Photography Basics – Color Grading Part 2

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.

In my last article I wrote about color grading in Lightroom. In this article I’ll be discussing color grading using a Lookup table (LUT) adjustment level. Photoshop installs with a few LUTs but with some searching, you can find lots of free LUTs. LUTs have either the suffix “.3DL”, “.look” or “.cube”.

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/

To install new luts select the lookup table adjustment layer select 3DLUT File click on “Load 3D LUT” and when the dialog box opens click again on “Load 3D LUT” and a browser will open. Browse to where your LUTs are stored and select them.

To apply a color grading effect, select the lookup table in the adjustment layers palette.

If the adjustment layers are not visible go to window and make sure adjustments are checked.

After creating the lookup table an adjustment layer will be created along with a mask. Remember with masks, white reveals, black conceals. Select load 3DLUT

Click on “Load 3DLUT” and that will open a list of LUTs you have loaded. Select one and it will be applied. Here I applied a LUT that is reminiscent of Annie Leibowitz’s style. And you can see I’ve applied a slight (29%) mask over the face.

Here is the before on the left and after color grading on the right.

There are also some color grading option under the abstract and device link sections. Here I’ve chosen cobalt-carmine from the abstract section and applied a slight (20%) mask over just the face. Remember that if you feel the effect is too strong over the image as a whole, you can decrease the opacity of the adjustment layer.

And here is the before (top) and after (bottom) images.

Here is another image with an Olive color grading applied and I made a split image so you see the difference. Again I did a slight mask over the face.

Photography Basics – Color Grading Part 2

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