How to Color Grade a Photo in Lightroom

It used to be that for serious color grading work, you needed to work in Photoshop, but Lightroom now offers some powerful controls for color grading that let you take precise control to dial in the exact look you want. This excellent video tutorial will show you how to leverage those controls to color grade your photos. 

Coming to you from Mango Street, this great video tutorial will show you how to color grade images in Lightroom. Color grading is an important step in the editing process that sometimes gets overlooked, but is often the signature of a professional's style and complete control over the image-making process. It can used to add mood or visual interest to an image, to augment the elements already in the frame, or simply to take it in a creative direction. The most important thing to remember with color grading is that less is more; it can be very easy to go overboard with it, and it usually only takes a little bit to get the effect you are going for, generally on the order of a five percent change in the sliders or less. Check out the video above for the full rundown.

Alex Cooke's picture

Alex Cooke is a Cleveland-based portrait, events, and landscape photographer. He holds an M.S. in Applied Mathematics and a doctorate in Music Composition. He is also an avid equestrian.

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