Balance controls are the core tonal adjustments available in Grid and Develop modes. There are seven controls:

  • Exposure — displayed as the real exposure value
  • Temperature — displayed in Kelvin (e.g. 6500K)
  • Tint — displayed in Kelvin
  • Contrast
  • Shadows
  • Highlights
  • Saturation

Balance and Look tools (chiclets) showing exposure, contrast, and other adjustment controls

Keyboard Stepping

Balance controls can be adjusted via configurable keyboard shortcuts. Each shortcut steps the value up or down by a fixed amount. Two modifier keys change the step size:

Modifier Effect
(none) Normal step
Shift Large step (3x normal)
Option Small step (1/3 normal)

Balance keyboard shortcuts are configured through the assignable key system. The specific keys depend on your configuration.

Note: Temperature and Tint have separate step sizes for different RAW processing pipelines (CI RAW, LibRAW, and display images).

Resetting Individual Controls

Right-click (or Control-click) any Balance control to open a context menu with a Reset option, returning that specific control to its default value without affecting other adjustments.

Context menu showing the Reset option for Balance controls

Resetting Balance

Shortcut Action
Cmd+R Reset Balance (or Reset Crop when in Crop mode)
Cmd+Shift+R Reset All Adjustments

See Adjustments for copy, paste, and apply-from-previous operations.