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USING PHOTOSHOP LIGHTROOM 2
Developing photos
Detail
Adjusts how much high-frequency information is sharpened in the image and how much the sharpening
process emphasizes edges. Lower settings primarily sharpen edges to remove blurring. Higher values are useful for
making the textures in the image more pronounced.
Masking
Controls an edge mask. With a setting of zero (0), everything in the image receives the same amount of
sharpening. With a setting of 100, sharpening is mostly restricted to those areas near the strongest edges.
Press Alt (Windows) or Option (Mac
OS) while dragging a slider to see the areas being affected (white) versus the areas
masked out (black).
To turn off sharpening, set the Amount slider to zero (0) or click the Detail panel On/Off icon
.
More Help topics
“
Sharpen a photo for print
” on page 159
“
Specify output sharpening
” on page 126
Apply local adjustments
The controls in the adjustment panels in the Develop module let you affect the color and tone of an entire photo. But
sometimes you don’t want to make adjustments globally, to the entire photo. You want to make them locally to a
specific area of a photo, much like dodging and burning in traditional photography. For example, you may just want
to lighten a face to make it stand out in a portrait, enhance the blue sky in a landscape, or apply a tint to compensate
for mixed lighting conditions. To accomplish these tasks in Lightroom, you can apply color and tonal adjustments to
specific areas of a photo by using the Adjustment Brush tool and the Graduated Filter tool.
The Adjustment Brush tool lets you selectively apply Exposure, Clarity, Brightness, and other adjustments to photos
by “painting” them onto the photo.
The Graduated Filter tool lets you apply Exposure, Clarity, Brightness, and other tonal adjustments gradually across a
region of a photo. You can make the region as wide or as narrow as you like.
You can apply both types of local adjustments to any photo, customizing them, refining them, and saving them as
presets for easy reuse. However, you cannot synchronize local adjustments across multiple photos.
Getting local adjustments “right” in Lightroom may take some experimentation. The recommended workflow is to
select a tool and specify its options, then apply the adjustment to the photo. Then, you can go back and edit that
adjustment, or apply a new one. As with all other adjustments applied in the Develop module in Lightroom, local
adjustments are nondestructive and are not permanently applied to the photo.
For a video about applying local adjustments in the Develop module, go to
www.adobe.com/go/lrvid2209_lrm
.
Apply local adjustments with the Adjustment Brush tool
1
Click the Adjustment Brush tool
in the tool strip of the Develop module to select it, or press K.
Lightroom sets the Mask mode to New in the Adjustment Brush tool drawer.
2
Choose the type of adjustment you want to make in the Adjustment Brush tool drawer by choosing an option from
the Effect pop-up menu:
Exposure
Sets the overall image brightness, with a greater effect in the high values.
Brightness
Adjusts image brightness, mainly affecting midtones.
Contrast
Adjusts image contrast, mainly affecting midtones.
Updated 03 September 2009
