Master the Lightroom Colour Grading tool

hey siri what's the temperature outside it's about 38 degrees outside it is way too hot in sydney today for my liking i'd much rather stay indoors so i thought it was a good day to go through and explain the color grading tab or the color grading wheels in lightroom which is a pretty new addition to lightroom it was added in at the end of last year so if you're unfamiliar with it this would be a really useful video to get your head around it it is a really powerful tool if you are familiar with split toning of course this is like an updated version of split toning it's like split toning on steroids there's lots of different options there so i'm solely gonna focus on this color grading tab show you how you can use it to edit your photos and explain what each of the options does i'll try and keep it short and sweet i've also got the files that i'll be editing today available for download so you can follow along if you wish i'll be using lightroom classic today these color grading wheels are exactly the same in lightroom and lyra classic so it doesn't matter which one you're using you should be able to follow along and learn how to get the most out of this tool that's enough talking let's get into lightroom so with lightroom open the first thing you want to do of course is click on color grading this tab here and you'll notice these three color wheels with split toning we used to just have shadows and highlights now we've also got mid tones a quick refresher if you're not familiar with this of course your highlights is going to be those very brightest parts of the image then you've got your shadows which will be the darkest part of your image and then your mid tones which will sit somewhere in the middle that area of your photo that's not too bright or not too dark so the color grading wheels essentially allow you to select individual colors to add to each of those different areas of the photo you've also got the option here to play around with luminance for each luminance is basically how light reflects off color so it results in it kind of looking darker or brighter you can see they're playing with the shadows it's kind of darkening the shadows or really brightening the shadows to show you what each of these do let's go ahead and make this image black and white now you do have a couple of different options of how you wish to view these wheels the basic one where you can see all three click on those you've got your individual ones at the top here as well you've also got this new one which is global which allows you to add color to the overall image let's go back to where we can see all three i'm going to add in really heavy color just so you can see how it affects the image so in the shadows let's just go and add in a lot of purple i've got that all the way up to 100 you can see how it's just added that color into the darkest part of the image compare that to the highlights you can see in those brighter parts of the image where i've added in 100 saturation green you can now see that area is green likewise in the mid tones you can see kind of those in between areas added in a little bit of blue as well now that we've got some color in there i can show you what blending does so blending basically means how quickly it's going to blend from one of those colors to the next at a hundred percent it's basically just merging the two so it's a bit more like split toning as it used to be and then down at zero you kind of more sharply shifting from one color to the next so balance as it suggests is basically the balance between your colors you'll kind of shift more towards your shadows as you bring this to the left or if i push more to the right it's going to be that color that i added in the highlights so lots of different options there you've also got this little eye so you can kind of see before and after just that one color wheel so that gives you an overall rundown of what each of these wheels does let's reset this image and edit it properly so you can see exactly how you can edit a photo using these different color wheels with this image let's start with the shadows i'm going to open up just the individual shadows curve so you can see it a little bit clearer so for me typically with shadows i usually like to add in a little bit of blue or aqua so let's go about there on this one if you know a particular hue you like you can just type it in as well there you can also type in your saturation another handy thing to know if you hit command you can kind of just scroll around the wheel and pick the color you like and then if you hit shift you can just control the saturation or the intensity of that color so this is really handy to know sometimes it's a bit fiddly to navigate around the wheel so for this one let's go about that level so luminance on this one i want to make those shadows darker so let's bring that down you can see how that's really affected the shadows there so for the mid tones again keep in mind this is usually skin tones there is a little bit of skin in this photo so i'm going to go for more of a yellowy orange color on this one so let's go about there and the luminance i'll have a quick play with i'm just going to leave it about there on this one now usually for my highlights i do like to add in a little bit of orange to the highlights i like this kind of feel but i don't want to make that white snow too yellowy orange i want it to look like someone's peed in the snow i want to make it feel nice and cool so i'm going to add in a little bit more blue into my highlights there so probably about there and let's just shift that luminance a little bit maybe bring it up a fraction to about there with that one and now we can play around with our blending and balance for this one i'm just going to bring it a little bit to the left you can see that just brings a little bit more kind of orange back into that face balance i'm going to keep bang in the middle so if i turn all our color gradient adjustments off you can see before and then after quite a moody edit there just from editing the color grading tab to complete this edit i probably would go ahead and maybe just turn down my blues a little bit because i like that kind of desaturated blue look and then i'd probably come up to the tone curve and just play around with that a little bit maybe bring up a little bit of a fade a bit more contrast bring those highlights up just a fraction so you can see that just from color grading and the tone curve i really like that edit and it's really simple to do so let's come across to another image this one here is quite different it's a lot warmer it's a lot darker than the previous image just to show you different examples of what you can do for this one i really want to make the orange kind of glow behind cory here shout out to corey now i really want to make that glowy orange stand out glowy orange so let's start with our shadows again typically for me i like to add in kind of some blue aqua to those shadows i'm going to make this one more towards purple than i usually would and then just play with the luminance a little bit i want to keep those shadows nice and dark so let's just bring that down a little bit and jump across to our mid tones this is where i want to start to bring out that orange so let's pump up those mid tones now this is much much heavier than i would usually edit when using color grading wheels but it will show you how you can use them so you can see there already i've really made that orange stand out i'm just going to increase the luminance a bit on this one i think yep just to make that really glow let's jump across to the highlights again more orange i really want to make this one stand out but i'll bring it a little bit more towards red there and again luminance let's just bring that up a fraction so you've got this area that's really kind of glowing nicely let's play around with the global you can go one step further and add in kind of a little bit of color there as well let's just do a fraction on this one luminance i'll just bring up the overall luminance a little bit turn off the color grading tab that's a really kind of heavy edit already and i've only adjusted this color grading tab so it is a really powerful tool to complete this edit i probably would go and adjust my colors a little bit maybe just turn it down a fraction and then go and adjust the tone curve a little bit as well because i made it so dark i could lift up those shadows a bit and a quick before and after majority done with color grading you can see how much of a difference that's made the last example i just wanted to show you how you can be really subtle when adjusting your portraits as well color grading my adjustments are usually pretty subtle compared to the last two where i've done really heavy just to show you what you can do so let's start with the shadows again and of course you guessed it i'm going to add in a little bit of blue to the shadows how did you guess luminance i'm just going to bring down a little bit darken those shadows let's jump across to the mid tones again skin tones just be careful let's add in a little bit of orange into these ones and then luminance i probably don't want to change too much i'll just bring it up a fraction for highlights here i'm going to have a play around so i'm going to hit option which means i can kind of spin around the wheel and see which looks best and for this one i'm actually going to add in just a little bit of purple there play around with the saturation so let's play around with the luminance i like how that white stands out a bit more as i bring that up so i'll bring that up to about there and now that i've adjusted those three let's just have a look at the blending i'm gonna keep that pretty central balance i'll just drop down a fraction towards those shadows so on this one as you can see that's the before that's the after if anything it's more of a color correction on this one rather than a heavy color edit so you can use the color grading tab to really create a unique and kind of moody or heavy edit or you can use it just really simply to kind of correct color as well so there you have the color grading wheels within lightroom i hope this video was useful for you remember to subscribe to the channel i really do appreciate the support give the video a thumbs up if you did enjoy it and until next time i'll see you here very soon bye for now

Channel: TKNORTH

Views: 8,635

Keywords: lightroom color grading, color grading, lightroom tutorial, color grading wheel, lightroom, lightroom color grading wheels, tknorth, tk_north, adobe lightroom, colour grading, learn photography, learn photography editing, learn lightroom, color grading wheels, lightroom colour wheels, lightroom color grading panel, split tone lightroom, split tones vs color grading, color grading in lightroom, how to color grade, lightroom tips

Id: n6zRZkE8StQ

Length: 10min 8sec (608 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 02 2021