Here are 6 #lightroom #colorgrading tips & tricks to make your next photos pop!
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0:00 Intro
Color Grading in Lightroom is a lot of fun but for beginner it can be a bit overwhelming. I compiled a list of tips and tricks to help getting through the color grading process.
0:14 1. Profiles
The first thing I do after opening the raw file is to check the different profiles. Do I want more saturation? Then, I’ll go with Adobe Landscape. Do I want to have a more neutral look to start with? Then I’ll go with Adobe Standard. Setting up the profile is my starting point for all the color grading that comes after.
0:48 2. White Balance
One of my most favorite tools is the white balance. You can use it the “intended” way to get a neutral look / neutralize color cast. I however usually prefer to be a bit more creative with the white balance. As an example, for sunsets, I like pushing the temperature some more to give the overall shot more warmth. Bringing up the tint can help intensifying sunset colors as well in certain cases.
1:54 3. Masking
While Color Grading in Lightroom is mostly done globally for the whole image, don’t overlook the power of masking. After The Profile and white balance adjustments, this is usually my next step in the color grading process. With masking you can adjust colors in targeted areas of your photo. To me that’s especially helpful when working with sunsets or sunrises with warm and cold colors present in the frame.
2:56 4. Tone Curve
One thing that’s often overlooked when it comes to color grading is the tone curve. In the first place it’s a great tool to add contrast but going into the specific color channels the tone curve helps to create awesome colors! Again, I want to take a sunset shot as an example: I can make the image warmer by going into the red channel and simply drag the point for the highlights slightly further to the left. This gives the brighter parts a subtle red color cast.
3:54 5. HSL
HSL adjustments are another thing I regularly use when color grading. These tools are straight forward: with hue you change a color tone, saturation makes a color more vibrant, and luminance affects the brightness of a color.
However, there are a few tricks which helped me over the years. Shooting landscapes there will mostly likely be sky in the image. Going into the blue hour it sometimes happens the sky comes with a very slight purple color cast. This is something that really bothers me, but fortunately its easily fixed by bringing down the purple hue and thus you’ll get a purer blue tone in the sky.
In the luminance tab I often bring down the blue luminance to make the sky darker and thus add a bit more contrast. However, bringing down the luminance of a color, also will increase its saturation. At the same time bringing the luminance up reduces the saturation.
4:59 6. Split Toning
Now on to the greatest tool that ever existed: The Split Toning! I absolutely love it because its super easy to use yet it hugely improves the colors of an image. When working with a sunset image, the highlights and midtones tend to be warmest part. We can enhance that by simply adding more warmth on top and thus really bringing out the colors. So, for most of my sunrise and sunset shots I use pretty much the same setting. Choose a warm color of the highlights and the midtones. Then, for the highlights I’m using a higher amount of saturation, while I tend to go softer on the saturation for the mid tones. At that point we can add some nice color contrast by going into the shadows and applying a cold, blue color tone with a very low amount of saturation.
#lightroomediting