Lightroom® 3: The Develop Module Made Easy

How about some more neat things in the Develop Module. ◆Start by turning on the clipping warnings (J key). ◆Before you leave the Basic panel, click with the cursor on any slider name in the Basic panel to highlight it ◆When you are working in another panel, you can still make changes to any slider in the Basic panel without going back and opening up the Basic panel ◆Because you left one of the effects in the basic panel highlighted, you can use the + and - keys on the keyboard to make changes in any effect in the basic panel ◆You can navigate to any effect slider in the Basic panel and make it the active slider by using the period (.) or comma (,) keys on the keyboard ◆Pressing the period key (.) will move the active slider in the Basic panel down one ◆Pressing the comma (,) key on the keyboard will move the active slider up one ◆After you have navigated to the slider you want, use the +/- keys to make changes with the active slider. For example, you highlight the Recovery slider name, then you go to the Targeted Adjustment Tool in the Luminance section of the HSL Panel and by increasing the Luminance too high and you start to get some burned out highlights in the image (they show up because you turned on the clipping warnings, remember?), but you like the brightness of the rest of the image. At this point, all you have to do is press the + key on the keyboard a couple of times and the burned out highlights will disappear because by pressing the + key you’re moving the Recovery slider to the right. If instead you decide you’d like to decrease the Exposure, then all you have to do is press the comma (,) key on the keyboard and that will take you up to the exposure slide. If you press the minus (-) key on the keyboard, you will be decreasing the exposure. If you make the image too dark then press the period (.) key on the keyboard a couple of times and you’ll be making changes with the Fill Light slider when you press the +/- keys. Press the period (.) key again and you’ll be working with the Blacks slider, press the comma (,) key again a couple of times and you’ll be working with the Exposure slider. All this will happen without leaving the Luminance section of the HSL/Color/Black and White Panel. Each time you move from one effect slider to another in the Basic panel, a message will appear in the bottom of the image indicating which effect it is with which you can use the + and- keys on the keyboard to make to make changes in the image with the active slider. You will also get a message in the image each time you press either the + or - key telling you how much of a change you made with the + and - keys on the slider. So, you can really edit using the Basic panel at the same time you are working in another panel. Try it, you’ll like it.