Find every tool
Open a photo in Develop. The section menu in the right-hand panel selects Prepare, Lens & Geometry, Light & Tone, Colour & Look, Detail or Effects. Choose a section, then click a tool heading to open its controls. This reference follows that menu, in the same order, and includes all 39 selectable tools.
| Section | What you do there | Complete reference |
|---|---|---|
| Prepare | Choose camera colour, convert a negative, reduce noise and remove distractions | All six Prepare tools |
| Lens & Geometry | Correct lens faults, turn or straighten the image, fix perspective and crop | All six geometry tools |
| Light & Tone | Balance the light source, set brightness and decide how dark and bright tones are rendered | All eight tone tools |
| Colour & Look | Adjust colours, apply a reference look, make black and white, choose profiles, film stocks or LUTs | All eleven colour tools |
| Detail | Control texture and local contrast, or sharpen edges | All four detail tools |
| Effects | Add halation, glow, a vignette or grain | All four effects |
Some of the workflow films were recorded with an earlier version; their steps remain useful, but older AI setup screens can differ. Current packages include the AI models and runtimes for offline use after installation.
Customise tools
Customise tools changes which tool cards are visible in the current section. It does not apply a correction. A tool marked Specialist in this reference may need to be ticked here before its heading appears.
| Menu choice | What it does |
|---|---|
| A tool's name | Shows or hides its card. Open the card and change a control to edit the photo. Hiding a card keeps its saved settings. |
| One tool open at a time | Opening a card folds the other cards in that section. Turn it off to compare controls in several open cards. |
| Collapse tools in this section | Folds all cards in the current section, without switching their effects off. |
| Restore default tools | Restores the normal visible set. Tools with active edited settings remain visible. It does not reset the photograph. |
A checked tool may be unavailable to untick because its edited settings affect this photo. This keeps an active correction discoverable. A tool may also depend on the input: Capture sharpening, for example, appears only for a suitable RAW. Selecting another photo can change the available controls.
Try it: select Light & Tone, open Customise tools and tick Tone equalizer. Open that card. Nothing should change until you adjust a zone or switch on an existing correction. Fold the card: the correction remains applied.
Fold, bypass and reset
These actions have different purposes. Use the status dot to compare an effect; use the heading to make room in the panel.
| Control | Result |
|---|---|
| Tool heading | Opens or folds its controls. It does not change the image. |
| Status dot / effect switch | Bypasses or restores the adjustment while keeping its values. A saved amount can remain even when the displayed effect is off. |
| Advanced / Filter controls / Show curves | Reveals additional controls. Folding them keeps their settings active. |
| ↺ beside a tool heading | Restores that tool's starting settings and state. Other tools retain their edits. Ordinary tool resets can be undone. |
| Small ↺ beside a changed value | Resets that value. A size, threshold or camera setting can have a nonzero default. |
| Double-click a slider / right-click a value | Restores that control's default. For an effect amount this often means no effect; white balance instead has a meaningful starting value. |
| ⋯ → Copy adjustment settings | Copies that adjustment so it can be reused on another photo. |
| ⋯ → Paste adjustment settings | Applies compatible copied settings to this adjustment. It is unavailable without matching copied settings. |
| ⋯ → Reset this adjustment | Resets the adjustment named in that menu. A grouped tool can contain several independent adjustments. |
| ⋯ → Save adjustment preset… | Saves a reusable recipe for that adjustment. Use the Presets panel for a recipe spanning several tools. |
Light groups exposure, contrast and shadows/highlights. Texture, clarity & dehaze groups three effects. Their contained adjustments can have separate dots and action menus. Light's Contrast shares the effect with Vibrance & saturation; use its value reset when you only want to reset contrast. Curves and Lab colour also share underlying tone-curve settings, as explained on their pages.
Drag a slider to change it, hold Shift for finer movement, or click its number to type a precise value. A completed drag forms one Undo step. Compare with Ctrl+Z and Ctrl+Shift+Z, or use the effect switch without discarding your work.
Auto and full-photo Reset
Auto, above the section menu, calculates a new exposure from the picture with highlight protection. It does not choose white balance; White balance has its own Auto. Auto replaces the exposure estimate rather than adding another identical increase each time. A night scene may still need to stay deliberately dark, and snow may need a brighter treatment than a middle-toned subject.
Reset, beside Auto, returns the whole photo to its import starting look, including the starting automatic corrections. Reset to Camera Original, in the Adjustments menu, removes that starting look too. Both full-photo resets clear development history and redo steps and cannot be undone. Use a snapshot before a major restart if you want to retain a version. A single tool's ↺ is the appropriate choice for removing only one correction.
Scope menu and exposure overlays
Scopes measure the current preview. They help you judge an adjustment but do not edit or export their graphics.
| Choice | How to read it and when to use it |
|---|---|
| Histogram | Dark tones are on the left and bright tones on the right. Peaks show how much of the photo occupies those brightness values. Use it for overall distribution; a peak at an edge is a reason to inspect clipping, not a requirement to force every image across the whole graph. |
| Waveform | Shows brightness against horizontal position in the photo. Use it to see whether a sky, face or bright window at a particular position is much brighter than its surroundings. |
| RGB parade | Shows red, green and blue brightness separately, from black at the bottom to white at the top. Use it to compare channel balance and find a colour channel reaching the limit first. |
| Vectorscope | Hue is the direction from the centre; distance shows chroma. Use it to judge a colour push or excessive saturation. The skin line is a reference under neutral lighting, not a universal target for every face. |
| False colour | Colours the picture by preview brightness: blue/teal for deep shadows/shadows, green around middle grey, pink for a light-skin brightness reference, yellow/orange for highlights/near white. Red and purple identify preview clipping. It is a viewing overlay, not a creative look. |
| Enlarge scopes / Compact | Opens a larger scope over the viewer or returns to the compact one. Drag its heading to move it and its corner to resize it. You can continue editing. |
| Clipping indicators (J) | Marks clipped highlights and shadows in the developed image. Adjusting exposure or tone can change this clipping. |
| Mark Clipped Sensor Areas | Marks saturated RAW sensor samples before the edit. Available for supported 16-bit Bayer and X-Trans sources. This is different from clipping caused by the finished rendering. |
False colour can be toggled with F, or held briefly to inspect. Before/After comparisons can be viewed with the same overlay. None of these overlays appears in exported files.
Crop, Masks and Retouch buttons
These buttons sit above the section menu. Crop opens the geometry toolbar; Masks and Retouch temporarily replace the section's controls. The back arrow or Esc returns to the adjustments. Leaving a tool keeps completed edits.
| Tool or choice | What it does | Controls and walkthrough |
|---|---|---|
| Crop | Trims the frame, straightens it and opens automatic/guided perspective | Crop & straighten |
| Masks → Radial | Makes a soft ellipse for a face, spotlight or off-centre vignette | Radial and gradient |
| Masks → Gradient | Makes a graduated transition, useful for sky or foreground brightness | Radial and gradient |
| Masks → Brush | Paints coverage where an adjustment should apply; brush marks remain editable mask shapes | Brush and pen |
| Masks → Pen | Draws an editable outline with nodes for a precise subject boundary | Brush and pen |
| Masks → Colour Range | Selects a sampled colour, with range width and softness. Combine a shape to exclude similar colours elsewhere | Colour Range |
| Masks → AI object mask | Uses points, a box or AI brush to estimate a subject, then turns the accepted selection into editable paths | AI masks |
| Shapes & overlay / Edge refinement | Combines, subtracts or intersects shapes and ranges; adjusts feathering and the visible coverage overlay | Combine and refine |
| Local adjustment controls | Apply exposure, contrast, colour, warmth, tint, sharpness and other offered corrections within the selected mask. Mask opacity scales the correction; overlay opacity only changes the display | Every local control |
| External mask | Imports a greyscale image to restrict supported global adjustments: white permits the effect, black excludes it, grey gives partial coverage | External masks |
| Retouch → Heal | Copies texture from a source and blends it into the destination's surroundings | Retouch and frequency separation |
| Retouch → Clone | Copies source pixels more directly; useful when texture or an edge needs to match exactly | Retouch and frequency separation |
| Retouch → Blur / Fill | Softens a selected spot or fills it. Frequency layers let you target texture separately from broader tone | Retouch and frequency separation |
| Retouch → AI object removal | Opens the same cleanup tool found in Prepare | AI object removal |
A practical order and a fair comparison
Correct the input and noise first, then geometry, white balance and light. Make colour changes after the basic exposure is useful. Add detail and finishing effects while checking their combined result. This is a working order, not a demand to enable every tool.
Use Fit for composition and overall tone. Use 100% for noise, sharpening, texture, halos and repaired edges. A fitted preview can hide both noise and smoothing. During an edit, the image may temporarily show a softer overview while full-resolution tiles finish; wait for the detail render before judging sharpness.
Before/After compares the starting photo with the whole current edit. A tool's status dot compares only that effect. Snapshots preserve named edit states for alternatives; History and Undo step through edits. The left dock also offers Presets and Soft Proof; see the Develop workflow for those controls.