Today’s Question: I just read your answer to question about creating thin ovals with the radial gradient tool. Somewhere in the last few Lightroom Classic updates I lost the guide handles and lines for both linear and radial gradients. How do I get them back?
Tim’s Quick Answer: You can get the controls back for the gradient options for masking in Lightroom Classic by choosing “Auto” or “Always” from the “Show Edit Pins” popup on the toolbar below the image preview area.
More Detail: There are several options for the visibility of controls for the Linear Gradient and Radial Gradient options for masking in Lightroom Classic. These are available from the “Show Edit Pins” popup on the toolbar below the image preview area. Note that you can also toggle the display on or off by pressing the “H” key on the keyboard, so you may have unintentionally pressed that keyboard shortcut at some point, causing the controls to be hidden.
If the toolbar is not visible below the image preview area in the Develop module, you can press the letter “T” on the keyboard to toggle the display. You can also choose View > Show Toolbar (or View > Hide Toolbar) from the menu to toggle the toolbar display.
At the far left of the toolbar you’ll find the “Show Edit Pins” popup. I prefer to set this popup to “Auto”, so the controls will appear when my mouse pointer is over the image, and they will disappear when I move the mouse pointer out of the image area.
You can also choose “Always” from the popup if you want the controls to always be visible, regardless of where your mouse pointer is positioned. The “Selected” option will cause only the controls for an active edit pin to be displayed, while “None” will obviously hide the controls.
Once you’ve changed the setting, it is “sticky”, meaning your choice will remain until you change it again. Just keep in mind that accidentally pressing “H” on the keyboard will hide the controls, in which case you could also simply press “H” again to make the controls visible again.
