Adjustments

The preset configurations contained under Looks are great for fun finishing touches, but if you need to tweak exposure or color in a photo in a more realistic-looking manner, you’ll need to make a stop in Adjustments. The tools contained in the Adjustments section (Figure 5.13), really the bread and butter of Develop, are divided into three sections:

• White Balance

• Exposure

• Contrast

Within each section you can also drill down a level for a finer level of control. Let’s take a close look at each section.

Figure 5.13 The Adjustment tools.

White Balance

The white balance controls are generally used for adjusting the overall color cast (or lack thereof) in a photo. Our digital cameras have white balance settings as well, and for the most part they do a fair job of creating a photo that has a near neutral appearance. You’ll know when you used the wrong white balance setting in your camera when the colors in the photo tend to be too warm (having a yellow-orange cast) or too cool (having a bluish cast). For example, if you take a photo in a room lit with tungsten lights using a camera set with a daylight white balance, you’ll get a photo with a very warm cast (Figure 5.14), while that same camera set to using a tungsten white balance takes a photo outdoors in daylight will result in a photo with a bluish cast (Figure 5.15). When this happens, we can use Carousel to reduce the appearance of the cast and make the photo look more normal.