Develop basics

• Basic panel
• Cropping
• Presence

Basic panel

The basic is where a lot of or initial editing will happen. Here we have control over White balance, Tone and Presence.

White Balance

Shooting with your white balance set correctly give you  a huge advantage when it come to editing your images, however it is worth remembering that what balance is applied to to your image in camera after it has bee captured. This means we retain the ability to adjust an images whit balance after it has be taken in Lightroom.

The purpose of adjusting the white balance of an image is to compensate for undesirable colour cast that can appear in an image due to the light source.

Color Temperature	Light Source
1000-2000 K	Candlelight
2500-3500 K	Tungsten Bulb (household variety)
3000-4000 K	Sunrise/Sunset (clear sky)
4000-5000 K	Fluorescent Lamps
5000-5500 K	Electronic Flash
5000-6500 K	Daylight with Clear Sky (sun overhead)
6500-8000 K	Moderately Overcast Sky
9000-10000 K	Shade or Heavily Overcast Sky

Temperature (Temp)

The table above include temperature ranges for some common sources of light.

Using the Temp slider we can warm or cool an image to make it appear more natural. Images shot outside in daylight can appear to have a blue cast and images shot inside using Tungsten Bulbs can appear very yellow. 

Tint

The tint slider allows us to adjust for casts generated by some artificial light sources. Fluorescent bulbs can give a slight green cast. Moving the slider in a positive direction will compensate more for the green cast by increasing the the amount of magenta.

Eyedropper

The white balance section also includes an eyedropper. clicking the eyedropper will engage it. You can then click an area in you image you know should be white or neutral grey, and Lightroom will figure out the temperature and tint for you.

This only works if you select an area you know to white. if the area you select is not white or neutral, Lightroom will compensate for the colours in the area giving unpredicted results.

Tone

The tone sliders are where we do most of the correction we would want to do to an image. We have control over Exposure for the overall brightness of our images, and Contrast, for contrast.

A rule to follow is to edit first using Shadows and Whites, followed by Highlights and Blacks, before using Exposure and Contrast.

These sliders are represented on the histogram and can be manipulated there too.

Cropping

Cropping an image can make a significant difference the quality of an image. adjusting the composition to make improve the way your subject is being present, or shifting from landscape to a portrait. Can transform a O.K. photo into something special.

Aspect

The crop tools will allow you crop and rotate you image to any shape or angle. You can select a common aspect ration from the Aspect drop down, or enter your ow custom one. The padlock icon will lock or unlock the image from conforming to the select aspect ratio.

Angle

Angle can be adjusted using the slider or by clicking and dragging slightly away from the edge of the cropping bounding box.

When adjusting the angle a finer mesh grid will appear as an overlay making it easier line-up horizontal and vertical line.

overlays

The crop tool includes a few built-in overlays to aid composition. by default the you see a rule of thirds grid. Pressing 'O' will cycle through Diagonal, Triangle, Golden Ratio, and Golden Spiral. Pressing 'Shift + O' will rotate the overlay.

Presence

Clarity

Clarity help improve definition by boosting contrast in the in mid-tone and highlights. Often without blowing out the bright points. It also maintains detail in the shadows and blacks.

Vibrance

Vibrance boosts colours that are muted while leaving highly saturated colours alone. In a lot of images you'll notice cooler colours (Blues and Greens) becoming more saturated while warmer colours are affected less. 

Saturation

Saturation applies to all colours equally. And will make the colours in you image pop.

It's a good idea to try using Vibrance before Saturation.