Ever wonder how some photographers get the best and most amazing colors for their photos…especially in the fall? Well, some of that is luck of geographic location (hello beautiful northeast fall colors) but another way to enhance your fall colors is through your editing process. I’ll be the first to tell you that getting your photo correct right out of the camera is really your most important focus while photographing, but editing can enhance what you captured. Today we are going to dive into a quick way to get the best colors for your fall photos.
Enhance colors while editing
The quickest way to enhance the colors in your photos is by using the HSL tab in adobe Lightroom. HSL stands for hue, saturation, and luminance. Using these three sliders can work wonders on your photos and in your editing techniques. For years I simply left this part of my editing process alone, but controlling specific colors and tones in your photos can bring your imagery from flat to amazing. In the video below I show you how to quickly change the photo using the color mixer (your HSL tab) in Adobe LR. Hint: you can do the same thing using Lr on your phone!
Lightroom Color mixer/HSL tab
HSL/Color on LrC and color mixer on Lr are exactly the same thing. Why they chose to call them by different names is a very good question to bring up to Adobe. After years of teaching one method (Lightroom) and regularly using the other (Lightroom Classic) I get annoyed by things that don’t cross over from one program to the other. Especially silly things like keyboard shortcuts that have cut hours off my editing but I have to learn new ones when teaching my students. I talk much more about the differences between Lr and LrC in this blog post—especially why I teach one program and use the other professionally. The color mixer is located under the editing tab in LR and looks like this image to the left.
Are You going to try the color mixer or HSL tab?
I’ve shown you how easy it is to enhance your photos quickly so you can get the best colors for your fall photos. It truly is this simple and allows you to bring out specific tones, colors, or hues. Be sure to really play around with the sliders to make the image your own. I usually suggest making smaller changes at first so the photos don’t look overdone, but that is my personal preference and obviously you can do whatever you want with your editing style and technique. Trying out a few different options always allows you to change between different edits and find the ones that really speaks to your work and your personal style. You’ll never know until you try!