Lightroom Classic Cheat Sheet

Basic Panel

Tone Controls

Exposure
Shifts the entire histogram left or right. Simulates changing the aperture in full stops. Affects midtones most visibly but moves everything.
Contrast
Applies an S-curve to the tone curve—darkens shadows and brightens highlights simultaneously. Expands or compresses the tonal range around the midpoint.
Highlights
Targets the upper quarter of the histogram. Recovers or pushes detail in bright areas without touching midtones or shadows.
Shadows
Targets the lower quarter of the histogram. Lifts or crushes detail in dark areas without touching midtones or highlights.
Whites
Sets the white point—the brightest value in the image. Affects only the extreme highlight end of the histogram.
Blacks
Sets the black point—the darkest value in the image. Affects only the extreme shadow end of the histogram.

Presence Controls

Texture
Enhances or suppresses medium-frequency detail—the fine grain and surface texture of objects. Leaves edges and large tonal transitions alone.
Works on smaller detail than Clarity.
Clarity
Adds or removes midtone contrast by finding edges and increasing local contrast around them. Makes the image feel "crisper" or "softer" without affecting sharpness.
Works on larger structures than Texture.
Dehaze
Analyzes the image for low-contrast, washed-out regions (atmospheric haze) and restores local contrast and saturation. Also darkens areas it reads as haze—including image edges, which creates a vignette effect.
Negative values push into the haze, adding atmosphere.
Vibrance
Saturation with intelligence—boosts less-saturated colors more than already-saturated colors, and protects skin tones from oversaturation.
Saturation
Uniformly increases or decreases color intensity across the entire image. No protection, no targeting—everything moves the same amount.

Tone Curve

Maps input luminance values to output luminance values. The horizontal axis is the original brightness; the vertical axis is what it becomes. Lifting a point brightens those tones; lowering darkens them.

Parametric Mode

Sliders control four tonal regions (Highlights, Lights, Darks, Shadows) with smooth transitions between them. The range sliders at the bottom adjust where these regions begin and end.

Point Curve Mode

Direct control—click anywhere on the curve to add a point and drag it. RGB together or individual channels. Channel curves shift color: lifting the Red channel adds red/removes cyan, etc.

HSL / Color

Targets colors by their hue and lets you adjust three properties independently. Same controls, different organization: HSL groups by property, Color groups by hue.

Per-Color Adjustments

Hue
Rotates the selected color around the color wheel. Orange shifted toward yellow becomes more yellow; shifted toward red becomes more red.
Saturation
Increases or decreases the intensity of that specific color range only. Desaturating blue affects only blues.
Luminance
Brightens or darkens that specific color range. Useful for controlling how colors translate to grayscale in B&W conversions.

Color Grading

Adds color tints to different tonal ranges. Replaces the old Split Toning panel with more control.

Wheels

Shadows / Midtones / Highlights
Each wheel targets a tonal range. Position in the wheel sets the hue; distance from center sets saturation. The slider beneath each wheel adjusts luminance of that range.
Global
Applies a color tint to the entire image regardless of luminance.
Blending
Controls how much the tonal ranges overlap. Higher values create smoother transitions between shadow/midtone/highlight colors.
Balance
Shifts the boundary between shadows and highlights. Negative values expand the shadow range (shadow color affects more of the image); positive expands highlights.

Detail

Sharpening

Amount
How much edge contrast to add. Higher values = stronger halos around edges.
Radius
How wide the sharpening halos extend from edges. Larger radius = thicker halos, more visible effect.
Detail
How aggressively to sharpen fine detail vs. just major edges. Higher values sharpen more texture but can emphasize noise.
Masking
Restricts sharpening to edges only. At 0, everything gets sharpened. At 100, only strong edges get sharpened. Hold Alt/Option while dragging to see the mask—white areas get sharpened.

Noise Reduction

Luminance
Smooths brightness variations (grain). Higher values = smoother but softer image.
Luminance Detail
Threshold for what counts as noise vs. detail. Higher values preserve more texture but keep more noise.
Luminance Contrast
Preserves local contrast while reducing noise. Higher values maintain more punch but can leave blotchy artifacts.
Color
Reduces color noise (random colored speckles). Usually needs less aggressive values than luminance noise reduction.

Lens Corrections

Profile

Enable Profile Corrections
Applies a lens-specific correction profile that fixes distortion and vignetting based on Adobe's measurements of that lens. Reads lens data from EXIF.
Remove Chromatic Aberration
Automatically detects and removes color fringing along high-contrast edges caused by the lens failing to focus all wavelengths to the same point.

Manual

Distortion
Corrects barrel (bulging outward) or pincushion (pinching inward) distortion. Positive values counteract barrel; negative counteracts pincushion.
Defringe
Manual chromatic aberration removal. The eyedropper samples a fringe color; the sliders let you target purple or green halos specifically.
Vignetting
Corrects lens vignetting (darkening at corners). Amount controls how much to brighten; Midpoint controls how far into the frame the correction extends.

Effects

Post-Crop Vignetting

Amount
Darkens (negative) or lightens (positive) the corners of the frame. Applied after cropping, so it always affects the current frame edges.
Midpoint
How far toward the center the vignette extends. Lower values push the effect further in; higher values keep it at the edges.
Roundness
Shape of the vignette. Negative values make it more rectangular (follows frame shape); positive makes it more circular.
Feather
How gradually the vignette blends into the image. Higher values = softer transition.
Highlights
Protects bright areas from the vignette darkening. Useful when you want dark corners but don't want to muddy bright objects near the edges.

Grain

Amount
How much grain to add. Simulates film grain texture.
Size
How large the grain particles appear. Larger sizes look more like fast film; smaller sizes look finer.
Roughness
How uniform or irregular the grain pattern is. Higher values create more variation in grain density across the image.

Calibration

Adjusts how Lightroom interprets the raw color data before all other processing. These are foundational shifts that affect everything downstream.

Primary Controls

Shadows Tint
Adds green or magenta cast to shadow tones only. Useful for correcting sensor-specific color casts in dark areas.
Red / Green / Blue Primary
Each primary has Hue and Saturation controls. Hue rotates that channel's color response; Saturation controls its intensity. Changes here ripple through all downstream color work.