Adobe® Photoshop® Lightroom® 3: Streamlining Your Digital Photography Process

Chapter 4. DEVELOP

Perfecting your photos in Develop

After you've edited the shoot, identified your selects and put them into collections using the Library module, it's time to make each photo look as good as it can.

Along with the organizational power in Library, the Develop module is one of Lightroom's core strengths. Master the Develop controls and you may find that you can complete all the processing you desire entirely within Lightroom. (In cases where you also want to work on your images more in Photoshop, Lightroom provides a streamlined workflow for sending photos to Photoshop, and then back to Lightroom when you're done; Chapter 9 includes instructions for Lightroom's "round-trip" procedure for editing photos in Photoshop.)

Obviously, processing individual photos involves a number of variables, and what works in one instance won't necessarily work in another. Some images will require very little adjustment, and others more. But even with the greatest care taken at the time of capture, every raw image stands a chance of being improved—often significantly—during processing.

DEVELOP MODULE PANELS

In the Develop module, the left panel set (see Figure 4-1, opposite page) contains the Navigator, Presets, Snapshots, History and Collections; we'll look at those later. I usually work with the left panels hidden to give the photo as much room as possible in the preview area; see Figure 4-2.

The right panel set provides all the adjustment controls and tools you'll use to Develop your photos. ...