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Adjustments tab

Adjustments tab icon

Adjustments is the Develop stage. It builds a nondestructive processing chain for the active photograph. The same operations appear as nodes in Graph.

Full Adjustments panel

Sections

Alphabetical here, which is the order the guide's sidebar takes from this list. The panel itself keeps workflow order, source to geometry, top to bottom.

Section gestures

Click a section title or its chevron to open or fold it. Option-click (Alt-click on Windows) sends every entry in the section list the same way, including entries hidden by All / Pinned / On filtering. Option-Shift-click narrows that action to sections with the same on/off state as the clicked section. Cmd-click (Ctrl-click on Windows) pins or unpins it without folding it.

View > Expand All Sections and View > Collapse All Sections provide the same bulk opening and folding. Find a Control finds both commands, and Keyboard Shortcuts can assign them keys. Folding, opening and pinning are layout changes, never undo steps between edits. Color Sets and Lens Character keep their separate companion-panel folds.

Pinning and filtering

The panel lists every section in the order above. Right-click a section's header and choose Pin to top to keep it in a PINNED group at the top of the panel, in the order you pinned; a small pin mark sits after the title, and Unpin from the same menu takes it back. Pins are a preference, so they follow you across photographs and launches.

Above the sections, chips choose what the panel lists: All (every section, the pinned ones first), Pinned (only the sections you pinned), and On (only the sections switched on for this photograph, which needs no setup). On the free tier a fourth chip, Free, lists only the sections the free tier can use, so the Pro ones step aside; the chip is not there on Pro, where every section is yours, and a remembered Free reads as All. The choice is remembered between launches. Color Sets follows Recolor and Lens Character follows Depth of Field, so they appear with their host section.

When the open photograph is linked to others, right-click a section header and choose Override for this photo. An overridden section is this photograph's own in both directions: another photograph's edits to it never land here, and edits made to it here never travel to the others, while everything else in the link keeps flowing. The whole section wears a dotted orange outline. Right-click a single dial for the same at the dial's size, and the dial wears the outline. Remove override from the same menu. Overrides belong to the photograph and are saved with its edits.

Scopes

The panel above the sections shows the scopes: histogram, RGB parade, waveform, vectorscope, chromaticity, and the harmony wheel, with a channel row for the histogram and a pop-out button for a larger window. The readout under the plot names what is under the cursor, and the arrows at the right report the share of the frame clipped to pure black and pure white.

The button at the readout's left, a small histogram wrapped in a marquee rectangle, scopes them to the current selection: with it on, every scope reads the selected region only, and the readout says so. It waits disabled until a selection exists; any selection works, drawn or smart. Turn it off to read the whole frame again.

Section switches and targets

An off switch bypasses the section while keeping its values. Only Exposure and Color are on for a fresh photograph; every other section is off and adds its nodes the first time it is switched on or a control is changed, so an untouched photograph's graph holds five nodes and nothing else. Switching a section on counts as an edit, marks the photograph edited, and can be undone. A section's switch reads on only when one of its nodes is in the graph and live.

Most sections can target a selected adjustment layer, and the section header says whether a setting applies to the layer or globally. Sharpening, Skin Softening, Relight, Color Tune and Recolor all follow a layer's mask. Noise Reduction and Sky Rescue are recipes built from several nodes and remain whole-photograph operations.

Auto, reset, and pickers

Where present, Auto analyzes the active photograph and sets that section. Reset controls return the section to neutral values; the Tone Profile resets to the shipped look. Eyedropper and pick controls move work into the image viewport; the active pick is labeled there. Every slider and choice says what it does in the status bar when the pointer rests on it, the Source dials included.

Curves and graphical controls

Graphical editors use direct manipulation. Drag points or bands to shape the result. Channel chips select which component is edited. For standard curves, Ctrl/Command-click removes a non-endpoint point. Pickers can sample the photograph and place or select the relevant tone or color.

Local adjustments

Use Layer > New Adjustment Layer… to create a masked Develop adjustment. Radial, linear, range, brush, and smart masks limit the adjustment. These are different from Finish adjustment layers: Develop layers live in the adjustment chain; Finish adjustment layers are stacked with pixel and fill layers.

Each adjustment layer's row carries a dot that switches the layer off and on. Off bypasses the layer's exposure and every tool behind it while its mask and settings stay, so the row dims and the photograph reads as if the layer were not there; the next click brings it back exactly as it was. A slider moved while the layer is off lands and waits rather than switching one node back on.

A range mask's panel shows a histogram of the photograph along whichever axis the picker targets, luma or hue, with the mask's window over it. The picker row is an eyedropper, the three sample modes Set, Widen and Narrow, and the two targets, all as icons with their names in the status line.

Every mask carries a Depth mask block under Invert mask. Switched on, the layer's mask is multiplied by the photograph's depth map read as the eye shows it: white, the nearest point, takes the layer's full effect, black, the farthest, takes none, and the greys in between take their share. A range layer with Depth on therefore affects what is in its range, most where it is near. Under the switch sits the same histogram widget the Levels section has, drawn over the depth map's own histogram, with the three handles: drag Black up and the depths below it take nothing, drag White down and the depths above it take the full effect, and Gamma bends the depths between. Invert depth reads the result the other way, the farthest taking the full effect, for this layer alone: another layer's depth mask is untouched. The eye beside the switch shows the depth map itself. The first layer to ask computes the map, which the Depth Map section tunes for every depth user at once.

A radial mask's panel ends with a Lines row: the gizmo over the photograph draws in the opposite of the photograph's own colour, and the Hue and Luma sliders take over from that, with Auto handing it back. It is the same setting Grid Warp and Shape Warp use for their lines. How thick the gizmo draws is the Thickness row beside it, which is the Shape outline thickness preference under Interface: it sets the thickness for every photograph, Shape Warp's rings included, and ships at 2 pixels.

Color Sets

Color Sets is a section like its neighbours: its header collapses every set at once, the count of sets rides on it, and to the right sit the add button, a reset that removes every set in one undo step, and a switch that runs every set's grade together. Each set keeps its own drawer and its own eye, so one set can be judged on its own while the switch compares the whole family against nothing. At the foot of every set's drawer sits a Depth mask block, the one a layer's mask carries: switched on, the set's range is multiplied by the depth map, with the Levels widget over the map's histogram, its falloff handles included, and an Invert, both this set's alone.