Hey folks, I'm a self-taught photographer and I've been struggling to achieve certain trendy effects and color grads for portraits & fashion (You might see below) I would be more than grateful is anyone can help. Thanks in advance
P.S: I tried to tweak the blue hue, split tone on lightroom, Color curves but still couldn't get there
https://drscdn.500px.org/photo/133383337/m%3D2048/657b1280133fb494043a9c...
https://drscdn.500px.org/photo/123107975/m%3D2048/adb4f33c6d10abeab3c0d1...
https://drscdn.500px.org/photo/125014129/m%3D2048/bdacc4f22149b18f305aac...
Are the images attached your attempts or what you are trying to achieve?
What I'm trying to achieve :)
Looks to me like a fairly 'neutral' colour corrected image with the blues shifted toward the cyan and a bunch of saturation dropped into the blues/cyans (looking a the second and third link, the first has the blacks lifted kind of like what you see in VSCOcams filters).
But in terms of the 2nd and 3rd images, in LR, start with a neutral white balance and then under HSL you could shift the hue of the blues and aqua's to the left to give them more of that cyan tone. You may want to shift the yellows and oranges to the left as well to make them more orange-y red. This will complement the cyan tones nicely. And then in the saturation tab of HSL add saturation to the aqua's and blues. Your source image will need to have similar colour tones to start with otherwise you won't get the same effect (i.e. you need to apply a style to certain images, you can't just globally apply some colour effects to every picture and expect them to look good). But if you have a blue sky or blue water in your image that would probably be enough to start with.
You can do more with colour tones/ranges in photoshop using a 'Selective Color' adjustment layer. It will give you more control over these colour shifts not to mention being able to mask accurately if need be. You can see in the image with the hat where the cyan tone starts to come through the cream colours on the hat.
Looks like some nice dodgin/burning and retouching in photoshop too
To get the look in the first image you need a contrasty/harshly lit photo to start with, something with good harsh shadows and highlights. Make sure your black levels are set correctly so that the blackest part of the image is pure black. Then with curves, bring up the bottom left corner along the diagonal line of the curve so that you rinputs/outputs are 15/15 20/20 or 25/25, somewhere around there.
Do the blue/aqua shifts as above and you should hopefully have something pretty similar. Again if you don't have the right sort of source image to start with it won't have the same effect. If your source image is brightly lit with very little shadows you won't get anywhere near the same effect.
If you post up your images I'm happy to have a play and give you my recommendation on what I would do :)
Tried it and it worked pretty great, seems like the trick was mainly about tweaking the white balance before playing with the hues
Excellent!
Thanks so much Shaun taking from your time to explain all that. I will probably have a session very soon so I'll try to apply your instructions. If I can't get there I'll share with you. Thanks another time :)