Black and White & Creative Image Editing in Lightroom - Black and White in Photoshop CS4 and Photoshop Lightroom - page 178

Creating a Graduated Neutral Density Filter in
Lightroom
Most traditional photographers are familiar with the Graduated and Split
Neutral Density i lters. These i lters reduce the exposure over part of the
image in either a graduated or abruptly graduated manner. Often Neutral
Density i lters are used to equalize exposure when shooting a large amount of
sky in the image. Used properly, metering and exposure can be adjusted for
the foreground details, while preserving highlight detail in the sky and clouds.
1. Select an image and activate the Develop Module.
2. Activate the Neutral Density tool just under the Histogram (M) key.
3. Click on the show ef ect icon to activate the Exposure panel and create an
Exposure Neutral Density i lter.
4. In this case I clicked the “+” icon to increase exposure because
the house and foreground were underexposed.
5. Click inside the image area where you would like the lightening
ef ect to begin and drag to the portion of the image where you
would like the lightening to end. Lightroom will automatically
graduate the transition of the ef ect. You can also hold the