COLOR GRADING—Lightroom Classic’s new Color Grading Panel enables even more control over the application of color tints to your images. Colors can be applied independently to shadows, highlights and midtones in your image with additional controls to blend, shift balance, and change luminosity values. This video will walk you through the feature or, you can read all about it below.
Note: @7:25, you need to position your cursor over the Color Wheel in the Detail view for the shortcuts that I mention in the video to work!
The Split Tone Panel—The new 3-way Color Grading panel upgrades (and replaces) the Split Tone panel. When opening legacy files (or applying legacy presets that contain Split Tone settings), the color tints will be applied in the Color Grading panel (using the Shadows and Highlight color wheels and the Blending slider if necessary) to achieve a perfect match.
Applying Colors—The Default view of the Color Grading panel displays 3 color wheels: one for shadows, midtones, and highlights. Quickly select the desired Hue and Saturation by clicking in a color wheel.
• To limit refinements to the Hue, drag the solid colored dot (handle) on the edge of the wheel or, Command -drag (Mac) | Control -drag (Win) the hollow dot within the color wheel to restrict refinements to Hue.
• To limit refinements to the Saturation, drag the hollow dot within the color wheel (Lightroom displays a soft constraint (spoke) between the center and edge) or, Shift-drag to restrict refinement to Saturation. Dragging the dot far enough away from the initially selected spot will break the constraint and enable you to select a different Hue and Saturation.
• Option -drag (Mac) | Alt -drag (Win) the dot will move it more slowly, enabling finer adjustments to both Hue and Saturation. Note: Fine Adjustment mode does not use the soft-constraint.
The Luminance Slider—Drag the Luminance slider (beneath each color wheel) to darken/lighten each color range. Lightening the Shadows and darkening the highlights enables color to be added to the black and white pixels in an image.
• While Luminance changes can be applied to an image even without applying a color tint, there are more sophisticated controls in the Basic panel for adjusting tones (for example, recovering shadow and highlight information). The Luminance controls are intended to make color grading specific changes and are optimized to adjust the color tinting ranges as changes are made to the Blending and Balance sliders.
The Balance Slider—Use the Balance slider to shift the range of values that define the shadows/midtones/highlights. For example, if you apply a blue tint to the shadows and want that tint to extend farther into the midtones/highlights, move the Balance slider to the left. If you apply a yellow tint to the highlights and want that tint to extend farther into the midtones/shadows, move the Balance slider to the right.
The Blending Sliders—Use the Blending slider to determine the amount of color blending (crossover/overlap) between the tints assigned to the shadows/midtones/highlights. With blending set to 0, there is a small amount over overlap to avoid abrupt transitions but each color should remain “pure”. With the slider set to 100%, the color tints will overlap (crossover) and create additional colors between shadow/midtones, and highlights. Note: Without the blending slider, it would be difficult to control how color is added in the midtones (a lower blending value enables the midtone color to stand on its own).
• Option -drag (Mac) | Alt -drag (Win) the Blending slider to temporarily boost the saturation to 100, allowing you to quickly see how the tints are mixing as you adjust the Blending.
Detail View—To view individual (larger), color wheels, click the Detail icons at the top of the Color Grading panel (or click the “peek-a-boo” color wheels on either side of the panel to move from one color wheel to another).
• You can use the same options for adding color tints as the 3-color view, or use the disclosure triangle to use the Hue and saturation sliders.
• In Detail View, while hovering the mouse over the Color Wheels, hold Option (Mac) | Alt (Win) to adjust the Hue using the left/right arrows.
• In Detail View, while hovering the mouse over the Color Wheels, hold Option (Mac) | Alt (Win) to adjust the Sat using the up/down arrows.
• Small dots are added under each detail icon that has adjustments.
Global Color Slider—Use the Global color wheel to apply a color tint (and adjust luminance values) to an entire image or, to apply a tint in conjunction with three-way adjustments. This can be helpful when you like the effect that you have achieved using the other color wheels, but want to increase/decrease the global Hue/Sat/Luminance.
• The Luminance slider is displayed by default, use the disclosure triangle to view Hue and Sat sliders.
• Click the color swatch to select from the default colors or click -drag with the eyedropper to select a color. Note: the eyedropper is actually recording video when it is selecting a color – this is why (on Mac), Lightroom Classic asks for permission to record video.
• The Blending and Balance sliders have no effect on the toning applied by the Global wheel.
Resetting Color Wheels—Double click within a Color Wheel to reset the Hue and Saturation. Double click on the Luminosity slider to reset it. Double click “Adjust” to reset all sliders. Or, Control -click (Mac) | right -click (Win) on a color wheel and use the context sensitive menu to reset the color wheel you clicked on, reset all three-way color wheels and/or reset all three-way color wheels plus the Global color wheel.
Copy and Paste Color Wheel Settings—Control -click (Mac) | Right -click (Win) on an individual color wheel and use the context sensitive menu to Copy the settings of the clicked wheel or paste settings copied from another wheel. To copy and paste all color grading settings, select Edit > Copy choose Color Grading. Then, move to the desired image and choose Edit > Paste. Settings in the Color Grading panel can also be saved as part of a Preset.
Previewing Changes—Press and hold the eye icon to toggle the visibility of a single Color Wheel. Use the light-switch icon to toggle the visibility of all settings applied in the Color Grading panel.
