Lightroom's Radial Filter

Doug Sloss · Issue 77, Mar/Apr 2014 · pp. 47–50

Products mentioned: Adobe Lightroom 5

The new Radial Filter inside Lightroom 5 is a great tool for creating off-centered vignettes, highlighting important parts in your photos, and when used creatively, it can add more interest and clever flair to your underwater shots. Like the Adjustment Brush and Graduated Filter, the Radial Filter is also designed for local edits, applying its effects in circular or elliptical forms, as opposed to painting in effects with a brush or laying them down via a gradient, like the other two tools. Yet, while it differs in the way its effects are applied to a photo, you still have access to the same slider controls for creative edits once you open the tool’s Effects panel. But unlike the Adjustment Brush and Graduated Filter, there’s no need to first guess an initial setting to see where an effect will be applied. Just click and drag out a shape on top of your photo and release the mouse. The fi…