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How To Radically Change A Small Part Of A Photo In Lightroom

lightroom-local-adjustments

To some photographers, it’s not obvious, but Adobe Lightroom can make radical adjustments to small parts of a photograph.

For example, darkening a beam of light, or brightening a specific shadow. You can dodge and burn, just has you would in the darkroom.

Lightroom has a feature called local adjustments, which include a brush, a radial filter and a graduated filter.

As you can see in the screenshot, when you click on a local adjustment tool a new module appears.  Here you can change many sections to enhance or modify a specific region of your photo. The tools available to you are as follows:

  • Temperature
  • Tint
  • Exposure
  • Contrast
  • Highlights
  • Shadows
  • Whites
  • Blacks
  • Clarity
  • Dehaze (Lightroom CC only)
  • Saturation
  • Sharpness
  • Noise
  • Moire
  • Defringe
  • Color

Just below the color slider is the ability to feature brushes and the radial filter.

It’s also worth noting that you have the ability to include multiple local adjustments per filter. In fact, you can even duplicate filters if you want.

To learn more about how I use local adjustments check out my course, Camera to Completion: Lightroom Workflow.

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