Tutorial 3

Lauren Scott shows you how to correct casts and enhance Raw images

Control colour, correct casts and enhance your Raw images

of course, in an ideal world, you’d capture all the right colours in-camera. In truth, however, every image can benefit from a little editing, especially when it comes to boosting colours. In this tutorial, we’re making simple tweaks to a desert scene, so that it matches what we saw with our eyes when we took the shot. The original Raw file was a little drab, but with a few tweaks to the tones and colours, we can make it much more impactful.

The first step involves adjusting the white balance, using the Temperature and Tint sliders, so that the colour cast across the image is more ‘correct’. To adjust the exposure and contrast, we’re reshaping the Tone Curve.

One of the quickest ways to amp up colours over the whole image is by dragging the Saturation or Vibrance sliders to the right in the Basic panel. Be conservative at this stage, though, because too much Saturation degrades an image and causes posterization (this is when you notice colour transitions appearing as bands, rather than a smooth transition from one tone to another). The Saturation and Vibrance sliders can be found in the Basic tab of Lightroom’s Develop panel, but what’s the difference between the two? The Vibrance slider works on more muted tones. Ideal for portraits, it leaves skin tones and heavily saturated colours unaltered for a much more natural-looking result. The Saturation slider, on the other hand, affects colours no matter how saturated they already are.

Bear in mind that if you’re planning on printing your shots, you should calibrate your laptop or computer screen before you get going, because every monitor varies slightly in terms of colour saturation and brightness.