Photography Basics – Color Grading Part 1

by Mickey Rountree

Color Grading refers to adjusting colors and tones in your image to alter the mood and feel of your image. Color grading is used heavily in the movie and TV industry to alter mood, but also to create a consistent visual style. It is not the same as color balance and you should correct your color balance before doing your color grading. Color grading can be so subtle that it is hardly noticeable or so extreme that is obvious that colors are manipulated and not totally realistic.

I’ll start with how to do color grading in Lightroom, and of course it is also in the Camera Raw filter which is the same as Lightroom with a slightly different interface. You can do all of your color grading in Lightroom, but most of my images are finished in Photoshop and I typically do the color grading in Camera Raw applied to a copy layer. This allows me to vary the opacity and the intensity of the color grading as well as the ability to use masks to remove or decrease the effect in parts of the image.

The LR develop module has a color grading section with controls for the shadows, highlights and midtones. When you select one of the three zones, you will see a solid circle on the outside of the color wheel, and rotating it around will select the hue. The unfilled circle is used to adjust saturation with dead center being 0% saturation, and the outer edge being 100%. You will have much more control if you hold shift while adjusting the hue and saturation. The unmarked slider below each zone controls brightness, and even without changing color you can use these as another way to adjust contrast in your image. Blending controls how smoothly the colors in the three zones blend together, and the balance slider controls what is considered shadow, highlight or midtone.

When these articles are converted to PDF and sized for the newsletter, the resolution and quality of the images is seriously degraded. If you would like to read the article and see the images as I did, you can see this article on my website at this link.

https://mickeyrountree.smugmug.com/Articles/Basic-Photography-Series/

In general, it is best to start with cooler colors in the shadows and warmer colors in the highlights. Complementary colors work best, so choose a color for the shadows, and then something directly across the color wheel for the highlights. Until you have a bit more experience with color grading it is best to leave the midtones alone.

I’ll start with this image as an example. Here it is with no color grading.

Here I’ve added a rich blue in the shadows, and a yellow (opposite on the color wheel) for the highlights. With the saturation at 100% the effect is very obvious and probably too strong, but if you like it that’s your choice.

The effect is more subtle at 50% saturation.

And the effect is still more subtle at 30% It’s there but it’s hard to see without a side by side comparison.

Here it is with on the left with subtle color toning and for comparison on the right with no color toning.

Using cool tones in the shadows and warm tones in the highlights may not be an absolute rule on all images, but it pretty much is on people. Look how unflattering cool skin tones and warm shadows is.

Color grading also works on black and white images. It’s the same as a duotone if the shadows and highlights are toned or tritone if highlights, shadows and midtones are all adjusted. Below is the original B&W, the settings and the final color graded image.

Below are really unusual settings for a landscape. I used green (cool) in the shadows, and magenta in the highlights (sky). Don’t try this on people pictures!

One use for color grading that I find useful is for making composites blend together more realistically. The color grading helps create a more uniform feel that ties the images together and helps disguise mismatched color balances. Below is the composite with no color grading, the settings and the final image.