Basic Color and Toning in Lightroom
Lesson 6 from: Transform Your Images with Color GradingLindsay Adler
Basic Color and Toning in Lightroom
Lesson 6 from: Transform Your Images with Color GradingLindsay Adler
Lesson Info
6. Basic Color and Toning in Lightroom
Lessons
Introduction to Color Grading: Preparing for the Shoot
18:35 2Shooting for Color Grading: Clean Timeless Beauty
37:56 3Shooting for Color Grading: Simple but Dramatic Look
15:44 4Shooting for Color Grading: Gold Elegant Look
05:33 5Intstructor intro - Toning Intent
08:29 6Basic Color and Toning in Lightroom
09:03 7Toning with Selective Color Photoshop
07:51 8Color Look Up Tables in Photoshop
06:24Lesson Info
Basic Color and Toning in Lightroom
now to something a little fancier, which is called split toning. Split toning means I make the highlights. One color in the shadows, another color. I generally prefer to do this in photo shop because I have a little bit more control of what highlights. It's hitting in what shadows it's hitting right now. It's kind of arbitrary, like light Room is choosing it, not me. Where is in photo shop? I can select exactly how far into those shadows and highlights on. I believe this is part of what Chris Knights advanced selections talked about, like figure out how to control those. I'll show you a little bit. What? Ideo. So where you confined split toning is going to be in the develop module. New scroll down and split Toning is here, and so it allows you to do is pick a color for the highlights. Pick a color for the shadows. A lot of times I just told the shadows on Lee and I leave the highlights alone. So, for example, if I'm going from moody, dark, mysterious in this photo, I'm going to pick th...
ings in the blues and purples. A little bit more of the mysterious tones. So if I select this little gray area here, I get an eye dropper. I can pick whatever color I want. So by default it applies it super, super heavy. And so I can back off of my saturation until it looks good. And then I can shift the hue until it looks good. So, for example, comparing those two shots again, I'm moving even further in that direction of Moody. However, let's go back to the other photo and move it even further into the direction of warmth. So in the this this copy right here, what I could do for split toning is I can go to the split tone instead of adding those adding those blue to the shadows. I could add more yellows to the highlights. It could warm up the highlights a little bit. So I go to the highlights. I select somewhere in the yellows, decrease my saturation, something around there. Now I've got these two versions of the photo both totally right. Just different versions of one another. So split toning is one way that you can do this if you're a light room person kind of afraid of photo shop figure out what colors you want in your shadows and highlights in any point. If I'm like Oh man, that yellow, I don't I don't like the yellow. I can always shift the hue so I can move it around and see if maybe I want it warmer or cooler Or maybe was too green to yellow. I can back it off somewhere around there, so it's nondestructive. That's one of the awesome things about light room. Can't mess it up. In truth, I do most of my color toning in photo shop because I have more control. So far, we've got a little bit you thought where I played with vibrance split toning, hue, saturation, ruminants those air kind of the main color controls that I have. What's nice is for any of these. If I decide I love this, all this tone is beautiful. I want apply to all of these photos or I'm gonna use this lighting set up all the time, and I want to have this formula available to me. I can easily create a preset. So in your develop module on the left hand side, where it says preset. If I hit the little plus icon. I can create a new preset. I could call this warm creativelive and anything that's checked will be added to this formula that I can applied every photo that I want to look like that. So I hit enter and now five flip through. And I'm like, Oh, this pose looks beautiful. I can go back over to my presets if I'm warm creativelive and add that toning effect. So if you find a former formula you like, you can add it there. Now, next part of this is if you are at a loss like you're like, man, I don't I don't know what colors I want. I don't know how this works. There are tons of free light room presets online. They're also paid ones as well. People make them. And what's nice is you get this preview in the top left hand corner, where you can mouse over them, and it's giving you a preview of the different toning. So if you're like short on ideas, it it's can be quite useful, so they show up when you can import them here by default. Light room has a bunch, but you can always import ones that people sell where they make online. So here's like a fashion preset. Maybe I like this one, but it's non destructive. So if you go over and you see that it's too dark, you can always tweak it. One word of warning presets that might look awesome on someone's photo that you just bought these and apply it to your own. And then it looks like crap. It's not because it was a bad preset. It's because lighting effects what a preset looks like, as well as subject matter. No, remember before when I applied that preset and then, um, the darker skin subject came in and it looked terrible because I had made it blue and all of us, and she looked grey preset. You can't apply indiscriminately on everything like you've gotta be specific. So that's why if you think you can buy free sets and it will fix everything for you won't because you actually have to know what's going on so you can make it work for your shot. All right, so that is the gist of what I do in light room. But I tend to mainly use light room for when I'm tethering because it changes my vision changes what I'm looking for. All right, so let's go. One more in light room and then we're gonna open up and show you a whole bunch of different stuff in photo shop, for example, here is with auto White balance here is kind of what this shot would look like of Chiara. Um, just that it's not terrible. It's just kind of boring. And I want a little bit more mood to it so I can take this either extreme warming up. Cool it down. What I'm going to do in this case is we're going to make it cool on purpose. We already talked about what I can do so I can go to the hue saturation, luminous. And you have that little target. So whatever I click for the target, I can click on it and de saturated, so notice I could completely de saturate it. That doesn't look realistic. So I'm just gonna pull out a little bit of skin tone, and I am going to cool down the whole photo. I'm gonna pop the highlights a little bit, looks a little flat, and then I can go to my split toning add a little blue to the shadows somewhere around there. So here was the before and after. Okay, so my point is that's what's included in light room. Like that's That's your main stuff you're gonna work with. Photo shop has eight billion things more. By the way, have you ever have you ever taken a photo where you looked at it look good on camera, Then it pops up in light room for a second. It looks good, and then it looks crappy, like like like room does something crazy. And you don't know why the colors look crazy. If you go to right now, we're in our develop module all the way at the bottom. You have your camera calibration where there's profiles. Okay, so by default, it's it pops it over into Adobe Standard. This is what I'm talking about in the movies. So in the movies, they're shooting something that's much more camera neutral. It ends up being kind of flat. Not a lot of contrast. Not a lot of color. If it looks wrong, try a different profile, like if it pops it in and it makes it look crazy, because what that means is you shot maybe a shot standard or portrait in your camera? Well, when it brings a raw file over its applying whatever is here. So a lot of times I end up liking camera standard better than I dio whatever it was popping in. Just know that that's part of the equation. If it look good on camera and then it messes it all up, change your camera calibration. Okay, Any questions there? I think I think your answer to several East questions might be personal preference, But I understand Robert Hunter photography had asked, How do you know when you've gone too far with the color grading? Um okay, so two things. Most of the time I actually retouch before a color grade because it's much harder to go back. So what? I tend to dio as I tend to do all my cleanup in my retouching in photo shop. But I try to get it like in light room. I start with getting the right color balance, the right white balance. I tried to get the right exposure and I try to get the right contrast, the highlights, the shadows. I try to get that right. Then I go over and do my cleanup. And if I come back into light room to tone, it would be after the fact. What I usually do is I tone it, and I do two things. I walk away and I come back later and take a glance and see if it looks crazy or I send it to Chris and asked him if it looks crazy. So replace Chris with your fellow photo friend who will tell you honestly how it's looking. Chris, I don't think wants it. Isn't that many photos?
Ratings and Reviews
Sean
Fantastic course. Lindsay Adler is a such a photography Rock Star. She can do it all, shooting in and out of study, lighting, posing, teaching and very amazing, Photoshop guru. Thanks for getting Lindsay, in the beginning I never knew that she was so skilled in all these aspects. As you progress in your photography, you learn lighting, skin tones and white balance, then skin retouching, then you learn color grading and analogous colors, complimentary colors, color triads, etc. Color Grading is so key to that final polished and "expensive" look. Lindsay did a terrific job teaching this course. I watched it 3 to 4 times to really pick up how to use these tools. Lindsay is a phenomenal teacher and photographer. Thanks for getting her Creativelive.
Elizabeth Haen
This is a great class to learn many options for color grading images. Lindsay gives comprehensive options for use in both LIghtroom and Photoshop. She has a style of teaching that is easy to follow and does an excellent job of summarizing each technique after introducing it to help the process sink in fully before she moves on. I love how she goes over everything she does thoroughly in a way that clearly explains each step without assuming everyone knows what she is doing. There is never a time when I thought "wait, what did she just do there?!:". Just really great information that is well taught.
David Babcock
Awesome class - Lindsay is a wonderful teacher. It might be nice to have a list of the equipment used, I had to go back a couple of times to find all of what Lindsay was using. Excellent and well done!!
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