How to Use the New Lightroom Feature to Change Colors Locally

The June update for Lightroom saw several quality of life changes. But one new features is excellent for controlling and altering colors in specific areas of your images. Here is how you use it.

Color control and changes can dictate whether an image is dull and uninspiring, or memorable and print-worthy. However, when we think of colors we generally think of grading. This holistic approach is necessary in some genres, but not in all, and it doesn't always achieve what you had in mind. In many of my product or commercial shoots I like to ensure the colors used are either matching, complementary, or analogous and it's usually much simpler to do that in post than in reality.

While I tend do this work in Photoshop, Adobe Lightroom has recently received an update that makes it easier than ever before to do similar work and without making complex selections, or relying on multiple instantiations of the same color being close enough in hue, luminance, and saturation. In this video, landscape photographer Serge Ramelli goes through how he uses the new tool using a poppy field as the perfect example. The applications of this feature are of course myriad and in many cases more nuanced than how Ramelli uses it here, and it's a powerful tool to have in your arsenal.

Rob Baggs's picture

Robert K Baggs is a professional portrait and commercial photographer, educator, and consultant from England. Robert has a First-Class degree in Philosophy and a Master's by Research. In 2015 Robert's work on plagiarism in photography was published as part of several universities' photography degree syllabuses.

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1 Comment

Sorry but it didnt look too good. I still prefer to make these changes in PS.