From the course: Lightroom Classic Essential Training

Tour of the Develop module - Lightroom Tutorial

From the course: Lightroom Classic Essential Training

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Tour of the Develop module

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- [Instructor] With Lightroom classic editing is done in the develop module. So let's take a tour before we start the editing process. Right now I'm still in the library module and I've selected the chapter six folder here in the folders panel. When you switch to the develop module, you'll have access to whatever source that you selected while in the library module. We can switch to the develop module by clicking on the name up here in the module picker. You could also press the "D" key at any time to switch to the develop module. This places the selected photo in the center content area ready to be edited. The develop module is laid out similar to the library module with a module picker at the top. The left and right panel groups and the filmstrip at the bottom. But the content here in the left and right panel groups has changed. The heart of the develop module is on the right hand side. This entire group of panels is dedicated to editing. On the left hand side the most noticeable change is the absence of the folder panel. If your source is a folder and if you want to change the source to another folder, you have to switch back to the library module. Our source was a folder. If we switch back to the library module, we'll see that we selected the chapter six folder. But if we go back to the develop module, we don't see that. And this is a great reason to organize your photos into collections, so that you can quickly find them while you're editing. Notice that the collections panel is here in the develop module. Let's take a look at all the features in the develop module starting in the upper left hand corner here. We have the nameplate and we have the navigator which are essentially the same as in the library module. And below that we have presets, snapshots and history, which are specific to the develop module, and then the collections panel, which we've already explored. I'll click on presets to open this. The preset panel is used to apply and create preset combinations or save states of edits to get a particular look. There's a set of presets that come with Lightroom and that's what we see here. You can add your own preset by clicking on the plus icon. If you hover over a preset, you get a real time preview. To the right, we can see what this preset would look like if we were to use it. If we want to apply a preset, we have to click on it. I'll click on the flat green, and then I'm going to come over here and open the basic panel. And pay attention to what happens over here, when I click on a different preset. Those settings are going to change depending on whatever the Save state was of the preset. I'll go ahead and click on presets to close it, and we'll talk about snapshots. In the snapshots panel, you create a snapshot or a capture of the current edit state by clicking on the plus. This allows you to quickly get back to that look at any time even if you go on to experiment with more edits. Below that we have the history panel. I'll click on it to open it up, and you'll see a list of all the presets that I applied to this image. This keeps a running list of all the adjustments that you make in the develop module. And the great thing is that this list of history states is persistent. It doesn't go away even if you switch to another photo, or you close and reopen Lightroom, because this history is saved in the catalog. We can reset this photo back to the import state by clicking on the big reset button in the lower right hand corner here. So let's talk about the right side panels now starting at the top where we have the histogram. A histogram is a chart of the tonal values in a photo. The light tones are represented here on the right side and the dark tones are represented on the left side. We see in this image that there's a lot of dark tones and there's a lot of light tones, but there really isn't any middle value tones. And this tells us that the image that selected is very high contrast. We don't even have to look at the image to be able to tell that, because the histogram gives us that information. The tone sliders down here are directly connected to different regions of the histogram. As I hover over the histogram, notice that there's the name of the tone slider to the lower left. I'm hovering over the center of the histogram and we see that it says exposure, and if I move to the left, it says shadows. If you click and drag right here in the histogram, it'll move that corresponding slider. So as I click and drag to the right, we'll see that the exposure slider move to the right as well. I like to leave the histogram open so that I understand exactly what my adjustments are doing to a photo as I make them. If you'd like to learn more about this, watch the histogram movie in my course Lightroom, get professional results. Under the histogram are the camera settings. We'll see those if we hover over it. Just below the histogram we have the tool strip starting with the Crop Tool, the Spot Removal Tool, Red Eye removal and then three selective edit tools, the Graduated Filter, the Radial Filter and the Adjustment Brush. And finally below that we have all of the develop panels. Clicking in the dark area next to the name of a develop panel, will open or close it. We'll be going over all of these panels and the remainder of this chapter and the following. That's the grand tour of the develop module. It's a good idea to familiarize yourself with a workspace before you start editing your photos.

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