Clued up about Hue

QWhat could I use the Hue slider on a Lightroom Adjustment Brush to achieve? Greta King

AThe local Hue adjustment has been in Lightroom for just over a year now: it was introduced as a way to allow you to tweak or totally change the colour of something within your photo. Up until its introduction, the only way you’d be able to do this was to take your image into Photoshop and make various adjustments there. The Hue slider isn’t only available with an Adjustment Brush: you can select it when you apply a Radial Filter or a Graduated Filter, and it will give you the opportunity to make a 360-degree colour modification if you want. Bold changes can sometimes look a bit odd, though, so I’d suggest using the Hue slider wisely rather than liberally. You can also tick Fine Adjustment; this slows down the application of any colour change, which is worth doing if you just want to make a subtle alteration to something like the colour of someone’s eyes.

If you are into making wholesale colour changes for creative effect, use Hue in conjunction with the Auto Mask and Range Mask (colour) options to get your selections as neat as you possibly can. As I don’t really ever look to making wholesale hue changes within the type of photography I enjoy, it’s not a tool that gets much use within my workflow, but it’s good to have the option in Lightroom without needing to go into Photoshop.

As you can see on the two shots here, I changed the colour of the door in the background, from the blue that was similar in hue to the one of the boys’ tops being worn to a green. It was quick and easy to do, so the local Hue adjustment does provide this extra tool in your creative armoury.