Chapter 3 – Color and Tone Adjustments

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Hey Josh, Has Color Grading panel replaced Split Toning panel in Lightroom now?

Josh Cripps (Administrator) November 6, 2020 at 1:51 pm

Hey Mark,

Yep, that’s correct. One of the reasons I stopped producing processing tutorials was that I couldn’t keep up with the new releases of the Adobe suite! They churn out new features faster than a cheesemaker.

Thankfully in this case the functionality is essentially the same as it was, just more robust. Basically you can pick a color tone for your highlights and your shadows (and now your midtones). You can choose the intensity of the color, as well as which tonal areas it applies to by adjusting the Balance slider. You can also now adjust the luminance of the shadows, midtones, and highlights, and the effect seems to be more tightly controlled than the Highlights and Shadows slider in the Global Adjustment panel.

So when to use Color Grading? I mostly use it in images where I want to emphasize complementary colors for a pleasing color balance and consistent color scheme. For example, I might add a little blue to the shadows and a little orange to the highlights. I find this tool to be useful as well if I have bright parts of the sky which are nearly colorless because they are so bright. You can use Color Grading to inject a little color back into these areas without darkening them.

Cheers,

Josh

great tips Josh, love the birds chirping & awesome mountain photo 🙂

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