Ok, so now that I know I have it facing the right direction I can go ahead and make the necessary adjustments. When it does this you can use the mouse to rotate the graduated filter. If you hover your mouse over the center line you’ll see it turn to a curved line with arrowheads at either end. When I adjusted the exposure to the extreme, if it lightened the sky I would need to flip the graduated filter. In this case I am going to increase the exposure all the way and I can see that it lightens the lower part of the photo, which is what I want. When I’m working with the graduated filter the first thing I typically do after adding it to the photo is adjust the exposure setting to an extreme to make sure that I have it in the right direction. If you leave a short distance between the center line and the outer lines it will create a harder and less subtle transition. If you drag the parallel lines far out from the center line it will create a long, soft gradient that transitions gradually.
The from the middle line to the outer lines control where the gradient is applied and how hard or soft that transition is. You’ll see that it creates a line at the pin, as well as a parallel lines above and below. To adjust the exposure of the lower portion of the photo I will click near the top of the corn stalks and I’ll drag up a little bit into the sky. Don’t worry about being precise, you can move the pin later. To use the tool you basically click on a spot in the photo that you want to use as the starting point, and Lightroom will apply the pin for the graduated filter. To get started, click on the icon for the graduated filter tool, or use the keyboard shortcut “m”. It works in a similar fashion to how adding a graduated neutral density filter to your lens would work. If you shoot a lot of landscapes you’ll probably love the functionality of the graduated filter. The lower area of the photo, the corn stalks, is dark and underexposed, and we can use the graduated filter to improve this. This sample photo was taken at sunset at the edge of a corn field. In this sample we’ll use the graduated filter tool to lighten the lower portion of a photo, and we’ll also use it to enhance the sky. In this article we’ll take a look at how the tool works, and we’ll also use it to make some improvements to a sample photo. It allows you to impact one area of the photo without impacting others, and it applies the effect gradually like a gradient. Lightroom’s graduated filter can be an extremely useful tool in the right situation. If you don’t want to miss future articles in the series, please subscribe to our RSS feed or our email newsletter. As new articles are published they will be added to this page.
#Remove presets on lightroom graduated filter series
Throughout the series we’ll cover the details of Lightroom’s library and develop modules and how you can use Lightroom to improve your own photos. This article is a part of our series Photo Editing in Lightroom 101.