Lightroom editing, color grading & visual storytelling

Lightroom editing, color grading & visual storytelling — by Alex Rowe

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Stop Guessing at White Balance - Use Color Theory Instead
Video Tutorials

Stop Guessing at White Balance - Use Color Theory Instead

There’s a specific kind of frustration that hits when you’re staring at a cityscape shot at night and you know something looks wrong, but you can’t quite name it. The white balance is off, sure. But which direction? Too warm? Too green? You drag a slider, it gets worse, you drag it back, now you’ve wasted ten minutes and you’re no closer to a fix. That used to be me - especially shooting in mixed artificial light where the camera’s auto white balance essentially throws up its hands.

From Flat to Dramatic: How to Post-Process HDR Panoramas in Lightroom
Video Tutorials

From Flat to Dramatic: How to Post-Process HDR Panoramas in Lightroom

There’s a specific kind of disappointment that hits when you’re standing somewhere genuinely stunning, you nail the exposure bracketing, stitch the panorama, and then open it in Lightroom to find something that looks like a beige rectangle. I’ve been there more times than I want to admit. The camera captures data, not drama, and the gap between what you saw and what the file shows is exactly where post-processing lives.

Flat to Filmic: How to Edit a Dramatic Black & White Portrait in Lightroom
Video Tutorials

Flat to Filmic: How to Edit a Dramatic Black & White Portrait in Lightroom

Black and white portrait editing is one of those things that looks simple until you try it. You desaturate, you squint at the screen, and you end up with something that looks like a DMV photo with the color stripped out. Flat, gray, lifeless. The problem isn’t the subject and it usually isn’t the light. It’s that most people stop after clicking the black and white button and call it done.

Why Your Exported Photos Look Nothing Like What You Edited in Lightroom
Tutorials

Why Your Exported Photos Look Nothing Like What You Edited in Lightroom

I sent a gallery to a client last spring and got a message back within twenty minutes: “These look kind of washed out? The colors seem off.” I opened the exported files on my phone. She was right. The warm, golden-hour tones I’d spent an hour coaxing out of a flat RAW file had turned into something that looked like it was shot through a dirty window. The edit was fine.

You Can Actually Clone Objects in Lightroom. Here's How It Works.
Video Tutorials

You Can Actually Clone Objects in Lightroom. Here's How It Works.

My default assumption for years was simple: if something needs to be cloned or duplicated in a photo, you open Photoshop. Full stop. Lightroom handles the global stuff, the color, the light, the tone, and then you kick it over to Photoshop when the real surgery starts. That workflow isn’t wrong, but it has a cost. Every round-trip to Photoshop adds friction, adds file size, and pulls you out of the editing headspace you were in.

How to Create a Cinematic Golden Portrait in Photoshop (Dodge, Burn, and Color Grade Like a Pro)
Video Tutorials

How to Create a Cinematic Golden Portrait in Photoshop (Dodge, Burn, and Color Grade Like a Pro)

Client headshots have a way of exposing every gap in your retouching workflow. I found this out the hard way editing press shots for my old band, squinting at a laptop screen, trying to figure out why the skin tones looked like a wax museum exhibit. Good portrait editing is not just about fixing problems. It is about building something that feels intentional, like the light was always supposed to fall that way.

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