Color Grading is widely used in video editing to create a consistent look across a series of clips, but it’s now common to find color grading tools in photo editors too, like here in Lightroom Classic. Color grading works by splitting the image up into three tonal regions – shadows, midtones and highlights – and then adjusting the hue, saturation and luminance values for each to produce a range of cinematic or atmospheric effects.
Color grading is carried out using individual ‘color wheels’ for the shadow, midtone and highlight regions, and quick and intuitive control points for adjusting the color shift. It might look complex but it’s actually quite easy to do, and if you create a color grade you like that you want to re-use in the future, you can save it as a preset. Many Lightroom presets are based around these color grading tools.
3-way adjustment
You choose how the color wheels are displayed and adjusted using this set of buttons running across the top of the Color Grading panel. In the 3-way adjustment mode currently selected, you can see and adjust all three color wheels at once – the one you’re currently adjusting is highlighted while the others are greyed out.
This is a quick and simple way to work if you already have an idea how you want the image to look and you need to adjust shadows, midtones and highlights to get it.
Shadows, midtones, highlights
You can use these buttons to adjust the shadows, midtones and highlights color wheels individually. This is useful if the effects you want to achieve uses only one of these tonal ranges, which is not uncommon.
You can use the shadows color wheel to add a deep, rich color to the darker tones
Adjusting the midtones only will preserve neutral shadows and highlights
Global adjustment
You might just want to apply an overall color shift, and the global adjustment option is the way to do it. It’s also the simplest way to add a color grade to a photo.
Color wheel
This is the heart of Lightroom’s color grading tools, and it uses a draggable control point to adjust hue and saturation. Initially, this will be at the center (neutral) position in the color wheel, and you then drag it towards the edge in the direction of the color you want to apply. You can drag the control point around the wheel, not just outwards. The further you drag it towards the edge, the stronger the saturation of the color tint.
Hue control
You’ll see another control point on the outside of the color wheel showing the hue you’ve selected. You can move this control point around the outside of the color wheel to change the hue. It might look as if it’s doing the same job as the main control point, but in fact it adjust the hue only, not the saturation, and it allows much more precise control – especially when the main control point is very close to the center and small movements have big effects.
Luminance slider
The control wheel only allows you to adjust hue and saturation, but the luminance sliders let you change the brightness of the shadows, midtones and highlights too.
Try reducing the luminance for the shadows to make them richer and deeper
Increasing shadow luminance can create an attractive vintage ‘matte’ effect
Blending
BLENDINGIf you are using different color values for the shadows, midtones and highlights, they blend together progressively for a natural-looking color transition. This slider lets you adjust this blending effect to be more abrupt and pronounced or smoother and less visible.
Blending adjustments can be quite subtle but they are still worth experimenting with
Balance
Normally, your shadows, midtones and highlights adjustments will get an ‘equal share’ of the tonal range, but you can use the balance slider to push the effect of your shadow adjustment further into the tonal range, for example, or bring your highlight adjustment further down into the midtones.
The balance slider make quite a difference to the way an image looks, but also introduces another variable that complicates things – you might find it simpler just to tweak the look with the color wheels
