Set tone and contrast before color

The Tone tab holds white balance, exposure, and the tone curve. Press 1, or click Tone, to open it — it's the first of the Editor's three tabs.

Tone and white balance apply before your color pins, so contrast set here won't shift your hues, and grading on the wheel later won't undo it. Because of that ordering, many photographers set exposure, neutrality, and contrast first, then move to color.

Set a neutral, then place exposure

Start with White balance. The square pad shifts color around neutral: drag the marker toward the color you want to add — toward yellow to warm the photo, toward blue to cool it. If something in the frame should read as clean gray, click Pick neutral ("Click something in the photo that should be gray"), then click that spot and Tone Caliper removes its color cast. Double-click the pad to reset. The readout shows neutral when there's no shift, or the offset while you work.

Then set overall brightness with the Exposure slider — from −3 to +3 EV, in fine steps. Get the midtones roughly where you want them before you shape contrast; double-click the slider to reset.

Shape contrast with the tone curve

Open the Tone curve to shape contrast. It works on lightness only, so it reshapes how bright each tone renders without touching the colors, and it does the same job in both the Color and B&W tabs.

The horizontal axis runs from shadows on the left to highlights on the right; the vertical axis from darker at the bottom to lighter at the top. Drag a part of the curve up to lighten those tones, down to darken them. A common move is a gentle S — lift the highlights, drop the shadows — for more contrast. Click the curve to add a point, drag to shape it, and double-click a point to remove it.

The two curve ends double as your black and white points: drag the bottom-left end inward to set where black begins, and the top-right end inward to set where white clips.

Read the histogram, protect the extremes

Open the Histogram from the scopes rail on the right edge of the photo. It reads the finished, on-screen result — the same tones an export would contain right now.

To find where detail is being lost, click the Clipping icon on the rail (or a corner triangle on the histogram) to mark clipped pixels directly on the photo; highlights and shadows are marked differently. Then ease the curve ends or exposure back until they clear. To control where an adjustment lands by lightness, see luminance masks.

1. Open the Tone tab. Press 1, or click Tone, to reach white balance, exposure, and the curve.

2. Neutralize the cast. Drag the white-balance pad, or click Pick neutral and click a gray in the scene. Double-click to reset.

3. Place exposure. Set overall brightness with the Exposure slider before you shape contrast.

4. Shape the curve. Add an S for contrast, and drag the endpoints inward to set black and white points.

5. Check the extremes. Open the histogram, turn on Clipping, and ease exposure or the curve ends back until nothing is marked.