Editing 341 photos from Montenegro in Lightroom Classic

After culling 1,668 photos down to 467, I had a clean archive ready for editing. I had never edited in Lightroom Classic before. This post documents the full process of learning to edit, building a personal preset, and exporting for web delivery.

What this post covers
First-time Lightroom Classic editing across 341 RAW images from Montenegro. Covers the Basic panel, HSL colour work, masking, preset creation, noise reduction, and export settings for CloudFront. This is a learning journal, not a Lightroom tutorial.

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Starting Point

I had 467 images after culling. Before editing, I applied the preset I built during this process across all of them as a final quality check. Images that did not respond well to the preset got cut. That brought the total down to 341 intentional keeps.

From those 341:

Collection	Count	Purpose
Montenegro Gallery	26	Images that stand alone visually
Montenegro Journal	17	Images that support narrative
Archive	298	Memory and future resource

The gallery and journal images got full individual edits. The archive keeps the preset as a base.

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The Result

Before — straight from camera

After — full edit

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The Test Group

Before editing all 341, I picked 5 images that represented different conditions. I tagged them with red colour labels in Lightroom to isolate the group.

Image	Subject	ISO	Focal Length	Challenge
1	Scenic town, green water	50	19mm	Clean file, full tonal range
2	Monastery in fog	100	18mm	Bright fog, limited sky
3	Mountain road with yellow markings	100	70mm	Fog over mountains, highlight clipping
4	Indoor gym from balcony	1250	28mm	Low light, noise, artificial lighting
5	Sunset, man on boat	800	30mm	Dark exposure, warm light, action

The idea was to learn on these five, build a preset from the first edit, then test it across the others. Every technique I learned got applied across different conditions to see how the same adjustment behaves differently depending on the image.

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Step 1: Profile

Before touching any sliders, I chose Adaptive Color at 100 as the profile. This is not a preset. It is the foundation that determines how the RAW data is interpreted. Adobe recommends applying it before other adjustments because changing profiles after editing shifts the foundation underneath your work.

I left it at 100. The slider goes to 200 but 100 is the intended strength. If the image still feels flat after all edits, bumping to 120 or 130 is an option. That is a decision for the end, not the beginning.

Do not combine Adaptive Color with Auto.
Adobe says this directly. Pick one approach.

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Step 2: White Balance

White balance controls colour temperature. It determines whether the photo looks warm or cool.

Temp moves between blue (cool) on the left and yellow (warm) on the right. Tint moves between green on the left and magenta on the right.

I started by trying the eyedropper on a neutral grey surface. The camera shot at 5,850K. The eyedropper corrected to 5,500K. The difference was subtle, 350K cooler and 6 points less magenta on the tint.

I then tried the white balance presets. Cloudy at 6,500K gave the image a warmer, slightly vintage feel. I liked it and went with it.

Questions I ask when setting white balance:

1. What was the light actually like? Direct sun, overcast, golden hour, shade?

2. Does the image feel too cool or too warm right now?

3. What mood do I want? Warmer tones feel inviting and nostalgic. Cooler tones feel calm and distant.

4. Do neutral surfaces look neutral? Grey stone, white walls, concrete. If they have an obvious colour cast, the white balance is off.

What I discovered across the five test images:

White balance is the most scene-dependent setting. It cannot live in a preset reliably.

Scene	White Balance	Temp
Overcast landscapes	Cloudy	6,500K
Direct sunlight	Daylight	5,500K
Indoor gym	As Shot	4,700K
Sunset	Cloudy	6,500K
Snow mountains	Cloudy + reduce blue saturation in HSL	6,500K

The preset keeps Cloudy at 6,500K as the default. Most outdoor Montenegro images responded well to it. Indoor and direct sunlight images needed changing.

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Step 3: Tone

This is where the histogram matters. The histogram shows the tonal distribution of the image. Left is shadows, right is highlights, middle is midtones.

The triangles in the top corners are clipping indicators. These became essential throughout the editing process.

Triangle colour	What is clipping
Blue	Blue channel only
Red	Red channel only
Green	Green channel only
Pink/magenta	Red + blue channels
Yellow	Red + green channels
Cyan	Green + blue channels
White	All three channels, no recoverable data

One colour is a warning. Two colours means back off. White means you have gone too far.

Exposure

Controls overall brightness. I used the histogram to check for clipping but made the decision by eye. My first image only needed +0.10. The camera exposed well at ISO 50. Not every image needs exposure correction.

Across the test images, exposure varied the most:

Image	Exposure	Why
Scenic town	+0.10	Well exposed in camera
Monastery	Preset value	Fog was intentionally bright
Mountain road	-0.30	Preset pushed already bright image into clipping
Indoor gym	+1.00	Dark scene, camera struggled for light
Sunset boat	+0.50	Dark scene, needed lifting without killing mood

Highlights and Shadows

Highlights control bright areas. Shadows control dark areas. Most landscape photos benefit from pulling highlights left and pushing shadows right because cameras capture high contrast scenes poorly compared to what your eyes see.

I went with highlights -70 and shadows +20 on the first image. The trap to avoid is pushing both to extremes. Highlights all the way left and shadows all the way right makes the image look flat.

What does flat mean?
Not enough difference between light and dark areas. Everything sits in the middle of the tonal range. Nothing is truly bright, nothing is truly dark. It looks dull.

Whites and Blacks

These set the upper ceiling and lower floor of the tonal range. After pulling highlights and pushing shadows, the tonal range can compress. Whites and blacks stretch the endpoints back out.

The Alt/Option drag method:

Hold Option while dragging Whites right. The screen goes black. Coloured pixels appear as you approach clipping. Stop just before they appear. Same process for Blacks in the opposite direction.

I landed on whites +43 and blacks -11 on the first image, then checked the clipping triangles. Both lit up blue. I pulled back to whites +43 and blacks -11 where the triangles settled. On other images these values changed significantly. The mountain road needed whites at +20. The gym needed blacks at +10.

Contrast

The contrast slider applies a broad S-curve. After building contrast manually with whites and blacks, the slider needs a light touch. I pushed to +10 on the first image. Higher values triggered additional channel clipping because the whites and blacks had already used most of the available headroom.

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Step 4: Presence

Slider	What it does	My value	Notes
Texture	Enhances fine surface detail	+20	Grain in stone, cloud texture, foliage
Clarity	Adds midtone contrast	+5	Could not push higher without clipping
Dehaze	Cuts atmospheric haze	0	Caused shadow clipping on first image
Vibrance	Boosts muted colours, protects strong ones	+15	Safer than saturation for colour
Saturation	Boosts all colours equally	0	Even +1 triggered pink clipping

Important lesson:
When checking clipping during presence adjustments, I had to establish a baseline first. The blue triangle was already lit from the tonal work. So the real question for each presence slider was not “does it cause clipping” but “does it change the triangle from blue to pink.” Blue was already there. Pink was the actual limit.

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Step 5: HSL Colour Work

HSL stands for Hue, Saturation, and Luminance. Each colour in the image is independently controllable across these three properties.

Hue shifts a colour towards its neighbours. Push blue towards cyan and the sky looks more teal.

Saturation controls how vivid the colour is.

Luminance controls how bright or dark a colour is.

I started by only using saturation. That is one third of HSL. The real discovery was luminance. Pulling luminance down on a colour makes it richer and deeper without making it more vivid. The two together are more powerful than either alone.

Practical habit: Every time I push saturation on a colour, I also try pulling luminance down slightly on the same colour.

First image (scenic town)

Colour	Adjustment	Value	Effect
Green	Hue	+25	Shifted water towards aqua/teal
Green	Saturation	+10	Made water more vivid
Orange	Saturation	+20	Made warm trees more vivid
Yellow	Luminance	+10	Brightened creamy buildings

What I learned across all images

HSL is always per-image. The dominant colours change with every scene. But some patterns emerged:

Scene type	Colours to adjust
Coastal/water	Aqua, blue, green
Warm buildings	Orange, yellow
Sunset	Orange, blue, aqua
Foliage	Green, yellow (dark foliage often sits in yellow)
Snow	Blue saturation down to reduce cold cast

Red saturation indoors:
On the gym image I pushed red saturation to boost equipment colour. At +30 the skin tones on two people in the frame started looking sunburnt. Pulled back to +20. Red saturation on indoor images with people has a lower ceiling than outdoor images without people.

Yellow saturation at 100:
On the mountain road image, the yellow road markings were the subject. At 100 saturation only the road and surrounding rocks were affected because the image had no other yellow. Context decides the value, not a rule about what number is too high.

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Step 6: Masking

Masking lets you edit specific areas of the image independently. Global adjustments in the Basic panel affect everything. Masks target just the sky, just a subject, or just an area you paint.

Sky Mask

For most overcast skies, I used a simple combination:

Adjustment	Value
Exposure	-0.15
Dehaze	+10

That took flat skies from “nothing” to “something” without being dramatic. On the first image I tried -0.4 exposure and +20 dehaze. It looked dark and stormy but made the image feel gloomy, fighting against the warm edit I had built. I pulled back until the sky had presence without overpowering the warmth.

The sky should support the image, not dominate it.
Find the point where it stops looking dull but does not start looking threatening.

Not every image needed a sky mask. If the sky was a tiny strip at the top or the image did not suffer from a flat sky, I skipped it.

Linear Gradient

On the mountain road image, the fog was on the mountains, not in the sky. The Sky mask could not select it. I used a Linear Gradient instead, dragging from the top downward over the foggy area. Dehaze and clarity within the gradient brought out texture in the mountains without affecting the road below.

Subject Mask

On a portrait of me chopping wood, the warm preset made the forest background look good but my skin looked like a filter. I created a Subject mask (Lightroom detected me automatically), pulled Temp left by -10 to -15 within the mask, and reduced saturation by -10. The forest stayed warm, my skin looked natural.

Brush Mask

On the monastery image, a woman was holding a red bag in the background. I painted a brush mask over just the bag and pushed saturation up to make it pop. Masking does not have HSL. It has a single saturation slider that boosts all colours in the masked area, but since the mask isolated just the bag, only the red was affected.

Manastir Ostrog

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Step 7: Detail and Noise

Sharpening

Lightroom applies default sharpening to every RAW file: Amount 40, Radius 1.0, Detail 25. I pushed Amount to 55 and added Masking at 40.

The Masking slider is the most useful one. Hold Option and drag right. White areas get sharpened, black areas are protected. I set it so the sky went black and the edges of buildings and trees stayed white. Sharpening is only visible at 100% zoom.

Denoise

At ISO 50 and 100, Denoise was unnecessary. The files were clean. At ISO 1250 on the gym image, with exposure pushed to +1.0 and shadows lifted, noise was visible. I ticked the Denoise checkbox and left it at 50. It created a new DNG with the noise removed. The difference was significant.

The rough threshold is around ISO 800 and above, depending on how much you push exposure and shadows.

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Step 8: Lens Corrections and Effects

Lens Corrections

Lightroom detected my Sony E 18-135mm automatically and applied the built-in profile for distortion and vignetting correction. I ticked Remove Chromatic Aberration as well. Chromatic aberration is colour fringing on high contrast edges. It costs nothing to enable and there is no reason to leave it off.

Post-Crop Vignette

I added a subtle vignette to draw the eye towards the centre.

Setting	Value
Amount	-15
Midpoint	45
Feather	65
Style	Highlight Priority

If you can see the vignette, it is too strong. The goal is that someone looking at the image feels drawn to the centre without noticing the edges are darker.

Remove Tool

On the gym image, one overhead light was distracting. I used the Remove tool with Generative AI to paint over it. Lightroom sampled the surrounding area and replaced it cleanly. The Remove tool is for cleaning up distractions after the edit is done. It is not part of the tonal or colour workflow.

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Building the Preset

After the first complete edit, I saved it as Montenegro Base v1.

What the preset includes

Setting	Included	Why
White Balance	Yes	Cloudy 6,500K as default starting point
Basic Tone	Yes	Exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows, whites, blacks
Presence	Yes	Texture, clarity, vibrance, saturation
Lens Corrections	Yes	Profile and chromatic aberration
Chromatic Aberration	Yes	Always on
Post-Crop Vignetting	Yes	Subtle vignette
Process Version	Yes	Consistency
Calibration	Yes	Consistency

What the preset excludes

Setting	Excluded	Why
HSL / Color Mixer	Yes	Colour adjustments are image-specific
Masking	Yes	Sky and local adjustments vary per image
Sharpening	Yes	May need different values per image
Noise Reduction	Yes	Only needed at high ISO
Curve	Yes	Not used

How the preset behaved across conditions

Setting	Reliable across images?	Notes
Contrast, Presence	Yes	Personal preference, consistent
Vignette, Lens Corrections	Yes	Always the same
Highlights, Shadows	Mostly	Consistent style choice
White Balance	No	Indoor and direct sunlight needed different values
Exposure	No	Changed every image
Whites, Blacks	Sometimes	Depends on highlight and shadow range

The preset is a starting point, not a finished edit. It handles style preferences but every image needs per-image decisions on exposure, colour, and local adjustments.

The Preset as a Culling Tool

After building the preset, I applied it across all remaining images as a final quality pass. Some images that survived culling did not respond well to the edit. They looked flat, the colours did not work, or the composition felt weak once the tonal adjustments revealed what was actually in the frame. I cut those, bringing the total from 467 down to 341.

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Export for CloudFront

All images are served through CloudFront on photos.digitalden.cloud. Gallery and journal images use the same full size files. Display size is controlled by Chirpy width classes in the post markup.

Gallery Full Size

Setting	Value
Format	JPEG, converted to WebP
Quality	93
Color Space	sRGB
Resize	Long Edge 3000px
Resolution	72 ppi
Sharpen	Screen, Standard
Metadata	Copyright Only
Don’t Enlarge	Ticked
Naming	Custom Name - Sequence (montenegro-gallery-1)

Gallery Thumbnails

Setting	Value
Format	JPEG, converted to WebP
Quality	75
Resize	Long Edge 800px
Sharpen	Screen, Low

CloudFront Structure

photos.digitalden.cloud
  → montenegro-2026
    → full
      → montenegro-gallery-1.webp
    → thumbs
      → montenegro-gallery-1.webp

Gallery images display full size on the gallery page. The same files are referenced in journal posts with Chirpy width classes controlling display size:

![Montenegro](https://photos.digitalden.cloud/montenegro-2026/full/montenegro-gallery-1.webp){: .w-50 .left }

Why sRGB

sRGB is the standard colour space for web. Every browser and device supports it. Wider colour spaces like Adobe RGB or ProPhoto RGB can look washed out on browsers that do not support them.

Why Copyright Only metadata

All metadata strips camera serial numbers, GPS coordinates, and camera settings. The images serve on a public website. Copyright is all anyone needs to see. Full metadata is preserved in the RAW files and Lightroom catalog.

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Backup

The archive is two things: RAW files and the Lightroom catalog. The catalog stores every edit, rating, collection, and preset. Losing the catalog means losing every adjustment.

Storage Structure

NVMe Drive
  → Capture_Archive
    → 2026
      → 2026-01 Montenegro
        → Photo
          → RAW
          → Export_Web
  → Lightroom_Catalog
    → DigitalDenCloud_Lightroom_Catalog.lrcat
    → DigitalDenCloud_Lightroom_Catalog.lrcat-data
    → DigitalDenCloud_Lightroom_Catalog Previews.lrdata
    → DigitalDenCloud_Lightroom_Catalog Smart Previews.lrdata

The catalog sits alongside Capture_Archive, not inside it. One backup of the NVMe drive covers both.

Two-Location Backup

Component	Primary	Backup
RAW files	NVMe SSD	Local disk or cloud
Lightroom catalog	NVMe SSD	Local disk (Pictures folder)
Previews / Smart Previews	NVMe SSD	Can be regenerated from RAWs
Export folders	NVMe SSD	Can be regenerated from RAWs + catalog

Lightroom auto backup handles the catalog. In Preferences, set backup to run every time Lightroom exits, with the Pictures folder as the destination. The auto backup only covers the .lrcat file. Previews and Smart Previews can be regenerated so they are not critical.

One copy is not a backup. The NVMe drive is the working location. The local disk is the safety net.

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What I Learned

Lesson	Detail
A preset is a starting point	It handles style preferences but every image needs per-image decisions on exposure, white balance, colour, and local adjustments
The histogram is a tool, not a rule	Clipping indicators tell you what is happening technically. You decide whether that matters creatively
White balance is scene-dependent	Cloudy 6,500K for overcast outdoors. As Shot 4,700K for indoor. Daylight 5,500K for direct sun
Luminance is underused	Pulling luminance down on a colour gives richer, deeper results than saturation alone
Masking solves local problems	When a global adjustment cannot fix a specific area without affecting everything else, a mask isolates the problem
Denoise has a threshold	Unnecessary at ISO 50 to 100. Essential at ISO 800 and above
Not every slider needs to move	If the image looks right, stop. The best edits are the ones where you can explain why you moved each slider
Apply the preset as a final cull	Images that survive culling can still fail in editing. The preset revealed weak compositions not obvious during culling

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Quick Reference

Editing Workflow

Step	Action
1. Profile	Adaptive Color at 100, before any other edits
2. White Balance	Set per scene. Eyedropper on neutral grey as starting point
3. Exposure	Adjust by eye, check histogram for clipping
4. Highlights / Shadows	Highlights left, shadows right. Do not flatten
5. Whites / Blacks	Option-drag to find limits. Check triangles
6. Contrast	Light touch after manual tonal work
7. Presence	Texture and vibrance first. Clarity and dehaze if headroom allows
8. HSL	Per-image colour work. Use luminance, not just saturation
9. Masking	Sky, subject, brush, gradient. Only where needed
10. Detail	Sharpening with masking. Denoise at high ISO
11. Lens Corrections	Profile on, chromatic aberration on
12. Effects	Subtle vignette. Remove tool for distractions

Clipping Triangle Reference

Colour	Channels clipping	Severity
Single colour (blue, red, green)	One channel	Warning, often acceptable
Two colours (pink, yellow, cyan)	Two channels	Back off
White	All three	Too far, no recoverable data

Preset Pattern

Transfers reliably	Needs per-image adjustment
Contrast, Presence	Exposure
Vignette	White Balance (indoor/outdoor)
Lens Corrections	Whites, Blacks
Chromatic Aberration	HSL
	Masking

Export Presets

Preset	Long Edge	Quality	Use
Web Gallery Full	3000px	93	CloudFront, full size display
Gallery Thumbnails	800px	75	CloudFront, grid preview

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Documented February 2026.