Where the tools are
On the edit page the tools live in two places. The top panel, across the top of the window, holds the tools you use with the pointer on the photograph and the controls for how the canvas is looked at. The develop panel, down the right, holds the sliders and settings in six tabs; the few settings that belong to a gesture on the photograph sit on a bar under it instead. This page is the map. The pages after it follow the develop panel from top to bottom, then the top panel's tools grouped by what they do, not strictly left to right, and last what is different about a RAW file. Adjusting inside a mask covers Subject mask and Colour grading covers Match a reference.
The top panel
From left to right:
- Crop · Straighten · Rotate 90° clockwise · Flip left to right · Flip top to bottom · Spot clean — tools that work on the photograph itself. Each wears a small dot when this frame's value is not its default: a crop that is not the full frame, an angle, a quarter turn, a flip, a spot.
- Fit the whole frame · 100% · 200% — how large the photograph is drawn.
- Focus mask · Clipping warnings · Grid and guides — readouts drawn over the photograph, never into it.
- Find distractions · AI lasso · Subject mask · Match a reference — the four tools in violet. On a window narrower than about 1,500 points they fold into one AI tools button, drawn as three dots, with the same four items.
Outside the tools, the same row starts with Back to cull, an undo button and your place among the takes, and ends with Before / after and Export, which carries the number of takes (Export 12).
Rest the pointer on any icon and a card opens after a moment: the tool's name, one line on what it does, and its shortcut if it has one. The six tools that change the photograph itself also show a before-and-after pair of a real photograph put through that exact tool; the rest carry words alone.
Click a tool to arm it. Crop, Straighten and Spot clean fill with orange while they are armed; the AI lasso does not change, so look for its bar under the photograph instead, and the Subject mask button fills violet while its scope is on. An armed tool puts a bar under the photograph with its own settings, and those live nowhere else: the crop's ratios, the straighten angle, the guided perspective's modes and Amount, a brush's Size and Flow, a mask's Feather and Invert.
Crop, Straighten and AI lasso keep what you draw as a draft until you apply it. With a draft on the canvas, pressing the tool again applies it, the same as ↩; Esc throws the draft away and leaves the tool armed. With nothing drawn, pressing the tool again or pressing Esc puts it away. Rotate 90° clockwise and the two flips are never armed: each press turns or mirrors the frame at once.
The six tabs
The develop panel's header carries a strip of six pills. Each is one tab, and each has a key.
| Tab | Key | Sections, top to bottom |
|---|---|---|
| Tone | ⌃1 | Histogram · Exposure · High dynamic range · Clarity · Tone curve |
| Colour | ⌃2 | White balance · Saturation · Colour editor · Colour grading · Black and white · Look |
| Detail | ⌃3 | Sharpening · Noise reduction · Film grain |
| Lens | ⌃4 | Lens corrections · Vignetting · Perspective |
| Local | ⌃5 | Masks |
| Changes | ⌃6 | Changes · Versions · History |
A dot on a pill means this frame carries an adjustment somewhere in that tab. Changes wears a count instead: how many adjustments are on the frame. The tab you were last in is remembered, even across quitting the app. The last button in the header folds the panel to a narrow rail, and [ does the same; the rail keeps the six tab icons with their dots, and clicking one brings the panel back on that tab.
Under the pills sits the scope card: the frame's thumbnail, the look it wears and the base film simulation. A line under it gives the camera, lens and exposure the frame was shot at. When the sliders are scoped to the subject, the card reads Subject only in violet and offers Global to take it off again. Selecting a mask in the Local tab turns the card violet too and names the mask, but that does not scope the sliders on the other tabs: Global there only deselects the mask. See Adjusting inside a mask.
Reset all, in the header, clears every adjustment on the frame in one press, and one ⌘Z brings it back. Undo, Reset all, and where edits are kept says what it leaves.
What a section header can do
Every section is the same card. Its header holds, left to right: a chevron to open or close it, the section's glyph, its name with a summary under it (linear · untouched, no profile for XF23mmF1.4 R, 2 masks on this frame), an orange dot when something inside has moved, and up to three small buttons at the right.
- The reset arrow appears only when there is something to reset, and it clears this section's settings and nothing else. Resetting Film grain leaves your vignette exactly where it was. The resets for Lens corrections and Perspective also re-fit the crop, replacing one you drew by hand;
⌘Zbrings it back (Lens has the detail). - The eye switches the section off without losing its values. The row dims and its summary begins bypassed; the photograph renders as if you had never opened that section. Click again and everything comes back, and it is one step on
⌘Z. Eleven sections have an eye: Clarity, Tone curve, Colour editor, Colour grading, Black and white, Sharpening, Noise reduction, Film grain, Lens corrections, Vignetting and Perspective. Exposure, High dynamic range, White balance and Saturation do not, because the four are kept together as one setting. - The ? opens a short guide for that section.
Esc, a click anywhere on the panel, or changing tab or frame puts it away. The panel's own header carries a ? for the tab you are in.
Rest the pointer for about a quarter of a second on the header of a section with an eye, and the photograph shows the frame without that section; moving off puts it back. It writes nothing and touches no undo step. It works only on a section that holds something and is not already switched off, and never while a slider is under your hand.
Every tab opens with its first section showing, and Tone with its first two, the histogram and Exposure. Which sections you have opened is remembered for the session.