How to Use the Graduated Filter in Lightroom Classic? – Beginners Tutorial
Welcome to this beginner’s tutorial on how to use the Graduated Filter in Lightroom Classic! This powerful tool is perfect for enhancing your photos by adjusting exposure, contrast, color, and more in specific areas of your image. Whether you’re editing landscapes or portraits, mastering this feature will help you create stunning results with ease. Stick around as we walk you through step-by-step instructions and tips to make the most of the Graduated Filter!
This video is from our Lightroom Classic for Beginners Course.
Video Summary
This tutorial introduces the Graduated Filter tool in Adobe Lightroom, a specialized feature designed for making smooth, uniform adjustments to large areas like skies and foregrounds. While similar to the Adjustment Brush, the Graduated Filter is more efficient for creating realistic, “feathered” transitions. The video demonstrates how to use this tool to fix “blown-out” highlights in a bright sky and how to apply a second filter to enhance the foreground, mimicking the effect of a physical neutral density (ND) filter.
Time Stamps
- 0:00 – Introduction to the Graduated Filter tool and its convenience vs. the Adjustment Brush.
- 0:24 – Analyzing the sample shot: Overexposed sky with lost detail.
- 1:12 – How to activate the tool and drag the filter across the image.
- 1:49 – Visualizing the affected area using the red overlay (Mask).
- 2:14 – Adjusting feathering for a smooth transition versus an abrupt change.
- 2:58 – Understanding the digital version of a physical Graduated ND Filter.
- 4:04 – Editing the sky: Reducing exposure and highlights to recover cloud detail.
- 5:14 – Before and after comparison of the sky recovery.
- 5:53 – Applying a second filter to the foreground to boost clarity and saturation.
- 7:08 – Final summary of how exclusive edits transform the image.
