A RAW image is a little like a negative from the film days. After you take a photograph, you need to develop it, color correct it, do contrast adjustments, etc. This all used to take place in a chemical filled darkroom. Today you use the Develop module in Adobe Lightoom.
The Develop module in Lightroom is where your images come to life. The most important elements of this module are the image view, the histogram, and the adjustment sliders. The key to understanding the developing process is being comfortable with the histogram. The sample image below is a straight RAW file with no adjustments – notice it looks flat and washed out. This isn’t a problem with the image, it just needs developing.
The histogram shows the distribution of tonalities across the image. If a lot of the histogram is on the left, the image is dark, If a lot of the histogram is on the right, the image is dark. In the sample image, the mountain is medium dark, the sand is medium to light, and the sky is light. When you map these to a histogram you get:
Lightoom actually breaks the histogram into three color channels – red, green, and blue. This is helpful when looking at color casts. All of the major controls in the Develop module simply make modifications to the histogram. The primary controls are:
Some of these sliders have a large effect on the image, some have a smaller effect. It is usually best to do the large adjustments first. My workflow is:
Remember, the RAW image that comes from your camera is exactly that – a raw image. By understanding how to use the develop module, you can significantly improve the quality of your final images.
| Original RAW Image | Developed RAW Image |
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In the rest of this article, I’ll go in to more detail on the controls and how I use them.
Back in the film days, most film was calibrated to produce normal colors under daylight (a color temperature of 5500 Kelvin). If the light was a different temperature, colors would distort. For example, if the light source is around 3200 Kelvin, colors take on more yellow. In 3200K sunrise light, this is great – the landscape takes on a nice worm glow. In 3200K light form a Tungsten lamp in your living room, your friends faces turn yellow!
With film, we had to decide how we wanted the light rendered before we took the photograph. If we wanted the color to shift, we just took the photograph. If we wanted to eliminate the color shift, we had to add a filter over the lens. With digital, we can just shoot away and adjust the color temperature later in Lightroom.
The Temperature slider adds or removes blue from the image. Changing the amount of blue means changing the amount of yellow (red+green) – so if you want more yellow (warmer tones) slide the temperature to the right. When adjusting a slider, it is often a good idea to pull the slider all the way to one side and then the other to get a feel for what it does.
Temperature slid all the way to the right (yellow shift)
Temperature adjusted slightly warm
The Tint slider adds or removes green from the image. Changing the amount of green means changing the amount of magenta (red+blue).
Tint slid all the way to the right (magenta shift)
Tint adjusted slightly magenta
The shape of the histogram represents the exposure of your image – how dark are the darks, how light are the lights. While there is no such thing as a perfect histogram, there are a couple of things to watch out for. If your histogram has a spike against the right side, your image is probably overexposed and some portion of the image will render pure white with no detail. Similarly, if your histogram has a spike against the left side, your image might be underexposed and some portion of the image will render pure black. There are of course exceptions – some images contain pure white, many images contain pure black.
The Exposure slider moves the entire histogram left or right. This will darken or lighten the entire image. If you move the exposure too far to the right, you will get a spike on the right side of the histogram and parts of the image will become pure white.
Exposure slid two to the right (over exposed – notice the histogram and the pure detail-less white in the image)
Exposure adjusted slightly higher (1/3 stop)
The Brightness slider moves the middle portion histogram left or right. This is a more subtle adjustment than exposure and will darken or lighten the mid tones in the image. Note that while this slider primarily moves the mid tones, large adjustments will also move the light and dark tones.
Brightness slid 50 units to the right
Brightness adjusted slightly lower (6 units)
The Blacks slider stretches the histogram to the left while leaving the right side unchanged. This allows you to anchor the image with pure black. Visually this is often important – if an image has a slightly muddy look to it, it often needs some black.
Blacks slid about 1/4 way to the right. This give the image some pure black without making it too dark,
Now that the overall histogram is in good shape, it’s time to adjust the fine details in the image. These adjustments are targeted to a specific part of the histogram and mainly effect the level of detail visible in the image.
The Contrast slider stretches and compresses the histogram. Stretching out the histogram increases the difference between light and dark tones. This adds contrast to the image.
Contrast slid all the way to the right (high contrast)
Contrast adjusted slightly higher (40)
The Recovery slider darkens only the highlights and brings back detail into areas of the image that are close to being blown out.
Recovery slid all the way to the right. Notice the detail that has come back
The Fill Light slider is the pushes the histogram to the right and lightens the dark portion of the image.
Fill Light slid all the way to the right. Notice the detail that has come back
The final set of sliders in the Develop module allow you to add punch to the image. While they all do different things, I tend to use them together. The vibrance slider is often more useful than the saturation slider because it only effects the undersaturated portion of the image. Additionally, too much saturation can clip the histogram and loose shadow detail.
Clarity slid all the way to the right. Notice the lines are darker and more refined but the rest of the image hasn’t changed much. 
Saturation slid all the way to the right. Notice the deeper reds and pinks. 
Vibrance slid all the way to the right. Notice the deeper blues. 
If you’ve made it this far, you have probably asked the question “what if I only want to change a portion of the image”. In Lightroom 2.0, Adobe introduced the Adjustment Brush. With the Adjustment Brush, you can do modify exposure, brightness, contrast, saturation, and clarity on a portion of the image.
It usually makes sense to do localized adjustments after you are finished with the global adjustments.
Overall, the Death Valley image is looking pretty good. The only thing it really needs is to darken the sky. In the develop module, click on the paintbrush (Adjustment Brush) and paint over the area you want to modify – the sky.
Before painting on the mask, you need to set up tour brush. I usually set the exposure to -4 and the flow to 50. This allows me to easily see see where I am drawing the mask. A flow of 50 means that you need to draw over an area twice to fully cover it – this is useful for feathering an edge. You can make the brush larger and smaller by pressing the ‘[' and ']‘ keys.
If accidentally brush on an area that should not be adjusted, hold down the option key while painting to erase the mask.
Now that the mask is drawn, reset the exposure slider to zero and then adjust the sliders as needed. For the sky I decreased the exposure and brightness and increased the saturation.
