Discover how to adjust luminance and saturation for specific colors within a photo using Lightroom, a key skill for those pursuing a career in digital photography or graphic design. Learn to manipulate the lightness, darkness, and color intensity of your images to enhance their visual appeal.
Key Insights
- The tutorial guides you through adjusting luminance and saturation in Lightroom, focusing on altering specific colors within a photo.
- The process involves importing the photos into the Lightroom Library module and selecting the one you wish to edit.
- You can adjust the luminance (lightness and darkness) of a color by selecting it with the Targeted Adjustment tool.
- Adjusting the luminance of a color involves clicking on the color in the photo and using the arrow keys to make it darker or lighter.
- Similarly, you can adjust the saturation (color intensity) of a color by selecting it in the HSL / Color / B & W panel and moving the slider to change its value.
- Adjusting both luminance and saturation allows for dramatic transformations of the photo, improving its visual appeal.
This exercise is excerpted from Noble Desktop’s past Lightroom training materials and is compatible with Lightroom updates through 2020. To learn current skills in Lightroom, check out our Photo Retouching Certificate and graphic design classes in NYC and live online.
Color Grading Steps
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White Balance First
Get neutral colors right before any creative grading.
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HSL Panel
Shift, lighten, or darken individual color ranges.
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Color Grading
Set highlight, midtone, shadow color tints for mood.
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Match Across the Set
Sync settings across selected images for consistency.
Topics Covered in This Lightroom Tutorial:
Adjusting Luminance, Adjusting Saturation
Exercise Preview
Exercise Overview
In this exercise, you’ll learn how to adjust separate colors in a photo by adjusting their luminance and saturation discretely—in other words, one at a time.
Adjusting Luminance
- If you have not imported the photos that were imported in Exercise 2E:
- Go into the Library module.
- At the bottom left of the screen, click Import.
- In the dialog box that appears, on the left under Source, navigate to Desktop > Class Files > Lightroom Class and select the Develop folder.
- At the top, above the photos, make sure Add is selected (highlighted).
- On the bottom right, click Import.
In the Library module, in the Catalog panel to the left, click on Previous Import.
Click on the second swan photo (_CAS4927).
Press D to go into the Develop module.
In the Navigator panel, click on FIT (if it isn’t already highlighted).
Expand the HSL / Color / B & W panel on the right side.
Make sure HSL is highlighted.
In the options immediately below HSL, click on Luminance if it isn’t already selected. Luminance is a measure of lightness and darkness of various colors.
At the top-left corner of the panel, click the Targeted Adjustment tool
.
Click on a blue part of the sky. We’re going to darken it.
Press the Down Arrow key about 8 times. Note that the Aqua and Blue values change in the panel too.
At the top-left corner of the HSL / Color / B & W panel, toggle the Switch
off and on to view the changes, leaving it on before proceeding to the next step.
Adjusting Saturation
Let’s adjust the saturation of the yellows and greens in the photo, and then the luminance again.
In the HSL / Color / B & W panel, click on Saturation.
Drag the Yellow slider all the way to the right, to + 100.
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That’s maybe a little too dramatic.
Drag the Yellow slider back to the left to + 60.
Click the Switch
Click on Luminance.
At the top-left corner of the panel, if the Targeted Adjustment tool
Near the bottom of the photo, click on the grass.
Press the Up Arrow key around 6−8 times.
Below and to the right of the photo, click the Done button.
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Click the Before & After icon
to scope out your work on this photo.
Very impressive!
