---
title: Edit a photo
description: Open a photo in the Edit panel, adjust Light, Color and Effects sliders, compare with the original, and undo or reset.
order: 30
verified: 0.7.1
---

Double-click a photo in the grid, then press `E` to open the **Edit** panel. Drag a slider to change the photo. Your original file is never changed, because edits are stored in the library.

## Steps

1. In **Photo Grid** or **Square Grid**, double-click the photo. It opens in the **Detail** view.
2. Press `E`, or choose **Window** > **Edit**, to open the **Edit** panel.
3. Click **Auto** for a first pass, or skip this step and start with the sliders.
4. Open the **Light** section and set **Exposure**, **Contrast**, **Highlights**, **Shadows**, **Whites** and **Blacks**.
5. Open the **Color** section to change **Vibrance** and **Saturation**. Open **Effects** for **Texture**, **Clarity** and **Dehaze**. The panel also has **Detail** and **Optics** sections.
6. Check your work against the original. Hold `\` to peek at the original. Press `Y` (**View** > **Compare Before and After**) to see before and after side by side.
7. To go back a step, choose **Edit** > **Undo**. To drop all edits on the photo, click **Reset** at the top of the **Edit** panel.

## Black and white

Click **B&W** at the top of the **Edit** panel to turn the photo monochrome. Click it again to return to colour.

## HDR

Click **HDR**, next to **B&W**, to edit the photo in HDR, with highlights brighter than SDR white for HDR exports. LightCraft cannot show HDR on an HDR screen yet, so you edit without seeing the extra brightness.

## Other edit tools

Open them from the **Window** menu, or press the key shown next to each one:

| Panel             | Key         |
|-------------------|-------------|
| **Crop & Rotate** | `C`         |
| **Remove**        | `H`         |
| **Masking**       | `M`         |
| **Presets**       | `Shift`+`P` |

## Good to know

- A raw photo that LightCraft cannot decode yet is edited from the camera's embedded JPEG. The **Edit** panel then shows **Preview only**. See [A raw photo opens as "Preview only"](../troubleshooting/preview-only-raw.md).
- When you zoom in on a large raw, the view can look soft for a few seconds while LightCraft renders the full-resolution pixels.
- To save the result as a file, see [Export photos](export-photos.md).