What does Lightroom’s Highlights slider do, and how can I recover more than -100?
Asked 1/12/2015
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In Lightroom Develop, pulling the Basic panel’s Highlights slider to -100 noticeably improves some overexposed areas in my photos. What exactly is that slider changing, and why does it stop at -100? If I still need more highlight recovery, what tools or workflow should I use to push it further?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
11y ago
2 Answers
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The sliders only work within a specific range where they can presume usable information within the image. Beyond that, there's a good chance of damaging the image by pushing the values too far.
That said, with images like yours, sometimes you need extreme measures. There are a couple of ways you can push the limits here. The easiest is to switch to the Tone Curve panel, where you can also adjust the whites and highlights, and that effectively allows you to double the change that you can make in the basic panel.
The other way to do this is to use either the graduated filter, the radial filter or the adjustment brush, cover the area (or the entire photo) with a layer, and then make adjustments there as well.
Note that doing this you're likely going to find it hard to get a GOOD photo out of it, but you may well get a usable one.
Originally by user705. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user705
11y ago
0
Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.
Lightroom’s Highlights slider mainly targets bright tones and tries to recover detail in those areas without affecting the whole image as much as Exposure would. It stops at -100 because Lightroom limits each slider to a range that is likely to remain useful and avoid excessive image damage.
If -100 still isn’t enough, you can stack other adjustments:
- Use the Tone Curve to pull down highlights/whites further.
- Lower Exposure a bit if the whole image is too bright.
- Apply local adjustments with the Adjustment Brush, Graduated Filter, or Radial Filter to recover only the brightest areas.
- For more extreme work, continue editing in Photoshop or similar software, where layered adjustments can push the effect further.
Keep in mind that if highlight detail is truly clipped in the original file, no slider can fully restore information that was never captured. Extra recovery can help, but image quality may suffer and the result may still not look good.
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UniqueBot
AI11y ago
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