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IngridR5
Participating Frequently
July 2, 2023
Answered

Problem w/Standard Brushes in Lightroom Classic 12.4 (Amount Slider Grayed out)

  • July 2, 2023
  • 2 replies
  • 882 views

Hello!

I just ran into an issue when attempting to use the standard brushes such as Temperature, Tint, Exposure, Contrast, Highlights, etc. I do not have an issue with the brush presets that I have collected over the years though. Those work just fine. I only have this problem when I select the Standard Lightroom Brush Presets.


I hadn't had the need to do any real editing with Lightroom Classic 12.4 till last night. I was working on an image and clicked to select a standard brush from the list. Lightroom allowed me to choose the type of brush, brush size, feather, flow and density, but when I went to select let's say 'sharpness' from the standard list, the area where I should adjust the amount of sharpness-or any other standard brush preset from the list - is grayed out or not functional. It doesn't allow me to drag the amount slider left or right to adjust the amount to be applied, no matter which standard brush I pick within the standard brush list. So, I can pick the brush  and start painting with it on the image. It will also show me the red area of the mask as I paint with it, but the amount slider is not functional, no matter which standard brush I switch to from the standard list. Any ideas on how to fix this?


I am attaching a screen copy of the grayed out section with the arrow pointing at it.


Thanks in advance!

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer JohanElzenga

Johan - How do I check my non-working presets for slider settings? Where would I need to go to do that?

Just apply each preset and look what it does.

Is there something I could reset to see if this gets fixed? Should I try reinstalling Lightroom?

Reinstalling Lightroom probably won't solve this. You would have to clean out the local adjustment preset folder and let Lightroom rebuild it. But why bother? As John and I mentioned, these presets do nothing but set a single slider to an arbitrary value. It is faster to do that yourself! I'd say this is a non-problem.

 

2 replies

JohanElzenga
Community Expert
JohanElzengaCommunity Expert
Community Expert
July 2, 2023

It's indeed a bit odd, but the explanation is as follows: Presets (including the default ones) can easily become reset, in the following way. If you select the brush but do not actually create a mask by brushing something, and then you select a preset and manually change a slider, then this changes the chosen preset to what you've just set. The name of the preset will initially change to 'Custom', but if you select the preset again you'll see it now has the slider setting that you just applied. So this is how you update these presets.

 

This can reset a preset so that it does not do anything anymore, because all sliders are zero. I have a few presets that got unintentionally reset to all zero sliders this way, and apparently so do you. In the case that a preset sets all sliders to zero, the Amount slider will remain dimmed even if you start brushing, because you are not brushing any effect and so you cannot change the amount of that effect. The preset must actually do something for an Amount slider to make sense!

 

I see the same thing as you, but not for exactly the same presets. For example: on my computer the Temperature preset does not do anything, and so just like on your computer the Amount slider remains dimmed when I select this preset and start brushing. But the Highlights preset did not get reset on my computer (it apparently did on yours), so on my computer the Highlights preset does have an active Amoumt slider as soon as I brush something.

 

So that explains it. Check your non-working presets for slider settings. I'm sure all these presets do not set any slider. Change them so they do something useful and the Amoumt slider will also become useful.

 

-- Johan W. Elzenga
I
IngridR5Author
Participating Frequently
July 5, 2023

Thank you for your comments, John and Johan.

 

Ok, last night I looked around Lightroom again and I discovered that the basic functions that I listed above also don't respond when I select a Linear Gradient and a Radial Gradient. So I tried applying both to an image and then attempted to adjust, say...the Exposure. So I selected 'Exposure' from the list and again, no way to adjust the exposure with the amount slider. In fact, no effect is applied at all. It is not just that the amount slider doesn't work. It just won't apply the Exposure effect. Tried the same with the Linear Gradient and selected 'Exposure' (just to pick one from the list that won't work on my end) and no luck. I am basically unable to use a fully functional version of Lightroom and this is quite annoying.

 

Johan - How do I check my non-working presets for slider settings? Where would I need to go to do that?

 

Is there something I could reset to see if this gets fixed? Should I try reinstalling Lightroom?

Should those basic adjustments appear in the Local Adjustments folder? I looked and all I have in that folder is the brush presets that I have installed, but that's all I see.

 

The fact that this issue is not limited to the brush presets, but also happens when trying to use the Linear Gradient and Radial Gradient makes me think that something is quite messed up with my Lightroom.

 

Thank you for taking the time to look into this issue! Very appreciated!

 

JohanElzenga
Community Expert
JohanElzengaCommunity ExpertCorrect answer
Community Expert
July 5, 2023

Johan - How do I check my non-working presets for slider settings? Where would I need to go to do that?

Just apply each preset and look what it does.

Is there something I could reset to see if this gets fixed? Should I try reinstalling Lightroom?

Reinstalling Lightroom probably won't solve this. You would have to clean out the local adjustment preset folder and let Lightroom rebuild it. But why bother? As John and I mentioned, these presets do nothing but set a single slider to an arbitrary value. It is faster to do that yourself! I'd say this is a non-problem.

 

-- Johan W. Elzenga
Ian Lyons
Community Expert
Ian LyonsCommunity Expert
Community Expert
July 2, 2023

The Amount Slider is grayed out until you apply the brush. The idea being that you apply the brush, then adjust to taste.

I
IngridR5Author
Participating Frequently
July 2, 2023

Thank you for taking the time to respond, Ian.

I have used Lightroom 5 for many years and never had any brush issues. Both standard Lightroom brushes and downloaded brush presets never gave me any problems, so I am quite puzzled by this.

 

My steps: 1) I click on the Masking button. 2) Select Brush. 3) Brush over the area of the photo and then select the brush. I followed steps 2) and 3) to test each brush from the Standard Brush Preset List. Some of the brushes have their 'amount slider' working and some don't. Here are the results for the complete standard brush list:

 

Temperature works
Tint doesn't work
Exposure doesn't work
Contrast works
Highlights doesn't work
Shadows works
Whites works
Blacks works
Texture works
Clarity doesn't work
Dehaze works
Amount (not even sure what this means in the standard brush list) but the slider for this 'amount' brush works. ???
Hue doesn't work
Saturation works.
Sharpness doesn't work
Noise works
Moire works
Defringe works
Color doesn't work

 

So, why is this happening? I used the same method for each standard brush, yet some work and some won't work.

 

Thanks again!

 

 

johnrellis
johnrellis
Genius
July 3, 2023

I observe somewhat different behavior.

 

In my LR 12.4 / Mac OS 13.4, these local-adjustment presets don't actually change any slider values: Tint, Exposure, Amount, Hue, Noise, Color.  Because, as an example, the Exposure preset doesn't change the Exposure slider, the Amount slider is greyed out -- there's no point in ungreying the Amount slider if it won't have any effect. As soon as I change the Exposure slider, the Amount slider ungreys.

 

So the problem is not that the Amount slider is greyed out, but rather that some of the presets aren't changing their sliders correctly.

 

But on my LR 12.4 / Windows 11, all the presets change sliders (and Amount is ungreyed) except for Amount and Color.

 

So there are two immediate issues:

 

1. Why are many of the presets on my Mac (and presumably your Windows) not changing their slider values.

 

2. What are the Amount and Color presets supposed to do?

 

But there's a bigger issue: What purpose do those presets serve, anyway?  It takes two clicks to invoke the Contrast preset, which sets the slider to 25, and then I'm most likely going to want to adjust the slider.  Why invoke the preset at all then?

 

 

 

 

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