STEP BY STEP LIVEN UP YOUR IMAGES

Navigate around lightroom’s panels and tabs to come up with a more vivid capture

01 Set white balance

Once you’ve loaded up the Start image, head to the Basic panel, click the Eyedropper tool and choose a neutral point. You can adjust the Temperature and Tint sliders to fine-tune the colour correction after, but this provides a good starting point to edit from.

03 up the intensity

Head to the HSL panel and alter the Saturation and Luminance of specific colours. We wanted to boost the sky and sand in this image, so took the levels of Red to +16, Yellow to +24, Orange to +33, Blue to +70 and Aqua to +26. Tailor the values to suit your shots.

05 get Selective

You can use the Adjustment Brush to make very targeted adjustments to colour and exposure. We used a fairly small-sized brush and painted over the sand ridges in the dunes, upping the Clarity and lowering the Shadow levels for greater definition.

02 choose a profile

Next, head down to the Camera Calibration tab. Click the Profile drop-down tab to apply a Picture Style. In this image, the Camera Landscape profile gave us a good result. Set the profile before further edits, as it determines colours and contrast in the whole image.

04 add curves

We used the Tone Curve panel for precise control over the tones in this scene. Pay attention to the image’s histogram as you tweak the tonal range. Here, we took the Highlights to -40, the Lights and Darks down to around -25, and boosted the Shadows to +29.

06 finishing touches

Once you’ve finished making specific adjustments, take a look at your image and consider whether you’re happy with the overall result. We took up the Contrast to +53 and boosted the Vibrance again for a punchier finish that still faithfully replicated the scene we saw.