Today’s Question: Very recently when in the Develop module of Lightroom Classic, when I use the Adjustment Brush or the Graduated Filter, I can no longer see the circle with a black dot in the middle after making the adjustments. Usually when I hover the mouse over the dot, I can see the mask that was made during the adjustment. Has something changed in Lightroom Classic?
Tim’s Quick Answer: The edit pin icon you’re referring to is still available in Lightroom Classic, so the display must have been turned off. From the Show Edit Pins popup on the toolbar below the image preview you can choose “Auto” or “Always” to re-enable the display of edit pins.
More Detail: The targeted adjustment tools in Lightroom Classic (Graduated Filter, Radial Filter, and Adjustment Brush) use an edit pin to indicate where the adjustment has been applied within the image. You can click on an edit pin to select which targeted adjustment you want to refine, hover your mouse over an edit pin to see an overlay representing the shape of the area being affected by the adjustment, and press Delete after selecting an edit pin to delete a targeted adjustment.
You can choose when you want the edit pins to be displayed, which means it is possible to hide the edit pins altogether by selecting the “Never” option from the Show Edit Pins popup on the toolbar below the image preview in the Develop module. Note, by the way, that if that toolbar isn’t visible you can press “T” on the keyboard to bring it back.
I suspect in this case the keyboard shortcut for the edit pin display may explain why the edit pins unexpectedly stopped being displayed. You can press “H” on the keyboard to cycle through the options for the Show Edit Pins popup.
My preference, by the way, is to use the “Auto” option for the Show Edit Pins popup. This causes the edit pins to be hidden when you move your mouse pointer away from the image, so you can get an unobstructed view of the image. When you bring your mouse pointer back over the image (with the applicable targeted adjustment tool active) the edit pins will appear on the image again.