2 A few initial Basic panel edits were applied in this step. This included setting the Highlights slider to -100 and the Shadows slider to +100 to enhance the detail in the highlights and the shadows.
1 There were a lot of colorful elements in the original raw capture. The exposure was spot-on, but more needed to be done in postprocessing to enhance the color.
Photograph © Ansell Cizic
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3 In this step, a +20 Clarity adjustment added more midtone contrast and a +85 Vibrance adjustment boosted the color, but without letting the already saturated colors clip.
4 A Radial Filter adjustment was then added, set to Outside mode. The Exposure slider was set to -0.30 to darken the area outside the Radial Filter selection. The Tint slider was set to -28 to apply a slight green tint to emphasize the foliage colors.
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5 Here is the final version, where the Clone Stamp tool and Healing brush were used to fill in the top-right and bottom-right corners. This picture, a photograph of Sue Kreitzman, was photographed by Ansell Cizic for his series of portraits of artisans and artists of the East End. Kreitzman, a native New Yorker and former food writer, now lives and works as an artist in London.
Photograph © Ansell Cizic
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HSL/COLOR/B&W PANEL
The HSL/Color/B&W panel (Figure 3.12) can be used in HSL mode to apply color-selective hue, saturation, or luminance adjustments to color images. The Color mode allows you to do just the same, except with a slightly different interface, while the B&W mode can be used to convert a color image to black and white and adjust the tone brightness of the color components that make up a black-and-white conver- sion. Figure 3.12 shows the HSL panel controls in All mode where the Hue, Satura- tion, and Luminance slider controls are all accessible at once. Figure 3.13 shows the HSL controls with the Luminance mode selected.
You will notice that the eight color slider controls include Orange, Aqua, and Purple sliders. The reasoning behind this is that the slider colors listed here more typically reflect the color ranges most photographers are actually interested in edit- ing, as opposed to the usual list of Red, Green, Blue, Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow controls you will find in the Photoshop Hue/Saturation image adjustment dialog.
The Hue sliders can be used to modify the hue values for the Red, Orange, and Yellow colors and others. There aren’t too many applications for this type of adjust- ment unless you wish to deliberately change the hue for specific colors in an image or there is a problem with the spectral response of the camera sensor. For example, the sensors in older digital cameras had the tendency to give Caucasian skin tones a California suntan look. Such images can be improved by selecting the Orange Hue slider and dragging it to the right to make orange colors a little more yellow.
The Saturation sliders let you modify the saturation of the target colors, thereby allowing you to selectively boost or lower the saturation for specific colors.
In my view, the Luminance sliders are the most useful of all because they can be used to modify the luminance of the selected target colors to make them appear lighter or darker. The following step-by-step example shows the dramatic effect HSL Luminance slider adjustments can have on an image. When you click on the little button icon in the top-left corner to activate the Target Adjustment tool (see Step 3), you can move the tool cursor over the image and modify the values for the target colors below where you click and drag. Dragging upward increases the setting value, while dragging downward decreases it. When you do this, Lightroom selects a princi- pal and secondary color slider and adjusts both as you drag. In the following tutorial, you will see I targeted the blue sky and dragged the cursor downward: this adjusted mainly the Blue but also the Aqua slider. In this particular example, the effect is similar to placing an adjustable polarizing filter over the lens. However, adjusting the image digitally is not the same as doing it in-camera, and you may sometimes see halos appearing around the edges where there are contrasting colors. It can look worse onscreen than it will in print, but, still, this highlights the deficiencies of trying to do too much at the postproduction stage.
FIGURE 3.12 The HSL/Color/B&W panel in HSL All mode.
FIGURE 3.13 The HSL/Color/B&W panel in HSL Luminance mode.
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1 Here is a raw image before any Develop settings had been applied.
2 In this step, I set White Bal- ance to the Daylight setting and adjusted the Tone sliders to opti- mize the image. I also boosted the Clarity and Vibrance settings.
Modifying the color using HSL adjustments
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3 I then went to the HSL/Color/
B&W panel, where I selected the Luminance tab and Target Adjust- ment Tool (circled) and dragged downward on the sky area to selectively darken the target colors: in this case the Aqua and Blue sliders.
4 I kept the Target Adjust- ment tool active and clicked on the houseboats to modify the luminance values there, making Red and Orange lighter. Finally, I selected the Saturation tab and dragged on the image to selec- tively boost the color saturation for Red, Orange, and Yellow.
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