If you have a Lightroom Classic or Lightroom question that you’d
like answered in the pages of Photoshop User magazine, send
it to [email protected].left (that looks like a stack) lets you know this
photo appears within a collection.
Cool tip: These aren’t just icons, they’re buttons.
For example, if you click on the icon that shows it’s
been cropped, it takes you to the Develop module
and activates the Crop Overlay tool with your edited
crop in place ready for you to make changes. Pretty
cool, right?Q. When I sharpen my photos in Photoshop,
I have no problem seeing the sharpening as
it’s applied to my photo, but when I sharpen
in Lightroom, I can barely see any difference
in the look of my photo unless I add a lot of
sharpening, and even then I can barely see it.
Is something wrong with my Lightroom?
A. Well, kinda, but it’s not just your Lightroom, it’s
all of our Lightrooms. The way Lightroom displays
sharpening is much different than the way Photoshop
does and, while you can see the effects of sharpening
in Photoshop at most magnifications, from 25% to
33% to 67.5% and so on, in Lightroom you really
have to be at a 1:1 (100% size) magnification to be
able to see the sharpening as you apply it. In fact, if
you go to the Detail panel and you have the preview
window collapsed (the triangle icon at the top right
of the panel), and you’re viewing your image at less
than 1:1, you’ll see a warning icon (exclamation point).
If you click on the warning, it automatically zooms
your photo to 1:1, which is helpful.
Having to view your sharpening at 1:1 makes it
tough with today’s huge megapixel cameras; yourimage is so large onscreen at 1:1 that you’re only
seeing a small portion of it, and it’s often hard to
judge the effect of applying a particular amount of
sharpening on the entire image.
I don’t have a good workaround for you, accept
for doing what I do when I’m really not sure about
the sharpening, and that’s to bop over to Photoshop,
sharpen my image there (as the final step in my work-
flow), and then send that image back to Lightroom.
Probably not what you wanted to hear, but that’s
kinda where we are with sharpening previews in
Lightroom, and it’s always been that way.Q. On occasion, when I’ve completed processing
an image in Develop, and I view the file back
in the Library module, the tonal quality is
reduced. In other words, the image has become
dull and not as bright or strong as it was in
Develop. The background color might be weaker,
or there’s a slight color shift. When I go back to
the Library module from Develop, does Light-
room Classic switch from the RAW file to some
kind of lesser-quality JPEG preview?
A. Lightroom uses a series of different preview file sizes,
based on what you chose when you first imported the
image. Generally, the smaller-sized thumbnails are
a lower quality, but when you click on a thumbnail
to view it larger in the Library module, you now see
a larger rendered preview (it may take a second or
two to render this larger, higher-quality preview).
Then there are even higher-quality, larger previews
at full 1:1 size. (To build Standard or 1:1 previews after
you’ve imported photos, go to Library>Previews.)
So, there are multiple previews that get generated
along the way, based on where you’re viewing the
image, and how large. The smaller, faster-drawing
thumbnails provide a lesser-quality preview of the
image, so that may be why you’re seeing a difference
in how your image looks in the Library vs. Develop. nf HOW TOPHOTOSHOP USER
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