Adjust the settings
White balance, tone, presence, detail, touch-ups and crop — every one of them reversible.
Shortcuts are written the macOS way — on Windows and Linux, read Cmd as Ctrl. Press ? inside the app for the list as your own machine shows it.
The panel on the right carries the Rating, Label, Adjustments, Touch Up and Rotation tabs, and almost everything happens under Adjustments:
- White Balance — Temp and Tint, or click Pick Gray and then click a neutral-gray pixel in the photo to balance from it. Fastest way out of a yellow room.
- Tone — Exposure, Contrast, Highlights, Shadows, Whites and Blacks. This is where most photos are won or lost.
- Presence — Vibrance and Saturation. Vibrance leaves skin alone where it can, so try it before Saturation.
- Detail — Denoise. The Rotation tab turns the photo in 90° steps. Crop is enabled with the keyboard shortcut C. A dedicated crop UI will be added soon.
Three habits that make it faster
- Let the histogram start. Auto sets the tone sliders from the photo's own histogram — Cmd+U for the photo in front of you, Cmd+Shift+U for everything selected. Reset puts the sliders back to zero.
- Do one, then copy it. Cmd+Shift+C copies the develop settings off a finished photo; select the rest of the shoot and press Cmd+Shift+Y to apply them to the whole selection. One good frame becomes the look for the shoot.
- Heal the small stuff. The Touch Up tab removes spots — click a blemish and adjust with the Size slider, up to 64 spots per photo. It needs the full-resolution image loaded first, so give it a moment if you have just arrived from the grid.
None of this touches the original file. Every slider is an instruction
stored in the .lightphotos folder beside your photo, so you
can close the app mid-edit, come back next week, or reset the whole photo
without any harm done. When it looks right, the last step is
export.