Adjustment explanations

[Steve bOTT]

Hi, does anyone know of anywhere where these is a simple list of all the adjustments in Lightroom and what they mean?

I have been using LR for a good few weeks now and I am really impressed with what I have been able to achieve so far, but there are some areas that I haven't touched so far. So for example, I use sharpening on most photos and know roughly what it does, but what does radius, detail and masking do? And for noise reduction, what is luminance, detail, contrast, color, details smoothness? The same for all the other adjustment options.

I know I could probably use various resources, but if there was somewhere that simply listed them all and what they mean/do that would be great.

 

[Rob_Cullen]

The 'Help' file has a lot of information although it may be basic and brief- still worth a look.
Lightroom Training Videos
Download the PDF from the link at the top-left of the page.

And a lot of video information at-
Lightroom Training Videos

'Help' extract-
"> Sharpen a photo
You sharpen photos at two stages in the Lightroom workflow: as you view and edit photos, and when you print or
export them. Sharpening is part of the camera default that Lightroom automatically applies to your photos.
When Lightroom exports, prints, or rasterizes a photo for editing in an external editor, the sharpen setting for the image
is applied to the rendered file.
1 In the Develop module, zoom in on the photo to at least 100%.
2 Drag in the Navigator panel to see an area of the photo that highlights the effect of the sharpening adjustment.
3 In the Detail panel, adjust any of the following Sharpening settings:
Amount Adjusts edge definition. Increase the Amount value to increase sharpening. A value of zero (0) turns off
sharpening. In general, set Amount to a lower value for cleaner images. The adjustment locates pixels that differ
from surrounding pixels based on the threshold you specify and increases the pixels’ contrast by the amount you
specify.
Radius Adjusts the size of the details that sharpening is applied to. Photos with very 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.
Press Alt (Windows) or Option (Mac OS) while dragging a slider to see the areas being affected (white) versus the areas
masked out (black).

 

[Fred Stephenson]

Thanks for the help. I use Lightroom a lot but still haven't figured out all of it.

 

[Rob_Cullen]

Fred, I gave the wrong link for the 'Help' file in above post-
Should have been-
Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Help | Lightroom Help

 

[Hoggy]

... And don't worry.. Even after ~5 years with it, I'm still a little fuzzy on some specifics. So refreshers will always be handy.

For me off-hand, it also happens to be the luminance noise reduction: detail, and contrast -- and Color noise: detail and smoothness...sliders that are still a bit fuzzy to me in their operation. Either the explanations are just glanced over in tutorials and/or I find out, but forget quickly.


And no matter how many years or even decades you have under your belt, one will ALWAYS go back to images that were done earlier - and think: "man, I was such a beginner."

 

[Steve bOTT]

That's excellent thanks, I was on that page looking before I posted this, but never saw the link. Thanks again, that is EXACTLY what I was looking for.