When the camera is used as a tool to capture a scene or subject, you can change the tone and feel of the final photo in post-processing. With Adobe Lightroom, you can grade photos to give them an atmospheric feel and style. Whether it is a landscape photo or a party photo, you can use Lightroom to make your photos more impressive.
Color Grading offers the opportunity to change how your image looks in multiple ways. As a result, you can create something that expresses your style better than the original shot from your camera might.
In this article, you’ll find out where you can find Color Grading in Lightroom Classic on your desktop.
WHY ADOBE REPLACED SPLIT TONING WITH COLOR GRADING
In Lightroom, Adobe replaced Split Toning with Color Grading in late 2020. To put it simply, the company wanted to give users more choice.
With Split Toning, photographers could only change the colors for their images’ highlights and shadows. But with Color Grading, they can amend their midtones too.
WHAT YOU CAN USE COLOR GRADING FOR
You can use color grading to make technical changes to photos taken on your phone and camera. For example, if you capture a moody day, you may find that there is too much blue in the picture directly from the camera. At the same time, if you take photos on a sunny day, you may look pale.
But you can also use Color Grading for style and creative purposes. You can use it to alter the mood of a picture and reflect the emotions you want to bring out of the viewer.
With Color Grading, you can also alter the luminance of specific parts of a photo. You can also choose how much you want to blend your alternated colors.
WHEN YOU SHOULD USE COLOR GRADING
While editing your photos in Lightroom, it’s a good idea to start with altering other parts of your image before Color Grading. For example, you can play around with the hue, saturation, and luminance for individual colors. You can also tweak saturation, vibrance, and white balance.
Once you edit the color, brightness, etc. of the picture, color grading can add the right finishing touch.
Unless you pursue a real style, you most likely want your photos to still look like they do in real life. First, color grading can make editing more difficult, and you may add too much or less risk to other sliders.
WHERE IN LIGHTROOM YOU CAN FIND COLOR GRADING
Finding the Color Grading wheels in Lightroom Classic is pretty simple. Below is a step-by-step guide.
Step 1: Open the Lightroom app on your computer.
Step 2: Click on the Develop tab.
Step 3: Scroll down to Color Grading. The option is below Basic, Tone Curve, and HSL/Color.
You can also change the layout of your Color Grading wheels. By default, you’ll see the Midtones, Shadows, and Highlights circles together. But if you’d prefer to, you can choose to view each one individually.
To view the wheels on their own, go to the Adjust section at the top of the Color Grading tab. Click on the circles next to it until you find the image area you want to edit.
TAKE YOUR PHOTOS TO THE NEXT LEVEL WITH COLOR GRADING
A lightroom is a powerful tool for tweaking your photos to match your style. And Color Grading can make the difference between average and outstanding.
When using color grading, it’s important to remember that too much will add undesirable color to your pictures-for example, it’s a good idea to exercise moderation.
Mastering color grading tools can be time-consuming for beginners. So try to practice as much as possible. Soon, you will start creating edits that will amaze your friends and family.
