How to Take Control of Color in Lightroom

Back when everybody used film cameras, photographers had to match the film type to their subject. For example, landscape photographers liked Fuji Velvia 50 because it produced deeply saturated slides. But portrait photographers liked films like Fuji Reala which rendered good skin tones. Today, as long as you use the Raw format, you can take the same approach in Lightroom.

It doesn’t matter what camera you have, Lightroom gives you a great deal of power when it comes to adjusting the colors of your photos. To give you an idea of Lightroom’s potential, take a look at the different versions of the photo below. The first is more or less straight out of the camera. I developed the others with customized Lightroom Develop Presets.

Now let’s look at some of the tools Lightroom has for altering color.

Vibrance and Saturation

The Vibrance and Saturation sliders are located at the bottom of the Basic panel. They alter the intensity of the colors in the photo in different ways.

• The Saturation slider changes the intensity level of all colors in the photo equally.
• The Vibrance slider affects the most deeply saturated colors in the photo the most. It evens out the saturation levels and is a more subtle adjustment than Saturation.

I prefer to reduce Saturation and Vibrance rather than increase them as desaturated colors are more subtle and atmospheric than saturated ones. These photos illustrate the difference between Vibrance and Saturation.

Camera profiles

Most digital cameras come with a set of color profiles. Every manufacturer gives their color profiles a different name. For instance, Canon uses Picture Style and Fujifilm uses Film Simulation. Check your camera’s user manual if you’re unsure. Regardless of your camera maker’s terminology, the color profiles all appear in the Camera Calibration panel in Lightroom.

Color profiles are the digital equivalent of the idea of using different films for different subjects. Most cameras have profile names like Landscape, Portrait, and Monochrome. The exception to this is Fujifilm, which names its profiles after real Fuji films, such as Velvia, Provia, and Astia. You’ll find most of these in Lightroom as well, ready for you to use.

The color profile setting is important as it sets both the color and contrast. You need to select the best profile before adjusting other Develop module sliders. For example, if you apply a preset intended for landscapes to a portrait then it’s unlikely you will get good skin tones.

This photo shows three different color profiles. I made the photo with a Fujifilm camera and the color profiles are specific to that model.

HSL / Color / B&W panel

The HSL / Color / B&W panel contains a set of powerful tools for adjusting colors in Lightroom. The HSL and Color tabs both contain the same sliders, just arranged in a different order.

I prefer to use the HSL tab, so let’s look at that. It lets you adjust Hue, Saturation, and Luminance individually.

Hue

The Hue sliders let you change the colors in your photos. The colors on the sliders (see above) tell you how they work. For example, if you move the Red slider to the left you will turn anything that is colored red in your photo to magenta. If you move the slider right then red colored objects become orange.

In the example below, you can see that I moved the Red, Aqua, and Blue sliders to change some of the hues (colors) in the photo.

Saturation

The Saturation sliders let you change the intensity levels of the colors in your photo individually. This is different from the Saturation and Vibrance sliders, which change the color saturation levels across the entire frame.

The photo below shows how it works.

Luminance

The Luminance sliders let you adjust the brightness levels of individual colors in your photos. In turn, this affects the apparent saturation. If you make a color darker (by moving the corresponding slider left) the color appears to be more deeply saturated. If you make it lighter (by moving the slider right) the color appears to be less saturated.

The example below shows it in action.

Putting it all together

Now it’s time to look at how you can put these techniques into action. We’ll do that by looking at the portrait I showed you at the beginning of the article.

Here is the before version and one of the after versions.

These are some of the settings I adjusted that affected the colors.

Camera profile

I set the Camera Profile to Adobe Standard. This is a standardized setting created by Adobe specifically for your camera. The idea is that if you take a photo of the same scene with two different cameras, then apply the Adobe Standard Profile to each one, the colors will look the same in each.

The benefit of using Adobe Standard is that it lets you create a Develop Preset that you can apply to photos made with any camera with consistent results. If you don’t want to do this, then you can use one of Lightroom’s camera specific profiles instead.

Saturation

Next, I reduced the overall Saturation using the Vibrance slider.

I reduced the Saturation of specific colors using the sliders in the HSL tab.

Luminance

Then, I increased the brightness of some of the colors using the Luminance sliders.

Tone Curve

Next, this isn’t related to the color, I made a Tone Curve adjustment to create the faded effect. The result of this Tone Curve Adjustment is that there are no true blacks in the photo.

The techniques in this article don’t cover all the color adjustment tools in Lightroom as there are too many for one article. But these are the main ones and they will get you started. Let us know in the comments if you have any questions about any of them.

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Faded Glory Presets for Lightroom

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