Sharing My Editing Process on Lightroom and Photoshop

My latest portrait series on Instagram received a great response and some of you asked me to share the editing process on Lightroom and Photoshop, so here it is!

As the theme and mood of the pictures revolve around ‘Alice in Wonderland’ vibes which is kind of a dark forest-y look, I have named this preset- Nina Explorer.

Nina Myers is the name of the model 🙂

Table Of Contents

Quick Introduction To The Idea

The mood board which I had created before the shoot day with Nina, was all about dark greens, sunlight and moody tones.

I have several Pinterest boards made for different portrait and fashion photography ideas, you can check them out here.

I want some element in the picture that would contrast with the dark surroundings. So, I picked up random vibrant colored and rather unusual items from my house.

First was a blue piece of cloth which I had saved up from a year ago. We received a gift from family friends which was a huge basket covered in this blue fancy looking cloth. Always look out for decorative items on gifts.

The magnifying was a no-brainer actually. You must have seen several portraits with a magnifying glass on Instagram and Pinterest already.

Lastly, the floral jacket that the model is wearing in some of the pictures, is, in fact, a skirt she brought with her. Instead of wearing it, we put it around her shoulders because the red roses on it would bring in more color to the otherwise dark picture.

Also Read: How To Add Rainbow Tears: Picsart Editing Tutorial

sharing my editing process or lightroom and photoshop

Editing Process on Lightroom

The first thing I do after importing a picture in Lightroom is adjust the highlights, whites and blacks. Let me break down the editing process on Lightroom.

Highlights, Whites and Blacks

In this particular picture, I brought down the highlights completely so that the bokeh in the background becomes more prominent.

Brought the blacks to retrieve details from the shadows because this picture was shot under-exposed as I wanted to get fine details.

RGB Curve

Lifted the bottom of the edge slightly for a hint of fade in the picture. The second point from the bottom creates contrast when it is pulled down.

The second point from the top affects the whites in your picture. Whites are basically those parts of your picture which are most lit.

Also Read: How To Do Any Kind Of Color Grading In Lightroom

Color Hues, Saturation and Luminance

RGB curve on lightroom, lightroom editing tutorial, dark moody tones, editing portraits on lightroom, moody tones, lightroom editing, garimashares

As you can see the picture has no actual green color in it. It is quite toned down. And I have turned the blue piece of cloth into another shade that is more of a mixture of aqua and sea green. How did I do that?

RGB curve on lightroom, lightroom editing tutorial, dark moody tones, editing portraits on lightroom, moody tones, lightroom editing, editing process on lightroom, retouching on photoshop, photoshop tutorial — Changes made to desaturate the green color

Split Toning

To put it in the simplest words, split toning is adding colors to the highlights and shadows of your picture. Once you master the technique of identifying which color is more dominant in the highlights/shadows in any picture, it will easier to create similar tones.

Look closely in the picture, the highlights are mainly present in the background and it has a hint of green. The shadows are warmer and have a hint of red to them. And this is exactly what I have done using the sliders, shown below:

RGB curve on lightroom, lightroom editing tutorial, dark moody tones, editing portraits on lightroom,

Camera Calibration

This is where the magic and disasters happen. Even small changes in the sliders of camera calibration can make a huge color difference in the picture.

It took me quite some time to get the hang of it and not go overboard with it while experimenting.

In here, when you move one slider, you have to adjust the others to maintain the balance. For example, when you move the Blue Primary slider to the left, it creates an orange and teal look.

But it also makes your reds, the skin usually look very oddly colored. To fix the skin, you have to adjust the Red Primary and Green Primary as well.

Reaching to the perfect point where the skin looks as close to its real complexion as possible should be the ultimate goal.

camera calibration on lightroom, lightroom editing, lightroom editing tutorial — How I tuned the primary hues for this edit

Moving on to Photoshop

Lightroom is great, truly it is. But don’t limit yourself to it. When you get to compare the finished result from Lightroom and Photoshop, the difference is quite significant.

Limiting your post processing is like baking a delicious cake but not applying any frosting, toppings on it.

For retouching, I have done what I always do and here is the post in which I shared the retouching process:

https://garimashares.com/5-minute-high-end-skin-retouching-tutorial/

If you prefer a video tutorial, here it is