Color Theory that Photographers Need to Know.

color is probably the thing that I spend the most time on when I'm editing my photos I've stared at images for 5 6 7 hours dialing in the colors trying to get them perfect and the reason why I spend so much time doing this is because color can have a massive impact on our photo not just the aesthetic but perhaps more importantly the mood or the story or the feeling that we're trying to express in that image now I also think color is one of those things that's a little bit difficult to master especially in

the editing phase where we really dial in and shift those colors to get them to look how we want so today in this video I want to do a deep dive into color theory in photography talk about how we can harness and shape and manipulate colors to tell a deeper story in our photography and also give you guys some key editing tips for Lightroom as well now before we jump into it I have a free preset pack which is six of my favorite presets I'll put a link down in the description and I hope you

guys enjoy that and also I have a brand new Lightroom course coming out so all the things that we're going to talk about today in this video I Really expand upon in this course and if you're signed up to my email list you'll know all about that once it's released but if you're watching this video at a later date I will put a link down in the description and I hope you guys enjoy that as well now I want to start off this video with talking about some of the foundational principles of color that you

need to understand as a photographer and we're going to start off with the anatomy of color now the anatomy of color is essentially what color is comprised of and it's comprised of three different things Hue saturation and luminance now Hue is essentially just the actual color that you're working with so whether that's green blue yellow orange pink purple whatever that would be the Hue of a color now saturation is essentially the purity of that color or the intensity of a color so if you have a more saturated color that would be a purer form of

that Hue or stronger or more intense whereas if you desaturate that color it's going to become a little bit more muted a little bit softer and not as pure and the third principle is luminance or the brightness of that color so if you take a color and you add white to it it's going to get brighter and it's also going to get less saturated as you increase the luminance value of that color and on the flip side of that if you add black to it that color is going to get darker and it's also going

to get more saturated as well and that's exactly why when we're editing and we enhance the contrast in our image often times the color gets more saturated in that image as well so that's the basic anatomy of color and the reason why I want to start with that in this video is because we can actually edit all three of these things in Lightroom or in any photo editing software for that matter we can independently adjust the Hue saturation and luminance of each color in our editing software and we're going to talk a little bit more

about that later on in this video now I also want to talk about temper temper here as well because temperature is pretty foundational when it comes to color theory in photography and temperature refers to whether colors are cooler or warmer so warmer colors would be more on the orange or the yellow side and cooler colors would be more on the blue or the purple side and adjusting the temperature in our photo can have massive massive impacts on the way our photos look and the way our photos feel and we're going to talk about that a

little bit later on in this video as well now I think it's also worth making a note about color space as well which for digital photography is RGB and RGB is ESS enally just a color model where our cameras capture red green and blue light and combine them to reproduce a broad range of colors and when you're editing in Lightroom you'll see that red green and blue in the color correction as well as in the tone curve are the three main colors represented because those are the primary colors in that image and all the other

colors that you see are just combinations of red green and blue in that photo now that's kind of one of those things that's good to know but not totally essential to know but one thing that is essential to know is that within RGB there are multiple different color spaces that we can use with the two most popular ones being Adobe RGB and srgb now Adobe RGB has a wider color gamut you can actually capture more colors when you're shooting and you're editing in Adobe RGB but the problem with Adobe RGB is it's not compatible with

most of the computers around the world srgb was designed specifically for screens and for digital photos and printing as well so if you do want to have the most compatible photos for pretty much everywhere that you're going to share these images make sure you shoot and you edit in the srgb color space your camera should be automatically set to srgb but when you're exporting your photos make sure you set that to srgb as well and if you don't do this and you upload your photos online your colors and your contrast might look super wonky and

weird and that's because when you upload an adobe RGB photo onto the internet it automatically converts it into an srgb file and it kind of ruins the process so we want to have control over that make sure you're shooting and exporting an srgb and you'll be good to go but now that we've talked about some of the more foundational things with color I want to dig a little bit deeper and talk about the psychology of color and how we can shape and manipulate the color in our images to tell a much more meaningful story and

I have plenty of examples to show you guys as well now first and foremost I think most of us know that color is highly highly associated with emotion and this is going to depend largely on your cultural background and where you're from and your life experiences but generally speaking this is true for the majority of people out there when you see these colors you'll feel something similar to these emotions now I'm not going to sit here and list off all the emotions that are associated with these colors but I'll put them up on the screen

here and I think you guys kind of grasp this idea already I'm sure most of you guys know that green is associated with nature or with wealth or with trust and we know that blue is very natural and very calming and we also know that warmer colors are more Fierce or more energetic or stronger now there's a lot of other emotions that you can associate with these colors as well but why this is so important for us to grasp as photographers is because we can really manipulate and enhance certain colors to express much stronger emotion

in our photo so for example let's take a look at a warm Sunset we can really lean into that Sunset and pull those colors out and enhance them in order to really emphasize that warm powerful or a dramatic Sunset like I do here with the temperature sliders or if we have a photo that has kind of that nostalgic Vibe we can really lean into that nostalgic Vibe by adding warmer tones using the color grading panel to really emphasize that kind of vintage nostalgic old school look in that photo or if we have a shot that's

kind of Moody and solemn to begin with we can really lean into those cooler or blue tones to really emphasize those feelings of isolation or moodiness or solemnness that you see in that image so essentially we're manipulating these colors yes to make the image look better and just look more aesthetic but more importantly we're using that color to express a much stronger story or emotion in our image but the aesthetic of those colors is super important as well we cannot ignore it and there's one more thing that we really need to pay attention to when

we're Ting our colors and that is color Harmony now color Harmony is essentially the relationship between colors and how they appear to us aesthetically as humans and some colors just look really really nice together for example blue and orange or red and green or yellow and purple now I can sit here and explain color Harmony to you guys but I would so much rather show you so let's jump on the computer and we'll take a look at a color wheel and take a look at some of the different color harmonies that are available to us

as photographers so this is Adobe color and this is a really amazing way for us to visualize the various color harmonies on a color wheel so this color wheel here represents all the different colors available to us in the RGB color mode and as you can see I can move the points around and I can drag it towards the middle which is white or drag it out and kind of move these around to get just different color palettes you can play around with it it's it's pretty interesting and pretty fun but if you look over

here on the left hand side you'll see color Harmony here and you'll see a drop down menu with many different types of color Harmony that we see uh with color now there's three main ones that we come across with photography those are analogous monochromatic and complimentary so let's start up at the top with analogous here and analogous color essentially refers to three or more Hues that are equally fanned out from a middle color so they're kind of equally divided here based on that middle color here which is orange so as you can see if I

select orange there it's kind of in the range of yellows to to Reds and oranges and if I go to Blue same kind of thing purple to kind of Cen with a deep blue in the middle and analogous color schemes are often found in nature you'll see it in things like sunsets in forest in bodies of water or like in this photo that I shot in kintamani in Bali at Sunrise we definitely have more of an analogous color scheme with these deep blues greens and golds in this image or in this photo that I also

shot here in Bali with the light Ray spilling over the road which is primarily greens yellows and oranges kind of all of differing luminance values now I use an analogous color scheme quite a bit in my photography but the one I use even more more is monochromatic and if we come over here to the drop down menu we can select monochromatic and monochromatic is essentially one Hue with differing ranges of luminance or brightness so you can see here if I have blue selected it's going to be the same Hue just differing brightness levels of that

Hue same thing if I drag it up here to Yellow you can see we have a brighter yellow fading all the way into black there in the middle and this is also often found in nature think of a really cool or really warm place like a sun Sunset the ocean or blue hour and I use this a lot in my photography because it allows us to really lean into one key color and really capture the emotions and the psychology behind that specific color so for example I use this most often in Sunset or Sunrise situations

where the temperature is naturally skewed to begin with like in this photo that I shot of my friend on the California coast which is dramatically warm I really wanted to enhance that warmth and just focusing on really bringing out those warm Orange tones or this photo that I shot at Morrow Bay at Sunset which just has different luminance values of these kind of pink or warm tones another example is the sunrise shot in Bali where I really wanted to emphasize that cool steamy morning jungle so I really leaned into those blues and pulled them out

of the image uh and I love the way this image came out all of these images essentially have one main key color and just different luminance values of that color now I also like to use this where I just really want one specific color to shine through like in this photo that I shot of Kelsey and Bali where I really wanted to emphasize those Cool Blues so I really leaned into the Blues in this image and yes Kelsey is a little bit orange but I think for the most part the rest of the image is

quite monochromatic and blue is very dominant in this image uh as well as this shot of my friend Mike in madira where I really wanted the cool tones to kind of bring down the image and make that image look super moody now these are actually two of the photos that I edit in my Lightroom course as well so be sure to check that out I'll put a link down in the description now the last form of color Harmony here that I want to talk about is complimentary colors now complimentary colors refer to colors that are

opposite of each other on the color wheel and you guys might have heard of this before because complimentary colors are generally welln I'd say and they're also very naturally occurring for example you might see them between a blue sky and a warm beach or a red flower set against its green stem and there's also some very popular complimentary color combinations um that you see in cinema for example the main one being orange and teal or CN and orange like this here um the reason why this is so popular is because the orange looks great in

skin tones uh in the blue in the background or in the shadows really kind of helps complement those warm skin tones now complimentary colors also introduce color contrast into our images or the differences between the colors in our photos and this not only adds a ton of visual interest to our photos but it also just makes those colors look more visually appealing as well and when I'm editing an image and I have multiple colors that I'm working with I am almost always trying to shift those colors to make them look more complimentary now sometimes the

colors in your image might be naturally complimentary but they might require just a little bit of attention to get them dialed in to really make them shine and sometimes that's as easy as just sliding one of the Hue sliders to pull the colors apart a little bit like in this image where I draged the orange Hue slider to the left to make it slightly more of an orange or pinkish color which compliments the greens and the blue sky much better than the yellow like it was before and sometimes achieving those complimentary colors is going to

be a little bit more of an involved process like in this image where I added a linear gradient mask over the foreground and then I added some warmth into that part of the image using the temperature sliders to kind of balance out the sky or in this photo where I really enhanced and dialed in those deep blues using the masking tools to complement the warmth of Kelsey's skin but complimentary colors really can have a profound impact on our work as well as color Harmony in general so I recommend you guys come on here and play

around with it a little bit like I said analogous monochromatic and complimentary are the three main ones but you have other ones here as well that you can try out um and it's just really interesting to see the different color combinations now you can also extract a theme from an image so if you come here to extract theme and you upload a photo you can see Adobe color just pulls the colors out of that image you can also move the points around a little bit so super interesting to it to play around with um and

if you really do want to get better at editing color I think just playing around with it can actually help a lot cuz it kind of gives you a better idea of what colors actually look good together now color Harmony is one of those things that can be a little bit difficult to to grasp and get your head around but the more you're shooting and your editing the better you're just going to kind of get a feel for it and you'll kind of start to learn what colors look good together and you'll learn what combinations

that you want to use the most but I also think it's really important for us to have a good understanding of how to actually edit color in Lightroom to begin with because maybe we know that these colors look good together or we know the colors that we want in our image but we don't necessarily know how to get that look in our photo so with that said now I want to cover some key Lightroom color editing tips that you guys can use when you're editing your photos in Lightroom that sounds great Sean but can we

please take a break take a break who said that it's me idiot your camera um okay we're almost done can we just bust it out real quick honestly your mustache is exhausting to look at I said I need a break okay uh yeah let's take five and um in the meantime I'll tell you guys about the sponsor of today's video motion array because believe it or not my camera can't talk unfortunately but with motion array's new AI voiceover feature you can bring anything to life with motion array's new AI voiceover feature you can easily convert

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you so much motionr for sponsoring this video now let's get into some color editing tips now the first tip I want to talk about here is more of a broader approach to editing color and not a specific technique or Lightroom tip and we will get into that in a bit here but I want to start off with this because one of the things that I hear most from beginner photographers is they open up a photo and they just don't know where to start especially in terms with editing that color and I think the most important

question that you can ask yourself when you're editing a photo is how do I want this photo to look yes number one but more importantly how do I want my photo to feel and then look at the colors that are in that image and think about how you can accentuate enhance or desaturate certain colors to really get that mood across in your photo and this is hands down the first thing I do when I go in edit a photo is I look at the colors and I think about how I can manip at them and

shape them to tell a more meaningful story in my photo cuz at the end of the day yes the Aesthetics are important but the story is much more important so for example if I open up a photo in Lightroom and it's a warm Sunset you bet your ass I am leaning into that Sunset and really pulling out those warm tones to enhance this really dramatic strong or warm Sunset and the same goes for kind of a solemn or Moody day I'm going to pull out some of those warmer colors and really emphasize the cooler colors

to make sure that I'm really expressing this kind of is ated or solemn or lonely vibe in that photo now this image that I shot in the small town of Stow Vermont is a really really great example of that because when I was there I remember this place being super warm I mean the leaves were on fire all I could see was orange and yellow and red and pink and when I went in to edit this photo it looked nothing like that it looked so incredibly flat so I thought to myself okay what can I

do to this image to enhance this scene to make it that cozy warm vibe that I witnessed when was there so I really took the time to really pull those colors back out of the image using the hsl sliders and the color grading panel as well as the DEH sliders which helped kind of cut through that Haze over the lake and really bring those colors out so so I really wanted to capture this kind of cozy warm Autumn Vibe and before I started editing any of the color I knew that that's the look that I

wanted to capture and I really like to do this with a lot of my images instead of just throwing Colors Over the image that I think might look good I start with how I want that image to make me feel and also how I remembered it being in that scene and then I really pull those colors out and I do this with a lot of my images like this photo of a surfer that I shot on the coast of France really leaning into those warm tones or this image from a sunrise in California where I

really enhanced the color in the sky and in the foreground to really let those colors carry the story and the aesthetic of the image I added warmth to the foreground and I really tried to bring out those pinks and those purples and Blues in the sky now regarding specific color editing Tools in Lightroom tip number two is that there's no right or wrong way to achieve a certain look but there are many different ways to achieve the same look in Lightroom now there are many different tools that we have available to us to edit color

in Lightroom we have the hsl sliders we have the tone curve we have the point color feature we have the temperature adjustment sliders we have the color calibration the color grading panel and even contrast adjustments are going to affect the color in your image and some images are going to be super easy to edit and you might only need to adjust the temperature The Tint sliders and the Vibrance and saturation Sliders in the basic adjustments panel to get the look that you want like I did with this photo that I shot in Morrow Bay at

Sunset I really didn't do a whole lot of manipulation to the colors in any other color editing features besides the basic adjustments because I already like the colors that were in that scene and this was enough for this particular photo but with other images that are a little bit more difficult to edit you might have to use all of these tools to get the look that you want in that photo and if I had one piece of advice for you when you're trying to edit color and you're having a little bit of a hard time

doing so is to just work your way through each of the tools and experiment with all the different tools that you have available so for example go to the hsl sliders and slide each slider all the way to the left and all the way to the right and look at how that's affecting your image and do the same with the color grinding panel and do the same with the temperature sliders really no image is the same and sometimes I'm doing all of these adjustments in the basic adjustments panel and sometimes I'm really bringing the image

to life using the color grading panel so each photo is different there's no right way to achieve a certain look just test out all the different color editing tools that you have available and eventually you'll find the right one that gives you the look that you want but of course you're going to be much better off if you actually understand how all of these tools work and I could sit here and tell you about it but it would be an hourong video and that's why I spend so much time discussing all these different color editing

Tools in my upcoming Lightroom class but if you guys do want more technical Lightroom editing breakdowns let me know in the comments down below and I will definitely add that to the content list but there are a few color editing Tools in particular that I think are super super important for us in editing color in Lightroom and I think they're really underutilized as well so let's talk about those now now the first one is the color grading panel and I've already mentioned this throughout this video a little bit here and there but the color gring

panel is massively powerful for us as photographers because it allows us to add colors into specific tonal ranges of our image and we can be very specific with the color that we want to add into our photo and a lot of the time instead of using the temperature sliders to make my image warmer or cooler I'll do that in the color grading panel cuz I have so much more control as to where I want that color to affect whether it's the Shadows the highlights or the midtones and I can choose a very specific color instead

of just orange and blue like you get in the temperature adjustments the color grading panel really does allow us to add so much color depth into our image I think it's underutilized and it's a tool that you should definitely be playing around with because I think it's helped me take a lot of my images that were originally a little bit boring and really spice them up and add a lot of emotion and drama to those images now the other color editing tool that I think is massively underutilized by photographers in the editing phase are the

masking tools and I talked about this a little bit in my last video but the masking tools give us so much creative control over the colors in our image we can really add specific colors to very specific parts of our image we can do that with the radial adjustments the linear adjustments we can use the color or the luminance range masks and and I use the masking features like crazy when I'm editing color for example back to that image of California at Sunrise here's the image without the masks turned on and here is the image

with the mask turned on and it really makes this photo and to do this all I did was selected the sky and enhanced The Tint saturation and I also reduced the highlights a little bit to make the colors pop a little bit more and I also use a luminance range mask to select the shadows in this image where I added some warmth to complement the cooler colors in the sky and another example is this photo that I shot in Italy I used a color range mask to select the warmer parts of the image and then

I increased the warmth even more to really emphasize the complimentary relationship between the blues and the oranges in this photo I also brought down the whites a little bit to kind of flatten out the image a little bit and give it kind of a nostalgic film Vibe now most of the time when I'm editing color with the masking tools honestly I'm only selecting a certain part of the image and then I'm adjusting the temperature The Tint uh the saturation and maybe the luminance values a little bit but that's pretty much it I veryy rarely do

more adjustments than that but if you do need to be more specific with the color you can use the Hue adjustment or you can use the point color feature which gives you crazy amounts of control over editing colors in very specific parts of your photo one tool that you had to use to edit color in your images I would probably say it's the masking tools because we have so much creative control over very specific parts of our image and it makes it a lot easier for us to isolate certain colors and saturate or desaturate certain

colors to achieve better color Harmony in our photos but there is one more color editing tip that I want you guys to take away from this video and that is to take breaks color fatigue is real and when you're staring at a photo and you're editing it for so long those colors might look good to you but if you take a break and come back I almost guarantee you they're going to look super weird and funky so definitely take breaks I very very rarely edit the color in a photo in one go I often start

an image I'll get the colors to a point where I think they look good then I'll take a break and I'll come back and they never look good so it's really important to take breaks cuz your eyes get a little bit tired and you start to get a little bit color blind in a way so it definitely take breaks when you're editing color in particular sometimes it'll take me five or six editing rounds to really nail the colors in that image um to get it to the final image that I end up sharing online or

printing but learning to see and work with color can be a little bit of a daunting task I understand I had really struggled with it when I was starting out as a photographer but now I think it's probably one of the most defining features of my work and like I said at the beginning of this video I probably spend the most time editing color in my images so I really hope this video kind of gave you guys a general idea or at least shed some insight into how I particularly approach color when I'm editing my

images and and I hope it gives you kind of a mental workflow that you can follow when you're editing color in your photos but I really really hope that it was helpful for you guys and if you guys do want to see more editing videos on Lightroom or just editing in general let me know in the comments down below uh I really do enjoy making these editing videos because it's a massive part of the photography process and I think it's super super important so thank you guys so much for watching to the end and thank

you once again motion for sponsoring this video I will see you guys in the next video very version [Music]