Edit photos

Lightroom offers various features and tools to help you refine your photos. Try out the editing tools in Lightroom to make precise adjustments to your photos and achieve a creative result. You can also share your edited photos with fellow photographers and the Lightroom Community. 

To begin editing a photo using any of the Edit controls, follow the steps below:  

You can view Highlight and Shadow clipping indicators in the upper corners of the histogram to check areas in your photo that are either too light or dark, respectively, as you make edits.

To view highlight and shadow clipping in your photo, follow these steps:

In this article, you can learn more about:

Profile

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.

Browse and apply profiles

To browse and apply profiles, do the following:

Add a profile to Favorites

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.

Import profiles

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

Manage profiles

Lightroom 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, follow the steps below:

Note:

Your settings to show/hide profile groups is specific to each computer or device. For example, you can hide some profile groups in Lightroom desktop but they will still be visible in Lightroom on your mobile device and vice versa. 

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

Light

Using the slider controls provided in the Light panel, you can adjust the overall tonal range of your image. Learn more about the local adjustments within the Light tool.

Fine-tune the tonal scale using the Curve

Curve in the Light panel gives you greater control over the tonal range and contrast in your photo.

 To adjust the Curve, select the Curve and drag it up or down. As you drag, the affected region and the new tonal value are displayed in the lower-right corner of the tone curve. 

You can adjust the Point Curve in the Red, Green, and Blue Channels or all three channels simultaneously. Do the following to select a Channel and adjust its Point Curve:

Color

Make targeted edits with Color Mixer

The Color Mixer gives you greater control over targeted colors in your photo. With this, you can adjust specific colors sampled from the desired area where you drag the pointer, enabling you to adjust the hue, saturation, or luminance for the colors directly under the pointer.

To adjust colors using the Color Mixer tool:

1. Select the   icon in the floating toolbar to show Color Mixer controls. Choose the setting you want to adjust: Hue, Saturation, or Luminance.
   
2. Move the pointer over a color that you want to adjust in the photo. Then, drag horizontally in the photo to increase or decrease the selected setting for that color. Dragging right increases values; dragging left decreases values.

Fine-tune individual color in a photo with Point Color

Achieve precise, accurate, and detailed color refinements in a photo using the Point Color control. You can now select and refine an individual color in a photo across Hue, Saturation, and Luminance. Point Color can also be used with Masking, giving greater control over specific colors without changing the vibrancy of the entire image.

Add color tint to your photos with Color Grading

The Color Grading feature lets you add a color tint to a photo's shadows, mid-tones, and highlights. You can explore this option to stylize your images by adding a color from the opposite color wheel to make shadows and highlights appear more prominent. 

Effects

Smoothens or accentuates textured details in your photo. Move the slider to the left to smoothen details; move it to the right to accentuate details. When you adjust the Texture slider, the color or tonality does not change.

Changes the contrast around the edges of objects in your photo. Move the slider to the left to soften edges; move it to the right to increase edge contrast.

Move the slider to the left to add simulated haze; move it to the right to remove haze.

Makes the outer edges of the photo lighter or darker. Adjust the Vignette 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.

Detail

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.

Move the slider to the right to sharpen details.

• 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.

Automatically correct noisy images using AI-powered Denoise. 

Move the slider to the right to reduce luminance noise, manually.

• 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.

Move the slider to the right to reduce color noise.

• 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.

Move the slider to the right to add film grain.

• 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.

Optics

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

Correct chromatic aberration

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.

Select this option to automatically correct blue-yellow and red-green lateral fringes in your image.

Enable lens corrections

Lightroom 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.

Defringe

The Defringe controls help identify and remove color fringing along high-contrast edges. You can remove color fringes caused by longitudinal chromatic aberrations and reduce some of the colorful artifacts that the Remove Chromatic Aberration tool cannot remove. To use this tool, follow these steps:

Lens Blur

Adjust depth in a photo using the AI-powered Lens Blur in Lightroom. You can use the Lens Blur tool to blur the background or foreground by making a depth map of the photo using Adobe Sensei. 

Learn more about how to blur a photo in Lightroom.

Geometry

Starting with the December release of Lightroom (version 7.1), you can find the Geometry panel within the Crop tool. 

A close distance to the subject and certain types of lenses can distort perspective and make straight lines appear bowed, tilted, or skewed in your photos. You can correct 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.

Choose an Upright mode to correct perspective

Copy and paste edits

Lightroom 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.    

Reset photo edits

Lightroom 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. To reset your photo edits, you must be in Detail view.

Healing tool in Lightroom

Work with the Healing tools to remove unnecessary spots, power lines, people, objects, red-eye, or other such distractions from a photo.

In the Loupe view, click the Healing panel icon on the right side of the screen.

Healing Brush

Select one of the following Healing Brush tools:

Content-Aware Remove: Removes unwanted spots and fills the selection with generated content from the sampled area.

Heal: Borrows the texture from the source area and matches it to the color and tone of the target area in the photo.

Clone: Replicates the pixels from the source area in the photo to the target area.

The tools transfer the texture borrowed from the source area to the target area. The Content-Aware Remove tool uses the content from a custom source, Heal tool, however, considers the colors and tones surrounding the target area and blends everything together. While the Clone exactly replicates the pixels from the source area to the target area.

Change the size, feather, or opacity of the selected Healing tool as necessary.

• Size. Specifies the diameter of the brush tip in pixels.
• Feather. Controls the soft-edged transition between the brushed area and the surrounding pixels in the target area.
• Opacity. Controls the opacity of the adjustment applied to the target area.

To move and position the source or target area on the photo, drag the blue pin at the center of that area.

Healing options

Long press on the blue pin at the center of the target or source area to bring up the Healing Options context menu:

• From the context menu, choose Content-Aware Remove, Heal, or Clone to switch between the tools.
  
• Delete: Deletes the selected source-target area pair.
• Reset Healing Brush: Resets and removes all the adjustments you've made using the Healing tools.
  

Keyboard shortcuts and modifiers

Circular spot:

• Single click creates a circular spot, and automatically finds a source.
  
• Control/Command + click to create a circular spot; drag to set the source of the spot. This option is only available for Heal and Clone.
• Command/Control + Option/Alt + click to create a circular spot; drag to set the size of the spot.
• Command/Control + Option/Alt + Shift + click to create a circular spot; drag to set the size of the spot.

Delete a selected area or spot:

• Select a pin, and press Delete to remove the adjustment.
• Press Option/Alt and click a spot to delete it.
• Press Option/Alt and drag the mouse to draw a marquee, and automatically delete spots that are within the marquee.

Red Eye correction

Quickly correct red-eye in a photo with the Red Eye tool in the Healing panel. You can do one of the following:

Auto Correct red eye - Auto Correct option in the Red Eye tool automatically corrects red eye in a photo.

Correct red-eye manually - If you wish to manually correct red eye in a photo, click the Red Eye icon. Click and drag from the center of an eye to correct red eye. You can adjust the Pupil Size and Darken controls as preferred. 

Apply local adjustments

Create, view, and export Versions

Versions help you to quickly view and compare different edits made to the same photo. You can view automatically created Versions and also create Versions. Follow these steps to know how:

Common questions

Installing custom, third-party presets and profiles

Do more with Lightroom

Lightroom is the complete photo service for professional and enthusiasts alike. Create and edit photos easily with Lightroom presets or customize to your liking anywhere with cloud photo storage management.