PC: Alt) key, the Clarity and Vibrance controls change into the Sharpening and Saturation controls (as seen on the right). Instead of sliders (which give us precise control over our adjustments), the Quick Develop panel uses one-click buttons (just to make us crazy). If you click a single-arrow button, it moves that control a little. If you click a double-arrow button, it moves it a lot.

Click to view larger image

Step Two:

There are only two situations where I’ll use the Quick Develop panel: One is where I see a messed-up thumbnail, and I want to see if it can easily be fixed, before I invest any time into it in the Develop module. For example, in the Grid view, click on an underexposed photo, then go over to the Quick Develop panel and click the Exposure right double-arrow button two times to get it closer to being properly exposed. Now you can make a better decision about its fate, without having to pause your sorting process by leaving the Library module and jumping over to the Develop module.

Scott Kelby

Step Three:

The other time I use the Quick Develop panel is when I’m in Compare or Survey view, because you can apply Quick Develop edits while in these side-by-side views (as shown here—just be sure to click on the photo you want to edit first). For example, the first photo shown here has a color problem—I hadn’t set a custom white balance in my camera yet, so the white background looked bluish. So, click on the first photo, then choose Flash from the White Balance pop-up menu in the Quick Develop panel, and see if that fixes the problem (of course, you know it will). Also, when you make “batch corrections” using Quick Develop, every image gets the exact same amount of correction (so if you increased the exposure by ⅔ of a stop, all the selected photos go up by ⅔ of a stop). But, it’s not that way when you do the same thing in the Develop module. There, if you set the exposure of one photo to +.50, every selected photo’s exposure is not automatically set to +.50. There you need to use Auto Sync.

Scott Kelby

Step Four:

If you’ve selected a bunch of photos, but only want certain edits you made applied to them (rather than all your Quick Develop edits), then click the Sync Settings button at the bottom of the right side Panels area. This brings up a dialog (shown here) where you can choose which Quick Develop settings get applied to the rest of the selected photos. Just turn on the checkboxes beside those settings you want applied, and then click the Synchronize button.

Click to view larger image

Lightroom Quick Tips > >

Speed Editing

This may be my favorite new shortcut in all of Lightroom 2: to jump to the next slider in the Basic panel, just press the . (period) key on your keyboard (you’ll see the adjustment name highlight); press the , (comma) key to move you back. I love it!
Resetting the White Balance

To reset both the Temperature and Tint White Balance sliders to their original As Shot settings, just double-click directly on the letters WB in the Basic panel.
One-Button Grayscale Preview

To quickly see how your current photo would look as a B&W photo, press the letter V (which converts it to grayscale), then press it again to return to color.
Panel Trick for Impatient People

Have you noticed that when you expand or collapse a panel, it gently (and arguably slowly) animates this sequence (in other words, they don’t snap open—they “glide” open). If you’d like to skip the fancy gliding and have those panels snap open/closed the moment you click on them, just Command-click (PC: Ctrl-click) on them instead.
Picking Zooms in the Detail Panel

If you Control-click (PC: Right-click) inside the little preview window in the Detail panel, a little contextual menu will appear where you can choose between two zoom ratios for the preview—1:1 or 2:1—which kick in when you click your cursor inside the Preview area.
Choosing What Will Be Your Before and After

By default, if you press the \ (Backslash) key in the Develop module, it toggles you back and forth between the original untouched image (the Before view) and the photo as it looks now with your edits. However, what if you don’t want your Before photo to be the original? For example, let’s say you did some Basic panel edits on a portrait, and then you used the Adjustment Brush to do some portrait retouching. Maybe you’d like to see the Before photo showing the Basic panel edits after they were applied, but before you started retouching. To do that, go to the History panel (in the left side Panels area), and scroll down until you find the step right before you started using the Adjustment Brush. Control-click (PC: Right-click) on that history state and choose Copy History Step Settings to Before. That now becomes your new Before photo when you press the \ key. I know—that’s totally cool.
Hiding the Clipping Warning Triangles

If you don’t use the two little clipping warning triangles in the top corners of the histogram (or you want them turned off when you’re not using them), then just Control-click (PC: Right-click) anywhere on the histogram itself and choose Show Clipping Indicators from the contextual menu to turn it off, and they’ll be tucked out of sight. If you want them back, go back to that same contextual menu, and choose Show Clipping Indicators again.
Copy What You Last Copied

When you click the Copy button in the Develop module (at the bottom of the left side Panels area), it brings up a Copy Settings dialog asking which edits you want to copy. However, if you know you want to copy the same edits as you had previously (maybe you always copy everything), then you can skip having that Copy Settings dialog pop-up up completely by pressing-and-holding the Option (PC: Alt) key, then clicking the Copy button.
Making Your Current Settings the New Defaults for That Camera

When you open a photo, Lightroom applies a default set of corrections based on the photo’s file format and the make and model of the camera used to take the shot (it reads this from the built-in EXIF data). If you want to use your own custom settings (maybe you think it makes the shadows too black, or the highlights too bright), go ahead and get the settings the way you want them in Lightroom, then press-and-hold the Option (PC: Alt) key and the Reset button at the bottom of the right side Panels area changes into a Set Default button. Click on it and it brings up a dialog showing you the file format or the camera make and model of the current image. When you click Update to Current Settings, from now on, your current settings will be your new starting place for all images taken with that camera, or that file format. To return to Adobe’s default settings for that camera, go back to that same dialog, but this time click on the Restore Adobe Default Settings button.
Updating Your Presets

If you start your editing by using a Develop module User Preset, and you like the new changes, you can update your preset by Control-clicking (PC: Right-clicking) on the old preset and choosing Update with Current Settings from the contextual menu.
Get Different Versions of Your Photo Without Making Virtual Copies

I briefly mentioned snapshots earlier in this chapter, but I want to give you another way to think of them. Think of them as another way to have one-click access to multiple versions of your photo. When you’re working in the Develop module and see a version of your photo you like, just press Command-N (PC: Ctrl-N) and how your photo looks at that moment is saved to your Snapshots panel (you just have to give it a name). So, that way, you could have a B&W version as a snapshot, one version as a duotone, one version in color, one with an effect, and see any of those in one click, without having to scroll through the History panel to try to figure out where each look is.
Fix Underexposed Photos Fast with Match Exposure

If you see a series of photos of the same subject, and some of these photos are underexposed, try this quick trick to fix those fast: Click on a properly exposed photo from that series, then while it’s selected, also select the underexposed photos, then go under the Settings menu and choose Match Total Exposures. It will evaluate the overall exposure from your “most-selected” photo (your properly exposed photo) and use that to fix the underexposed photos.
One of My Most-Used Presets

The intentional vignette look is really hot right now, and it’s an ideal effect to save as a one-click preset. Just go to the Vignettes panel, click-and-drag the Amount slider all the way to the left (to –100), then click-and-drag the Midpoint slider to the left to 10, and then go to the Presets panel and save that as a vignette preset. Now you can just move your cursor over this preset and you’ll get an instant preview of how your image would look with a vignette applied up in the Navigator panel at the top of the left side Panels area.

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