Strong contrast grabs attention, emphasizing the drama of your shots and adding depth. Here's how to get it just right in Lightroom.
Coming to you from Christian Möhrle - The Phlog Photography, this practical video focuses on Lightroom’s masking tools to boost contrast selectively within a scene. Möhrle starts by dialing in foundational exposure settings like shadows and highlights, ensuring each adjustment preserves essential detail. He demonstrates how to carefully manage exposure and contrasts without causing clipping—an important consideration to maintain image quality. What’s especially helpful is his technique for balancing the white balance: he carefully adjusts the temperature slider to reduce unwanted color casts while deliberately leaving subtle tones to preserve atmosphere.
Möhrle then moves onto Lightroom’s masking tools, clearly illustrating their power to make targeted improvements to your image. He introduces linear gradients and the select subject feature, emphasizing the importance of isolating the subject from the background to ensure your edits enhance rather than overwhelm. By darkening the dramatic sky, he skillfully increases contrast, giving the image immediate depth and drama. Watching his use of clarity adjustments and subtle temperature shifts within these masks provides valuable insights into effectively enhancing mood.
The video also demonstrates how specific attention to your subject can elevate your composition. Möhrle makes precise exposure adjustments, gently increasing brightness without losing detail. Particularly effective is his method of selectively highlighting and sharpening key elements—such as windows on a building—by adding individual object masks. His step-by-step approach in boosting clarity and carefully managing color balance within these smaller areas provides a clear guide for enhancing focal points without distracting from the broader scene.
Moreover, Möhrle briefly covers advanced finishing touches, including minor color grading tweaks and sharpening methods. His careful approach to adjusting individual colors, such as refining blues and subtly balancing reds, ensures the final image feels cohesive. Importantly, he emphasizes cleaning up your images, demonstrating easy fixes for common issues like lens distortion and sensor spots. These practical touches ensure your finished images look polished and professional, free from small distractions that might detract from the overall impact. Check out the video above for the full rundown from Möhrle.
