Working in Develop

Press D to edit a photograph, with adjustments in the sidebar and the current selection in the filmstrip.

Edits are saved as a recipe in the catalogue. The original file remains unchanged. Use ⌘Z to undo edits.

Start editing. The sidebar groups related controls:

• Crop & straighten (R): frame and level the photograph. Measurements follow the crop.
• White balance: adjust temperature and tint, or press W and click a neutral area.
• Tone: exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows, whites and blacks. The wand sets all six from the cropped photograph as one undoable edit.
• Tone curve: composite and RGB point curves. Press T to adjust a curve from the photograph.
• Colour: vibrance and saturation.
• Colour mixer: hue, saturation and luminance across eight bands. Press H to select a band from the photograph.
• Monochrome: filters, eight conversion bands and toning when the process toggle is enabled.
• Presence: clarity, texture and dehaze, all available on masked layers.
• Effects: crop-relative vignette and grain, also available on masked layers.
• Lens: profile strength, manual distortion and colour-fringe correction, applied before other edits.
• Detail: supported RAW controls for sharpness, detail, noise, moiré, lens correction, highlight recovery, local tone mapping and HDR.

Repairs and masks. Press Q to heal or clone spots and strokes using another area of the same photograph. Select a repair and press ⌫ to remove it. Press ⇧K to highlight possible dust in amber.

Press M for the last mask drawing tool and V to change the mask overlay. A selected layer limits adjustments to its mask.

Looks and versions. Press L to open 23 included looks with adjustable strength. Use the version picker to create or switch between up to five treatments and ORIGINAL. The selected treatment appears in other views and exports.

Before and after. Hold / to view the photograph as shot with the current crop retained.

Inspect detail. Pinch to zoom and drag to pan. Above fit, the navigator shows the visible region. At fit, press G for the magnifying glass. Canvas tools hide the glass. Crop, mask and targeted curve or mixer tools hold the canvas at fit; Repair allows zooming. Press K for green focus-peaking marks.

Press esc or double-click the background beside the photograph to return to fit, then leave Develop. If a repair or layer is selected, the first action deselects it. With a tool active, that tool handles the click.

Processing. White balance and RAW Detail changes require a new decode. The decoder stays open during a drag. Tone, curves, Colour and the mixer use the cached decode. Detail shows only controls supported by the current file and decoder; RAW 9 files have fewer controls.

Photos publishing. For Photos-backed photographs, leaving an edited photograph can publish a full-resolution rendering to Photos. Revert in Photos removes the published rendering. See An edit reaches Photos.app for behaviour and limitations.

See Monochrome, Lens corrections, Repairing a photograph, What a mask is, Seeing the mask, Working with looks, Composition review, Looking closely, Focus peaking, Repairing a photograph, Entering Develop, The controls, Crop and straighten, White balance, The tone curve, The colour mixer, Versions, Undo, RESET, bypass and copying, An edit reaches Photos.app, How a RAW file becomes a picture.