Watch video: Using the Effects and Detail panel in Lightroom
The effects and details panels are two features of Lightroom CC (opens in new tab) which, while not new, work seamlessly together to powerfully bring out new details and depth in shots. They combine very useful but incremental adjustments that include changing contrast, sharpness and noise for a drastically different photo.
You might find these areas useful when working on a photo like ours here – something blurry, distant, without contrast or definition. Sometimes blur can improve an image, but in this case we have two people on the right side of the frame that we want to highlight. The mountains behind the subjects are covered in clouds, making them somewhat less impressive.
So we’re going to give this shot a boost of sharpness for a more striking and attractive result…
1. Clarity
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If you want to increase the midtone contrast, you need to change the Clarity slider. This gives stronger definition to the midtones (rather than highlights or shadows) by increasing the pixels’ brightness/darkness. Be careful not to overdo it as this is a powerful tool, so subtlety is key here.
2. Depilation
The Dehaze slider is an impressive and selective localized contrast effect that analyzes the image before you work on it, clearing up foggy shots. Use it to reduce or increase fog and haze in your shot.
3. Vignette
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Create a dark band around the edge of your image by pushing the slider to negative values like we have here (-25), or a lighter band with a positive setting. It will draw attention to the center of the image, and comes with a variety of options to adjust the transition to the frame – you can even change its shape.
4. Details panel
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Here we can increase image sharpness, change the size of the sharpening radius, control the detail slider’s precision and change the threshold of areas not affected with the masking slider. We increased Sharpen to define edges of the scene with a radius of 2 because most of the subject is far away.
5. Noise reduction
After sharpening an image, we often find that noise has been introduced to the shot. To fix this, increase the Noise Reduction slider; we adjusted to 36. Color Noise Reduction will help reduce the color noise that is more visible in JPEGs, but we found it to be a bit high at 17. Be careful: you can definitely overuse the tool!
6. Grain
At this point it’s worth adding some noise – or, as the slider is called, Grain. It might sound crazy to add noise after removing it, but the Grain slider introduces a uniform and controlled grain, which looks much nicer than the original noise we removed, and you can change the amount by as much or as little as you like.
If you enjoyed this tutorial but want a little more power from your laptop, why not check out the best laptops for photo editing (opens in new tab)? If you are really keen to improve your skills beyond online photography courses (opens in new tab) could be the way to go.
