Refined Color Grading in Lightroom and Photoshop

Color grading is all about image stylization and your own personal preferences for your images. This video by Nemanja Sekulic is an excellent tutorial about how to put both Lightroom and Photoshop to use when color grading your portrait work. 

There is a specific difference between color correction and color grading. Color correction is adjusting for color issues that were either overlooked in the field or were too much to try to correct while actually on the shoot. Instead of focusing on correction, color grading is all about using color to enhance, style, or otherwise give an image a specifically intentional look. 

Image stylization is just one of many ways to distinguish yourself as a photographer from other artists. Outside of the lenses you use, the locations utilized, and choices in lighting, your choices in post-production can also be used to a very effective point. That point is simply to create a look that is unique to you and the images that you create. Whether you prefer a minimalist approach to post-processing, a more dramatic approach, or even a heavy digital artistry style, what you do with your images after the shoot is a part of your brand. Taking the time to consciously color grade your work, regardless to what degree you do so, is something that can enhance your personal style and help you become more recognized throughout the world.

Rex Jones's picture

Rex lives in Saint George, Utah. His specialty is branding and strategy, working closely with businesses to refine their branding, scale internal structure, and produce high-quality marketing efforts. His photography is primarily commercial, with intermittent work in portraiture, product imagery, and landscape photography for his own enjoyment.

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4 Comments

<sigh> I refuse to watch videos with unrelated footage!

Color grading is highly personal, so I won't get into what they did. But how they did it was often times contradictory and overly confusing.

One could achieve the same outcome with a fraction of the steps. Applying the profile they did in Lightroom amidst the other things they did was just bizarre.

I'm a total noob when it comes to photography, especially the post production aspect and probably the way I see a photo should look is not only subjective, but totally wrong. For me the "before" photo looks way better than the edited version.
Is it something wrong with it?

The title of this video should have been: how to use every single button and slider Lightroom has to offer.