Making the grade
Q Lightroom’s new Color Grading tool looks complicated. Is it difficult to get an interesting toning effect? Luke Bradley
A If you are going to work on a colour image and do some colour grading, my advice is to keep it simple and relatively subtle. The new Color Grading option is more powerful than its Split Toning predecessor, but it effectively does the same thing. Whereas before you could only tone Highlights and Shadows, now you can also tone Midtones – although whether you always want to is another matter! When you’re changing the hues and saturation of the three zones, Highlights, Midtones and Shadows, it’s easy to end up with a photo that looks unnatural.
As a rule, warming Highlights and Midtones while cooling Shadows slightly can work well, but it’s all about experimenting with each image: there’s no perfect recipe for the right look.
If you are going to tone a black-and-white image, the same rules apply, except you can afford to push the effect a little further, since we don’t see the world in black and white, and therefore it’s already adjusted from what is natural to the eye. With a mono image, you can recreate the traditional darkroom chemical toning looks of sepia, cyanotype, copper and so on – and they can look powerful and interesting, too.
The Color Grading Tool (which is in Camera Raw as well as Lightroom) is useful, but it does look more complicated than it actually is, which is why it puts people off from playing with it. There are some extra sliders now, giving you greater control – including Hue, Saturation, Luminance Blending and Balance. But it’s worth noting that Blending and Balance are global, whereas Hue, Saturation and Luminance are particular to each tone.