Month: April 2025

Today’s Question: I just watched a video where the presenter adjusts the Highlights and Shadows first and then sets the white & black points. I typically do this in the opposite order. Does it really make a difference if you set the black & white points before (or after) the Highlights and Shadow settings?

Tim’s Quick Answer: Ultimately, all that really matters is what the final settings are for the adjustments. However, in my view it is best to establish the maximum and minimum tonal values with Whites and Blacks first, and to then refine the level of apparent detail using the Highlights and Shadows sliders.

More Detail: Because the Whites and Blacks adjustments determine the overall limits of tonality for an image, I recommend establishing the value for those adjustments first. I will refine the setting for Exposure as needed before adjusting the value for Whites and Blacks, but I definitely recommend refining the Highlights and Shadows adjustments after adjusting Whites and Blacks. These same concepts, by the way, apply equally to Lightroom Classic, Lightroom, Camera Raw, and any other software that uses similar adjustments.

All the tonal adjustments have a degree of overlap between them, so that for example if you’ve set the value for Whites and Blacks and then modified one of the other adjustments, you may have created clipping of highlights or shadows in the image. This is one of the reasons I recommend using the clipping preview option, accessible by holding the Alt/Option key while adjusting the sliders for these tonal adjustments.

My approach is to first establish a setting for the Exposure slider based on a visual evaluation of the image. Then set the white and black point with the Whites and Blacks sliders, holding the Alt/Option key as part of that process to check for clipping preview.

At that point I’ll generally reduce the value for Highlights to enhance perceived detail and contrast in the relatively bright areas of the image. If you instead increase the value for Highlights, be sure to either use the clipping preview when doing so, or to adjust the Whites value using clipping preview to confirm an appropriate setting.

I then adjust the Shadows slider, leveraging the clipping preview option if using a negative value, to evaluate clipping of the relatively dark areas of the image. If there is too much clipping as a result, increasing the value for the Blacks slider can provide a solution.

You can most certainly refine these adjustments in any order you prefer. I find the above workflow to be helpful, but the most important thing is to make use of clipping preview as part of the process to ensure you’re applying adjustments based on clear information about the impact on the image.

Today’s Question: I renamed my Lightroom Classic catalog and associated files using the Rename Catalog command as you suggested. Is there any reason to keep the previous catalogs and files from when Lightroom automatically renamed with upgrades? I assume catalog backups made prior to renaming can be deleted?

Tim’s Quick Answer: As long as you are sure that the catalog files in question are from older versions of Lightroom Classic or are backup copies, deleting those files won’t cause any problems for your current catalog.

More Detail: While Adobe has made helpful changes to Lightroom Classic in terms of how catalog updates are handled, many photographers still have accumulated copies of outdated catalog files, as well as old backup copies of catalogs.

As long as you’re certain of which files relate to the current catalog, and that any unrelated files are not needed, it is safe to delete those files not associated you’re your current catalog. For example, the earlier versions of the current catalog that were from earlier versions of Lightroom Classic don’t need to be retained. In addition, numerous backup copies of your current catalog (or of prior catalogs) don’t need to be retained.

I do, however, recommend keeping a few catalog backups from various times, just so you have something to fall back on in case you run into an issue of corruption with your current catalog that might also have affected a recent backup. Obviously, the older a catalog backup is the less helpful it would be to recover from, since there may be many photos and updates that aren’t reflected in that older catalog backup.

Note, by the way, that one of the things I highly recommend doing to help minimize the harm that would be caused by a lost or corrupted catalog is to make sure the “Automatically write changes into XMP” checkbox is turned on, which can be found on the Metadata tab of the Catalog Settings dialog in Lightroom Classic.

Today’s Question: I was missing some photos in Lightroom Classic and used “show in finder” and located them. How do I get them into Lightroom Classic??

Tim’s Quick Answer: If the photos have a missing status, you’ll want to reconnect the missing images with the source files. If the photos are not in Lightroom Classic at all, you can use the Synchronize Folder command to import the photos that aren’t present.

More Detail: The “Show in Finder” command (“Show in Explorer” on Windows) enables you to display a window showing the storage location for a photo in your Lightroom Classic catalog.

For example, if some photos in a folder are missing, you could right-click on a photo that is not missing and choose “Show in Finder/Explorer” from the popup menu to go to the folder location where the missing photos are expected. The missing photos may have been renamed on the hard drive, for example, or they may have been moved to a subfolder, among other possibilities.

If you’re able to locate the source file for a missing photo in this way, you can reconnect the photos in Lightroom Classic. Start by clicking on the exclamation point (!) icon at the top-right of the thumbnail for the image to bring up a dialog where you can click the Locate button. In the dialog that appears, navigate to the folder location and select the applicable source image, then click the Choose button. The image in Lightroom Classic will be updated to reflect the correct filename and folder location for the image.

If, on the other hand, your exploration led you to discover that some images in the folder on the hard drive are not in your Lightroom Classic catalog, you can use the Synchronize Folder command. Right-click on the folder in the Folders section of the left panel in the Library module in Lightroom Classic and choose “Synchronize Folder”.

In the dialog that appears, turn on the “Import new photos” checkbox, which will have an indication of the number of photos that were found to the right of the label. I also recommend turning on the “Show import dialog before importing” checkbox so you can configure the settings you want to use for adding the photos to the catalog. Turn off the “Remove missing photos from catalog” and “Scan for metadata updates” checkboxes. Click OK, and the photos that were not in the catalog will be added.