QUICK DEVELOP vs. BASIC PANEL

The Quick Develop panel in the Library Module contains controls used to select an adjustment preset, pick a different crop ratio, change white balance and for basic toning.  In the “Saved Preset” section, you select from one of several items in a pull down menu.  For white balance and basic Tone Controls you use stepping buttons.  These controls seem to be, and in many ways are, redundant with controls in the Basic Panel in the Develop Module but there are differences.

Quick Develop Panel

LR017 01 Quick Develop Panel

The Basic Panel in the Develop Module controls many of the same things as the Quick Develop panel does.  You can pick a profile, change white balance and adjust tone controls using sliders.

LR017 02 Basic Panel

Differences between Quick Develop and the Basic Panel

All of the controls in the Library Module QD (Quick Develop) panel also appear in the Develop Module Basic Panel but they work differently.

Images applied to

In the library module grid view, the default mode for image adjustments is “auto-sync” whereas in the Develop module and the other Library module views the default is “single-image”.  With auto-sync, changes you make are applied to ALL selected images whereas with single-image, changes only affect the one Active photo.

Stepping Buttons vs Sliders

The first noticeable difference you’ll see is that the QD panel uses stepping buttons (you see no “value” numbers) whereas the Basic Panel uses sliders (and you can see as well as type in actual numeric values)

QD uses Stepping Buttons

LR017 03 QD 2

Develop Module uses Sliders

LR017 04 Basic 2

The single arrow stepping buttons are 1 step and the double arrows are 3 to 5 steps each.  What a “Step” is varies from control to control but should be considered as a “just noticeable” amount.  For example, 1 step in the Exposure control is 1/3 (or 0.33) stop and the double arrow is 1 full stop. 

Sharpening and Saturation but no DeHaze or Texture

You may notice that “Sharpen” and “Saturation” are missing from the QD panel set of controls  However, if you hold down the “Alt” key (”Option” on a Mac) the Clarity and Vibrance buttons change to Sharpening and Saturation.

You’ll also notice that the QD panel is also missing “Dehaze” and “Texture”.  If you want to those tools, you’ll have to use the Basic Panel.

Quick Develop behaves differently than Basic Panel

On the surface sliders vs. stepping buttons seem to be a trivial difference but there is more to it than meets the eye.  When you make a change in QD, that change is relative to the prior value in each affected image whereas in the Basic panel it is an absolute value. 

Here’s what that means.  Let’s say you have a single image selected that has an exposure adjustment of 0 (i.e. you haven’t changed the exposure).  Then you click the “increase” stepping button for Exposure (single arrow in the QD panel).  This will increase the exposure 1 “step” on that image resulting in a new exposure of 0.33 (1/3 stop).  Similarly, if you go to the Basic panel in the Develop Module you can move the slider the equivalent of “1 step” from 0.0 to 0.33 (or just type in 0.33).  So far they are the same thing.

Now, after putting the exposure back to zero, go back to QD and select 3 photos that already have different exposure adjustments and click the “1 step” increase for exposure again. This will increase the exposure on all 3 images by 1/3 stop as shown below.

Original Exposure      New Exposure
0.0                                 0.33
0.5                                 0.83
1.0                                 1.33

Now, after putting them all back to their original values, let’s do the same thing in the Develop module.  There we turn on Auto-Synch so any change made to the active image is also made to the other selected images.  We then select the same 3 images on the film strip and change the exposure on the active image from 0.0 to 0.33 (equivalent of 1 step) as we did before.  Here’s the result:

Original Exposure      New Exposure
0.0                                 0.33
0.5                                 0.33
1.0                                 0.33

Here you see that the change is no longer relative to the original value each image had, but is the absolute value I moved the slider to.  That’s a very different concept.  Don’t forget to turn “Auto-Sync” off.

Similarities

• Changes in both the QD panel and Basic panel appear in the History Panel of the Develop module and can be undone using <Ctrl> Z (Mac: <Cmd> Z), or the Edit -> Undo command on the menu.