Adobe Lightroom Tutorial: Color Control Workflow

By Rob Sheppard

The actual color of a photograph is an important part of color photography. Unfortunately, the camera doesn't see the world the same way that we do and often gives you compromised color. Lightroom offers some great controls to enable you to get the most from color in your images.

I am going to talk about the HSL part of the Develop module in Lightroom because it can do so much for you. However, a photo needs to have some basic adjustments done first in Develop: set blacks with Blacks, check whites with Exposure, control midtones with the Tone Curve (Brightness and Contrast also work, but less efficiently) and try a moderate amount of Vibrance. These adjustments all affect color.

In the photo you see here in Lightroom, basic adjustments have been made. It isn't a bad photo and many people would accept it as the final image. I don't. Better color can come from this photo. The function keys F6, F7 and F8 help clean up the look of the Lightroom interface. Try them to get more room for your photo.

I am not using Saturation at all or Vibrance very much. These are overall controls that affect everything. Most of the time we need to affect individual colors in a photograph and not all of them in the same way. Saturation is a pretty heavy-handed adjustment so I rarely use it. Vibrance has some good effects but it can be easily overdone, so I'm careful about how much I use it.

Let's go to HSL in the right panel. Start by clicking on Hue when HSL opens. Then click on the little icon just below hue that looks like a target.

This activates your cursor making it what is called the targeted adjustment tool. That kind of a dorky name; for what this does, this button and the tool might be called the magic button and tool. The cursor changes in appearance when you move it over the photograph. You don't have to know what sliders to use in HSL because the activated cursor finds them for you. The number to the right of the slider is highlighted.

Now all you have to do is click and drag up and down over that color in the photograph to change the slider. That's it! You don't have to go back to the slider at all. You just click and drag on the color itself in the photograph and the slider is found and adjusted for you.

Next click on Saturation. The cursor is now activated for changing saturation of individual colors. Click and drag up and down over the color that you want to change. The saturation increases going up and decreases going down.

Now go to Luminance. This is nothing like Luminosity in Hue/Saturation in Photoshop. This is a superb control to adjust brightness of colors. Now do the same thing - go out and click and drag up and down on a color. Up makes a color lighter and down makes the color darker. This is a terrific way to deal with skies. Click and drag colors to give your image a richer look and better colors.

That’s all there is to it. You really can do a lot by simply clicking and dragging up and down on the photograph when your cursor is activated. Stop the activated cursor by pressing the esc key.

Learn to make your photographs better with Lightroom with my Lightroom Workflow Library and Develop DVDs available at robsheppardphoto.com. Lightroom connects you with your photos and makes your work with them more efficient and more effective.

More information: Outdoor Photographer columnist and author Rob Sheppard teaches a number of terrific online photography workshops. Check out Rob's bio and course listings here...

Also, the BetterPhoto online school of digital photography also includes an Adobe Lightroom tutorial.

In addition, be sure to catch Rob on Twitter @robsheppardfoto.

Comments

[nocritics]

so, this is my first lesson for lightroom. Thanks, i'll try it out tonite

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