What are Lightroom Brushes?

Lightroom offers you countless options when it comes to editing and making adjustments to your photos. From endless preset and custom options, you will be able to create whatever type of photo you want, and get an amazing end result. However, the controls found in the Develop module do not always allow you the best options when it comes to making specific edits to your photos. The controls in the adjustment panels found in the Develop module are great for making changes to your entire photo, but sometimes you want to make corrections to a specific area of the photo. For example, you may want to lighten a face in a portrait, or enhance the blue sky in landscape, or whiten a subject’s teeth. You cannot do this through a preset or any other edit that would be applied to the whole photo, as you obviously need specific settings for this specific area of your photo. The way to do this is through the use of Lightroom’s Adjustment Brushes. The adjustment brush in Lightroom is a tool that allows you to make specific adjustments to certain areas of your image by letting you “paint” the adjustment on wherever you want it.

The adjustment brush tool can be found in the develop module, right below the Histogram, and above the “Basic” panel on the far right. Once you have selected the paintbrush icon and activated the adjustment brush tool, a selection of sliders will appear. From there, you can select which adjustments you want to make, and then simply take your brush and brush over the areas of your image you would like to edit. The adjustment brush lets you selectively apply exposure, clarity, brightness, and other adjustments to photos by painting them onto the photo. You can apply one of many styles of brush, depending on the effect you are looking to achieve. When you are finished brushing on your edits, click “Done” in the lower right corner of the preview window!

Lightroom brushes are one of the most important tools you can learn how to use when it comes to editing your photos. Once you learn how to use Lightroom brushes, you will be able to quickly and easily apply edits like whitening teeth, brightening blonde hair, reduce or remove scars and blemishes on the skin, adjust lipstick and eye makeup, and much more!

Out of the box, Lightroom already includes the adjustment brush tool, with several effects that are ready to be applied to your photos. This includes effects such as temperature, tint, exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows, whites, blacks, clarity, dehaze, saturation, sharpness, noise, and more. In addition to these preset options, you can create your own settings and adjust the brush to fit whatever edits you need to make, and you can also purchase and install other brushes that will give you even more options for editing!