Before October 2020, Split Toning was one of the most popular tools for color editing photos with Adobe Lightroom. However, as any photographer who has used it before will tell you, this feature, while useful, has its limitations.
Since then, however, Adobe has replaced Split Toning with a color wheel. These existed in Adobe Premiere Pro long before they came to Lightroom, and they work similarly.
This article will show you how to get started color correcting your photos in Lightroom, and you’ll also learn what this feature does.
What is Color Grading?
As you can guess from the tool’s name, Color Grading allows you to adjust the color of certain parts of an image. You can use these color wheels to adjust hue and saturation; you’ll also find a brightness slider at the bottom for each of these elements.
The color grading feature will add any number of colors to your photos. It differs from the individual color sliders, which focus primarily on boosting those specific colors in the image.
Color grading is useful in many situations. For example, you can make a photo appear more orange, yellow, or red than it actually is.
Should color be edited before other edits?
While you can always use color grading, it’s best to do basic editing before the process. Why? Because if you don’t, your edits will often look messy, and you’ll take longer to fix those mistakes.
In particular, it’s a good idea to use the HSL sliders for each color before editing. Likewise, you should determine if you want to adjust other basic settings – such as exposure, texture, and contrast.
In addition to using the sliders, there are other edits you should do before color correcting your photos in Lightroom. For example, you should make sure the correct camera profile is selected. Again, the early stages are a great time to make lens corrections and crop photos.
If you want to do more advanced color correction after color grading, you can always use Photoshop with Lightroom.
What palettes are available in Lightroom?
In Adobe Lightroom, you’ll see three primary color wheels: midtones, shadows, and highlights. Each of these color wheels affects the color of a specific area of the image without affecting other parts.
You’ll also see a color wheel, which changes the color of the entire image. It’s called Global, and you’ll find it in the last circle of the Color Grading section of the Lightroom app.
Whether you’re using Lightroom Classic or Creative Cloud, you can use the color correction wheel. You’ll also see them if you use Adobe Lightroom on your smartphone or tablet. This is different from Photoshop Express for mobile, which still uses Split Toning.
How to edit photo color in Lightroom
Now, let’s see how to color correct photos in Lightroom. First, you need to go to the Color Grading tab.
To increase the saturation of the image, move the circle in the center of each wheel to the edge. However, you need to be careful because moving the circle too much can oversaturate the image – as shown below.
If you want to change the hue, you can move the circles around the different colors on the wheel. To change the brightness, all you need to do is move the slider left or right for each section.
When editing photos in Lightroom, you may also want to change the view. While many editors like to group the three main wheels together, you can click on the individual circles at the top of this section to focus on each wheel individually.
After you finish colorizing your photos in Lightroom, you can save and export them. Plus, you can make more advanced adjustments in another app.
Get started with color correction in Lightroom
Editing brush colors is a daunting task, but it’s actually quite simple. With a solid understanding of how it works, you can dramatically improve the results of your photo editing—and find a style that suits your personality.
If you’re new to color correction, take a moment to try out the color wheels one by one. To improve your workflow in the future, you can save your favorite edits as presets.