Lightroom > Develop Module >

6 - Presence Section

Look in the upper-right corner of Lightroom, and make sure you're in the Develop module.

We're now going to look at the Presence section at the bottom of the Basic panel.

Basic Panel: Presence Section

Most often, you won't use Clarity on the Basic panel.

Instead, you'll use it with the Adjustment Brush tool.

Technically, Clarity increases or decreases midtone contrast.

The contrast change is due to sharpening.

In practice, think of Clarity as increasing or decreasing emphasis.

For example:

• Increase Clarity—increase emphasis—on the eyes in a portrait.

• Decrease Clarity—decrease emphasis—on a distracting background.

When using Clarity, click 1:1 in the Navigator panel in the top left corner of your screen.

When Clarity is too strong, you'll see halos on the edges in the photograph.

An edge is where there's a changed in tone or color.

Saturation is adjusted with the tools below.

Think of saturation as being the vividness/richness of colors.

Technically, saturation is the amount of gray in a color.

Vibrance increases the saturation of colors that are not already saturated.

It also ignores skin tones, because you generally don't want to increase their saturation.

Saturation increases the saturation of all colors equally, whether the colors are saturated or not.

The already-saturated colors in a photograph can be emphasized by decreasing Vibrance and increasing saturation.