Edit photos

You can access the Edit controls in Detail view. In the Edit panel, the edit controls are organized under various panels that you can expand/collapse to access those controls─Profile, Light, Color, Effects, Detail, Optics, and Geometry. To help you visually understand the effect that each of these edit controls produce in your photo, this article provides accompanying animations and visuals to illustrate the concepts.  

To begin editing a photo using any of the Edit controls, do the following:    

Profiles allow you to control how colors and tonality are rendered in your photos. The profiles provided in the Profile panel are intended to serve as a starting point or foundation for making image edits. 

Applying a profile on your photo doesn't change or overwrite the value of other edit control sliders. Therefore, you can make edits to your photos as you like and then choose to apply a profile on top of your edited image.

To browse and apply profiles, do the following:

To add a profile to the Favorites profile group:

• When browsing the profiles in the Grid or Large view, hover on the profile thumbnail and click the star icon that appears at the upper-right corner of the thumbnail. 
• When browsing the profiles in the list view, hover on the profile and click the star icon that appears next to the profile's name.

You can import third-party camera profiles in XMP format. Do the following: 

Lightroom CC allows you to show or hide various profile groups that are displayed in the Profile browser - Adobe Raw, Camera Matching, Legacy, Artistic, B&W, Modern, Vintage, or any other profiles that you've imported.

To show/hide profile groups in Lightroom CC, follow the steps below:

Profile browser now displays only those profile groups which you've selected using the Manage Profiles option.

Using the slider controls provided in the Light panel, you can adjust the overall tonal range of your image.

The Tone Curve in the Light panel gives you greater control over the tonal range and contrast in your photo. Click the  icon to expand the Tone Curve subpanel.

 To make adjustments to the Tone Curve, click on the curve and drag up or down. As you drag, the affected region and the new tonal value is displayed in the lower-right corner of the tone curve.  

You can also choose to make adjustments to the Point Curve inthe  Red, Green, or Blue Channels individually or all three channels at once. Do the following to select a Channel and adjust its Point Curve:

Using the slider controls in the Color panel, you can adjust colors in your image. 

• Set White Balance by choosing a preset option or specifying a neutral area in the photo with the  White Balance Selector.
• Fine-tune the white balance using the Temp and Tint controls.
• Adjust the color saturation (vividness) using the Vibrance and Saturation controls.
• Convert the photo to Black & White using the   B&W button.
• Fine-tune individual colors using the   Hue, Saturation, and Luminance (HSL) sliders.

• Feather: Lower values reduce softening between the vignette and the vignette’s surrounding pixels. Higher values increase the softening.
  
• Midpoint: Lower values apply the Amount adjustment to a larger area away from the corners. Higher values restrict the adjustment to an area closer to the corners.
• Roundness: Lower values make the vignette effect more oval. Higher values make the vignette effect more circular.
• Highlights: Controls the degree of highlight contrast preserved when Amount is negative. Suitable for photos with small highlights, such as candles and lamps.

Using the Split Toning controls in the Effects panel, you can create a split tone effect in which a different color is applied to the Shadows and Highlights in your photo. For example, you can colorize a monochrome photo or apply special effects, such as the look of cross-processed film, to a color photo.

To create a split tone effect in your photo, do the following:  

1. In the Effects panel, click the icon to view the Split Toning controls.
2. Set the Hue and Saturation values by individually selecting the Shadows or Highlights swatches, then dragging the corresponding controls point to select a color in the color ramp. Note that Hue sets the color of the tone; while Saturation adjusts the intensity of the color.
3. Set the Balance slider (located between the Shadows and Highlights swatches) to balance the effect between the Highlight and Shadow sliders. Move the slider to the right to favor the selected Highlights color; move the slider to the left to favor the selected Shadows color.

Using the slider controls provided under the Detail panel, you can sharpen your photo to enhance edge definition and bring out detail, as well as remove image noise that can degrade image quality. Image noise includes luminance (grayscale) noise, which makes an image look grainy, and chroma (color) noise, which is usually visible as colored artifacts in the image. Photos taken with high ISO speeds can have noticeable noise.

• Radius: Adjusts the size of the details that sharpening is applied to. Photos with fine details may need a lower radius setting. Photos with larger details may be able to use a larger radius. Using too large a radius generally results in unnatural-looking results.
• 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.

• Detail: Controls the luminance noise threshold. Useful for noisy photos. Higher values preserve more detail but may produce noisier results. Lower values produce cleaner results but may also remove some detail.
• Contrast: Controls luminance contrast. Useful for noisy photos. Higher values preserve contrast but may produce noisy blotches or mottling. Lower values produce smoother results but may also have less contrast.

• Detail: Controls the color noise threshold. Higher values protect thin, detailed color edges but may result in color speckling. Lower values remove color speckles but may result in color bleeding.
• Smoothness: Higher values apply a softened effect to the speckled color tones.

• Size: Controls grain particle size. At sizes of 25 or greater, blue is added to make the effect look better with noise reduction.
• Roughness: Controls the regularity of the grain. Move left to make the grain more uniform; move to the right to make the grain more uneven.

Camera lenses can exhibit different types of defects at certain focal lengths, f-stops, and focus distances. You can correct and/or minimize these issues using the options provided in the Optics panel.

Chromatic aberration appears as a color fringe along the edges of objects. It is caused by the failure of the lens to focus different colors to the same spot, aberrations in sensor microlenses, and by flare.

Lightroom CC includes numerous lens profiles, which can be used to correct common lens aberrations such as geometric distortion and vignetting. The profiles are based on metadata that identifies the camera and lens used to capture the photo, and then compensates accordingly.

A close distance to the subject, as well as certain types of lenses, can distort perspective and make straight lines appear bowed, tilted or skewed in your photos. You can correct for these issues using the controls in the Geometry panel.

The Upright control provides four automatic perspective correction options - Auto, Level, Vertical, and Full, as well as a manual Guided option. After applying Upright, you can refine the adjustment using the Manual Transform sliders.

Lightroom CC allows you to copy the edits that you've applied on a photo and paste it across multiple photos. You can also choose which edit settings you want to copy from a photo.    

You can create and save custom develop presets based on the current edit control settings (in the Edit panel) of the selected photo.

To update a saved user preset, do the following: 

You cannot delete built-in Lightroom CC presets. You can only delete the user presets.

Lightroom CC allows you to show or hide various preset groups that are displayed in the Presets panel - Color, Creative, B&W, Curve, Grain, Sharpening, Vignetting, and User Presets.

To show/hide preset groups in Lightroom CC, follow the steps below:

Presets panel now displays only those preset groups which you've selected using the Manage Presets option.

Lightroom CC allows you to restore your edited photo to its original state (when you first imported it). You can also restore your photo edits to the state when last opened it Lightroom CC. To reset your photo edits, you must be in Detail view.