# Adjustment Brush/Soften Skin  or negative clarity effects not showing



## themm20 (Jan 18, 2014)

*​*Hi- I have LR 4 & just tried the _adjustment brush with negative clarity_ to work on a portrait. Not sure what I may
  be doing wrong as the effect doesn't seem to show up after I click done or click the adjustment brush again to put it away.(I had the clarity way down to -100.) I have the "show selected mask overlay" clicked & can see the red mask while using it. The same thing happens with the "Soften skin" preset. Brush settings are in this range: Feather =36, flow= 33, density =49.  It seems the adjustment brush effects are showing with some of the choices including color & exposure but not with clarity, saturation,noise,tint. I'm a relatively new user ,not sure if I missed something as I just watched a short tutorial & this seems like a very useful feature for portraiture.   I'm using a 2009 Imac with Snow Leopard 10.6.8  *Thanks for any help!*


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## Tony Jay (Jan 18, 2014)

Hi!

Just as an opening gambit are you really using 4.0?
If so download the last 4.x upgrade and see what happens.

Tony Jay


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## themm20 (Jan 19, 2014)

Thanks Tony, I'll try that, whats the easiest way to do the upgrade as I haven't done that  since buying LR 4 boxed version?

Mike


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## Tony Jay (Jan 19, 2014)

If you have good internet access just go to the help menu in Lightroom and select check for updates and take it from there.

Tony Jay


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## themm20 (Jan 20, 2014)

Tony Jay said:


> Hi!
> 
> Just as an opening gambit are you really using 4.0?
> If so download the last 4.x upgrade and see what happens.
> ...



I was/am  on LR 4.4 so that's not the problem?


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## Tony Jay (Jan 20, 2014)

These kind of adjustments can be pretty processor intensive.
I see you are using a 2009 system.
Perhaps if you were to complete your profile it may shed some light.

Also, when you make the adjustments do the changes appear in the history panel?
Perhaps you could also try making a virtual image, then make the adjustments on the virtual image and then compare side-byside with the original image and look for any differences.

We will figure this out in the end.

Tony Jay


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## themm20 (Jan 20, 2014)

Just updated the technical specs in the profile info. Changes do appear in the history panel as "add brush stroke". When I do before & after using backslash key, I barely notice a difference with the adjustment brush even though  clarity is all the way down to -100.The effect seemed quite obvious in the tutorial I had seen. The spot removal tool works fine. The virtual image didn't seem to register the effect either! Thanks for your time & help!


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## Hal P Anderson (Jan 21, 2014)

What is your Size set to?

Also, after you paint with -100 Clarity, what happens if you crank the Exposure slider all the way down, does that patch turn black?


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## themm20 (Jan 21, 2014)

Hal P Anderson said:


> What is your Size set to?
> 
> Also, after you paint with -100 Clarity, what happens if you crank the Exposure slider all the way down, does that patch turn black?



I'm using large brush size of 12 to experiment with; yes the patch does turn black after cranking exposure slider down


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## AndreasM (Jan 21, 2014)

In the first post you mentioned the settings "flow=33, density=49". Is that on purpose?
Because even if you set clarity to -100, you only get roughly 15 % of that effect, because of the relatively low flow and density setting.

(Flow=33 means you have to brush 3 times over the same area to get the "full" effect. Density=49 halves every effect once more.)

If you have "Auto mask" selected, that could reduce the expected effect as well.


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## themm20 (Jan 21, 2014)

AndreasM said:


> In the first post you mentioned the settings "flow=33, density=49". Is that on purpose?
> Because even if you set clarity to -100, you only get roughly 15 % of that effect, because of the relatively low flow and density setting.
> 
> (Flow=33 means you have to brush 3 times over the same area to get the "full" effect. Density=49 halves every effect once more.)
> ...


I think that was the problem Andreas, as the effect is now more noticeable when I leave density & flow at 100. Although the effect seemed more obvious in the tutorial I had seen, I guess that was just due to the particular image used in the tutorial. I guess the only way to increase the effect after clarity is at -100 is to add another layer of smoothening?(still in Lightroom)  Thanks to all for the help! Time to practice....

Mike


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