The Lightroom Three Panel Challenge

Here’s the Lightroom three panel challenge. Can you develop your photos using just three panels? The Basic panel, the Masking panel and either of (your choice) the Color Mixing or Color Grading panels?

The idea for this challenge came from the many questions I’ve received about adjusting color in Lightroom using the Color Mixing, Color Grading, Tone Curve and Calibration panels. With so many ways to adjust color and tone it’s no surprise that photographers get confused. 

The three panel challenge addresses that by restricting the number of panels you use for the creative development of your photos. With fewer panels comes less confusion and more certainty and purpose. It also helps you build a consistent approach to developing in Lightroom. Your photos should look like they belong together and were made by the same photographer.

You could even say this is a typical Lightroom Classic secret. Complexity is good for writers like me and photographers who make YouTube videos because it gives us stuff to write and talk about. But the simple approach is often the most effective, and there’s no reason why you shouldn’t take it when you can.

The technical (or preparation) panels

Before we look at the challenge you need to get your photo ready for the creative stage of development. You do that with Lightroom’s technical panels – Detail, Lens Corrections and Transform. Technical panels isn’t an official term, but it’s what I call them. You might also like to think of them as preparation panels. 

The Detail panel is for applying Denoise and Raw Details. Use these for removing or reducing noise in high ISO photos.

The Lens Corrections panel is for applying a lens profile (if required) and chromatic aberration removal.

The Transform panel is for correcting converging verticals.

If you use a camera with built-in lens profiles then you may not even need to touch these panels. The tools are there for when you need them, otherwise you can ignore them.

The three panel challenge

Now for the three panel challenge. This is where you use three of Lightroom’s creative panels (again, my term, not an official one) for the creative side of developing your photos. In other words, this is the fun bit. It’s where your photos come alive and you get to apply the skills you’ve learned over the years.

Panel one: In the Basic panel start by setting the Profile and White Balance. They’re the foundation of color (and tone). Let these settings do the heavy lifting when it comes to color in your photos. Get them right, and you may not need to touch any of the creative color panels.

Use the Tone sliders to set the photo’s overall brightness and contrast. You can also adjust the Presence sliders. But if you’re going for a natural look rather than a heavily stylized one you can leave these where they are.

Panel two: Go to the Masking panel and use masks to make local adjustments. A lot depends on your photo but the Masking panel is now where most of your creative work takes place. This includes using a Radial Gradient to apply a vignette.

Panel three: (Optional) Use one of the Color Mixing and Color Grading panels, but not both. You can think of the Color Mixing and Color Grading panels as creative color or stylizing panels. Just like the Presence sliders you can ignore them if you want your photos to have a natural look. But if want to take a stylized approach to color then these are the panels to use. 

Another reason these are optional is because you can adjust color in a more targeted fashion using the Point Color tool in the Masking panel.

And that’s it. This approach keeps things simple and means you don’t have to understand the ins and outs of the more obscure panels.

The panels you can ignore, and why

You may be wondering why I choose to ignore the other panels. Let me go through them one by one and explain. It’s fine if you don’t agree. I understand that photographers have their own reasons for using Lightroom’s tools. Remember, the idea of this challenge is to help you keep things simple. You can take that principle and apply it to your own workflow. 

The Tone Curve panel. The Tone sliders in the Basic panel do all you need, and for most photos you’ll end up in the Masking panel, which gives you far more control over where your tonal adjustments (brightness and contrast) are applied. I think of the Tone Curve panel as a legacy panel – it’s there for photographers who accustomed to using it in apps like Photoshop, not because it’s overly useful in Lightroom.

The Lens Blur panel. This is a special effects panel that most photographers don’t need. If you want lens blur in your photos, buy a prime lens and experiment with the wide aperture settings. That’s the best way to do it.

The Effects panel. You can use this panel to apply a vignette (but a Radial Gradient is more versatile) or add Grain to your photo. If these finishing touches are important to you then feel free to use the Effects panel in addition to the others.

The Calibration panel. This panel is so obscure that I can’t even remember what it does without looking it up. It’s useful if you’re into heavily stylized creative color effects but otherwise you can ignore it.

The Lightroom three panel challenge – an example

Let me give you an example of how this works for me. Here’s a flower photo I made recently, straight out of the camera.

Basic panel: This photo didn’t need any preparation work, so I went straight to the Basic panel. I set the Profile, adjusted White Balance to warm the colors up and used the Tone sliders to give the photo a light, airy feel.

Masking panel: I masked the flowers and brightened them. Then I duplicated and inverted the mask to select the background. I increased Exposure, applied a touch of negative Clarity to emphasize background blur and used Point Color to reduce the saturation of the green foliage.

These are the masks I used.

And this is the result (the finished version is on the right).

And that’s it – just two panels to do all the work. I don’t use the Color Mixer or Color Grading panels much and didn’t need them here.

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