Edit Tone and Color

I try to make the best images I can in the camera so I can apply only the bare minimum of adjustments when I’m editing the photos. I also try to eat only healthy foods and get a full 8 hours of sleep a night. In other words, I have good intentions but not always the best results—but if that means ending up with an underexposed photo and a piece of pie, I’m a happy human. I can fix the photo (and take an extra-long walk, happy and filled with pie).

Lightroom mobile includes many tone and color tools found in the desktop version, more than enough to make a good photo or serve as the starting point for editing later on the computer. They appear in two guises: sliders, such as Exposure, which let you drag to set positive and negative values; and pop-up presets, such as White Balance, which let you choose from a selection of settings. And don’t forget the all-important Undo button in the lower-right corner for when you want to back up a step (or more).

Tip

This is the tip that you will probably use the most when editing your images: Touch and hold with three fingers to view the original, “before” version of the image. Lift your fingers to return to the “after” version. Note that this feature is limited to alterations you make within Lightroom mobile. If you worked on the image in Lightroom desktop before you synced it, that edited version is treated as the “before” in Lightroom mobile.

An Important Note About Color Management

You obviously want your photos to look the best they can, but digital photos are always at the mercy of the screen on which they’re viewed. On your computer that runs Lightroom, you can color-manage the monitor or laptop screen to varying degrees in order to be confident that the photos’ colors are displaying accurately. (If you don’t color-manage your monitor, I highly recommend it—especially if you also print your own photos.)

When you take your photos to another device, however, you lose that control. And in the case of the iPad, you get what you get: it doesn’t incorporate any type of color profiling or adjustment other than brightness. For some photographers this is a deal-breaker, because they want to be sure they’re looking at the same color values of a photo on any device. As it currently stands, you can’t expect true color fidelity on the iPad.

I suspect this isn’t a problem for most photographers, no matter where they land on the professional spectrum. I see Lightroom mobile as a tool for making initial edits or adjustments that must be done in a hurry. If the nature of your work demands a higher level of quality (usually in the form of printing photos or delivering them to clients who will probably print them), then you’ll want to bring it back to Lightroom desktop and fine-tune from there.

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