How To Use Lightroom’s Adjustment Brush

The Adjustment Brush is one of Lightroom’s most powerful tools for targeted, localized edits. Unlike global adjustments that affect your entire image, the Adjustment Brush lets you paint corrections onto specific areas—brightening a face, darkening a sky, or sharpening just the eyes in a portrait.

Accessing the Adjustment Brush

In the Develop module, find the Adjustment Brush in the tool strip below the Histogram, or press K on your keyboard. When activated, a panel of adjustment sliders appears, and your cursor becomes a brush.

Understanding Brush Settings

Before painting, configure your brush behavior:

• Size – The diameter of your brush. Use bracket keys [ ] to quickly resize while painting.
• Feather – Controls how soft the brush edge is. Higher feather values create gradual, seamless transitions. Lower values create harder edges.
• Flow – How quickly the effect builds up. At 100%, full effect applies immediately. Lower flow lets you build up the effect gradually with multiple strokes.
• Density – The maximum strength of the effect, regardless of how many times you paint over an area. Think of it as a ceiling for the adjustment.

For most work, start with Feather around 75-100 for smooth blending, Flow at 100 for immediate effect, and Density at 100 for full strength.

Making Adjustments

The Adjustment Brush gives you access to nearly all of Lightroom’s develop controls in a localized form:

• Exposure, Contrast, Highlights, Shadows – Tone adjustments for brightness control
• Clarity, Texture – Mid-tone contrast and surface detail
• Saturation – Color intensity
• Sharpness – Detail enhancement
• Noise – Noise reduction for specific areas
• Moire, Defringe – Color artifact correction
• Color – Add a color tint to the painted area

Set your desired adjustments before or after painting—you can always modify them later.

Painting Your Adjustment

1. Click and drag on your image to paint where you want the adjustment applied
2. A pin appears showing where you started—this pin represents this adjustment
3. Continue painting to add more area to the same adjustment
4. Press O to toggle the mask overlay (red by default) to see exactly where you’ve painted

Refining Your Mask

If you paint over an area by mistake, hold Alt/Option to switch to the Eraser brush and remove the adjustment from those areas. You can switch between A and B brushes with different settings for detailed work.

The Auto Mask checkbox helps keep your brush within similar tones and edges. When enabled, Lightroom detects boundaries and limits your painting to areas similar to where you started. This is especially useful for painting along complex edges like hair or foliage.

Working with Multiple Adjustments

Each pin represents a separate adjustment. To add a new adjustment to a different area:

1. Click “New” at the top of the Adjustment Brush panel (or just start painting in a new area)
2. A new pin appears for this adjustment
3. Set different adjustments for this new area

Click any existing pin to select it and modify its adjustments or mask. Press H to hide pins when they obstruct your view.

Common Uses

• Dodge and burn – Brighten or darken specific areas for depth and dimension
• Eye enhancement – Add clarity and brightness to eyes in portraits
• Skin smoothing – Reduce texture and clarity on skin while keeping other areas sharp
• Sky darkening – Add drama to skies without affecting the foreground
• Local sharpening – Sharpen just the subject while leaving backgrounds soft

Video Tutorial

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