For this project I needed to choose a digital skill to learn or expand. I chose color grading, this is using digital tools to make your photos look better. I already had a bunch of old raw (unedited) concert photos which I wanted to edit but never actually got the time to learn and do so. So I decided to learn Lightroom while editing these pictures. I challanged myself by using only Lightroom (so no removing stuff in the background with Photoshop) so I could really figure out all it has to offer.
Adjusting the skin color
During concerts the lighting used can make your pictures look different than what you had imagined. Here you can see that the left picture has a more green tone to it because of the lighting during the concert. By using colors on the opposite side of the color wheel (in this instance magenta) you can cancel those weird/unwanted colors out and have a more natural result like in the picture on the right.
Overlit pictures
Sometimes the lighting is so bright it makes your photos look like it's misty like the one on the left. To fix this problem I darkened the whole photo and separated the subject to lighten it up a bit and then fixed the colors. This can be a bit finicky because the original colors are undersaturated and you don't want them to be too oversaturated in the final picture.
Black and white
If you put a black and white filter over your pictures in Lightroom they won't always turn out the way you want. You can lose details you like. To fix this you can play with the highlights and shadows to try and get those details back. Adding more contrast also works wonders.
Photos by:
- Veerle van Meer
Artists:
- Babymetal
- Lovejoy
