The colors in your photos sometimes look wrong but you don’t know how to fix them? This article and video can help. I’ll show you how to get vibrant colors in your images.
First let’s define the problem. A few weeks ago I visited Fuerteventura. One evening, I captured a beautiful sunset near Jandia National Park. Both the setting and the lighting are breathtaking. The scene was bathed in golden light and I was sure I was guarded as I walked back to my car in the dark.
However, I’m disappointed when opening raw files in Lightroom. The warm lighting I enjoyed in that location negatively affected the colors. Everything looks a bit yellow. But it’s not a simple color gamut that I can fix with the “Temp” and “Tint” sliders in Lightroom. It will make the whole image cooler while it still looks like a splash of color.
Such a monochrome curtain can work in several photos. Blue hour is an example where it adds to the atmosphere. The same is true for photos taken at sunrise and sunset. But if you shoot more during the early golden hour and your scene has areas and objects that don’t look naturally yellow, orange, or red, that can become a problem if the lighting and fog cast up those colors.
The settings I’m now showing you work best in Photoshop because you’ll have more flexibility during the masking process. Accessing layer blending modes is also important for fine-tuning the effect. If you don’t have Photoshop, you can approach using just Lightroom. But it will be more difficult.
Selective smoke suppression
Have you noticed that the “Dehaze” tool in Camera Raw and Lightroom not only creates contrast but also affects color? You often get blue with darker tones of the image if you drag the slider to the right. It allows the following workflow to introduce color contrast to an almost monochrome photo:
- Duplicate the main image layer in Photoshop and go to “Filters – Camera Raw Filter…”.
- Use the “Desmoking” slider under “Effects” and increase it to a value of 50 or more.
- Use “Spot Color” in “Color Mixer” to sample cool and warm colors.
- Use “Hue”, “Saturation” and “Luminance” to improve the color contrast between those colors.
- Use the “Exposure” and “Contrast” sliders under “Light” to fine-tune the look of your image.
You can cycle through the different settings a few times until you achieve your desired results. Don’t worry about the contrast being too strong, just focus on the colors you introduce. Once satisfied, press “OK” to return to Photoshop.
You might ask, why not directly use Lightroom to make those adjustments? The answer lies in Photoshop’s layer blending modes. When returning to Photoshop:
- Duplicate the edited layer.
- Set the edited layer’s blending mode to “Brightness” and the copy’s mode to “Color”.
- You can now reduce the opacity of color and contrast adjustments separately. You’ll want to retain most of the color changes while reducing some of the contrast caused by “Desmoking”.
It gives you a more natural result because, right off the bat, strong Dehaze adds too much contrast.
Option
You can now use the “Hue/Saturation…” and “Selective Color…” adjustment layers and further refine the colors. The first adjustment layer gives you options similar to “Point Color” in Lightroom. It helps you enhance individual colors. With selective color, you can add cyan to and remove yellow from blue tones while removing cyan from warm tones. Removing yellow makes colors bluer, while removing cyan makes them redder. I show this workflow in the featured video.
Continue working in Photoshop using curves to improve contrast. Having a dark foreground and light background adds depth. You can emphasize it by using dodge and burn. And if you own Luminar Neo, you can add other effects. I have a video that shows some tools you can use to bring your photos to life even more.
My favorite tool by far is the “Sunbeam” effect. You can use it subtly to add light to the photo. If the sun is in the frame, you place the center of the effect on the sun. For a photo like the one I show here, you place the center outside the frame, roughly where the light is coming from. Don’t make the rays too defined. Aim for a soft and hazy look. After applying the Luminar effect, you can use a mask in Photoshop to apply it selectively. You can experiment with splitting the effect again like you did with “Dehaze”. Adjust each color layer’s opacity and brightness for best results.
Conclusion
In photo editing, you should know many different techniques to achieve the desired results. Using “Dehaze” to add color contrast is one of them. By dividing the effect into brightness and color layers, you can expand your control over your adjustments. This way, you can achieve results that would be difficult to create in Lightroom alone.
And remember, you can use this effect division for other adjustments. At the end of editing, I usually flatten all the layers using “CMD/CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+E.” I then removed all the adjustment layers and kept just the original image and the flatten layer containing all the edits. I then perform color luminance grading on this layer to refine the result.
