Editing Dark and Moody Photos in Adobe Lightroom

1. Introduction: Hey, how's it going? My name is Jake carbon era and I am a photographer, filmmaker, and creator based out of the Chicagoland area. Today we are talking about editing dark and moody photos and Adobe Lightroom. This class is designed for photographers of all levels who want to improve on their editing skills. If you're already an experienced photo editor, you may find some new tricks in here, so I'd highly recommend sticking around. We will be going over my personal editing process, tips and tricks in Lightroom and how to achieve that dark and moody look, I will be guiding you step-by-step along the way. And there is a class project, so I'd recommend checking that out down below in the projects and resources tab. With that being said, let's jump in the first lesson. 2. Lesson 01: Choosing The Right Photo: First let's talk about what makes a photo dark and moody. Typically the photo has lots of contrasts, dark shadows, and muted highlights. Usually there are colors such as deep orange, deep greens, blues deals. But basically any color would work when it comes to dark and moody photos, you want to first pick a photo best represents that kind of style. For instance, you could pick a photo that has leading lines, depth of field, lots of movement, maybe no movement at all. Something that looks interesting. It really comes down to the editing process that makes a photo dark and moody. And that's what we're gonna talk about today in this class, we will be working with this photo. This was taking a Manhattan in New York City and I chose this photo because of the leading lines, the depth of field, the movement of the oncoming cars which are the subjects, and the fact that it was taking it in an urban environment. Now let's talk about exposure. I took this photo on my A7 3 with a sigma 24 to 72.8 lens. The settings I used where ISO before F2.8 and one over 400 shutter speed. And I purposely underexposed the image just slightly just to make sure that it kept the details in the sky. I didn't want this guy to be blown out because it would be really difficult to retain that detail. And as well as I didn't want the shadows to be too dark, so I kept it in like a middle ground, speaking of which, let's get started with editing this photo. 3. Lesson 02: Composition: First things first, let's talk about composition because it is an important piece of editing any photo composition is how you arrange various elements and your frame. Typically, the rule of thirds is used to compose your photo. And this photo, we have a horizon line that we have to make sure straight. Let's fix that right now. So we're gonna go to the crop tool right here. Click on it and we can just hit Auto. See what that does. Looks like it did strain it out. We're also going to change the aspect ratio of the photo for Instagram. So we're gonna go over here where it says aspect. Click in that blank space right there. Go to a four by five slash eight by 10. We're going to crop it down right here. I'm putting the horizon line directly in the middle of the photo because I want the buildings and the sky to be balanced with the street. So we're going to hit Enter when it comes to architecture photography, wide lenses typically make the buildings look like they're bulging in Word. So to correct that, we're gonna go down to Lens Corrections right here. And we're going to click on Enable Profile Corrections. What that's gonna do is flatten the image so the lines of the buildings are completely straight and curved. So I'm going to toggle on and off the before and after. So you'd see, you can see it the most and the corners here. So now this is completely straight all throughout the whole photo. In the next lesson we're going to talk about basic corrections. 4. Lesson 03: Basic Corrections: I use the basic corrections section to make some adjustments to the photo as well as profit for the rest of the things I'm gonna do to it. Let's start by dropping down the exposure a bit right there. That's good. We're going to increase the contrast on and contrast is key when editing dark and moody photos. So we're going to bump that up a little more. Right there is good. I want to fix the sky because it's a little bit blown out. I wanted to show more detail in it. So I'm going to go over to the highlights and drop it down. Cool, looks great. Then we will bring up the shadows a bit to show more detail and the darker parts of the image. So let's go to shadows. Bring that right there is good and we're going to decrease the white submit to give the image more of a matte finish. There should be good. We're going to go down the vibrance and bring that down a bit. I always like to use vibrance over saturation because saturation takes out all the colors evenly down or up. Vibrance just takes the most saturated colors in the photo, keeps it at the level it's at relatively, and brings down the rest of the colors that aren't as prominent as the more saturated colors. Cool. So this is looking good so far, what we're gonna do now is change the white balance, the cloudy. Give it a little bit more warmth and they're sweet. This is looking good so far. So in the next lesson we're going to talk about the tone curve and how we can get more contrasts with it. And I'll show you a really cool tip with it. 5. Lesson 04: Tone Curve: Using the tone curve is another way of adjusting the contrast and brightness of the image, as well as color grade within it. For today's class, we're just going to use a tone curve to adjust the contrast and give the color is more of a pop. Alright, so we're gonna go down to the tone curve now and go to the red channel. Make an S curve. Just like this. And what you wanna do is right-click on it. Go to Copy Channel Settings. Go to the green channel, right-click on the grid and hit Paste Channel Settings. And then do the same thing for the blue channel. So now the photos looking really dark, there's a lot of contrast. But what we're gonna do is go back to the point curve, the gray circle right there. And we're going to bring up the shadows and highlights a bit. From here. What we can do is go back up to the basic corrections, drop-down that contrast just a little bit. Maybe bring up the shadows. We're going to bring down the exposure, bring down the whites a bit. And we're also going to bring up the blacks. What you wanna do is have some sort of balance between the tone curve and the basic corrections to make sure that everything in the photo looks good. Okay, so now the photo is showing lots of contrast. It has a good punchy field to it. The colors are popping and everything is exposed to where it's supposed to be. In the next lesson, we're going to talk about color and using the HSL and color grading tools. 6. Lesson 05: Color: Something I like to do before adjusting the color is to pay attention to what the colors are in the photo. So I see lots of reds, oranges, and not that many cool colors like green or blue. So what I think is best to do in this photo is to keep it on the warm side. Use basically only warm tones and mute out the cool colors, the skies a little blue. So what we're gonna do is make it a little bit more of a pale blue. The only greens I see in the photo are from the trees and the leaves at the very bottom of the photo. So what we're going to do is make it like a deep green and make the orange and reds and yellows really pop. So what we're gonna do is go down to L tabs and we're gonna kinda just mess around with the colors, see what we can come up with. So the reds, I want to be a little bit more orange, so I'm going to bring it over here. Bring it up a bit. Okay, So next we have orange. I like that. Keep the orange a little bit more towards the left to make him more like a deep orange. And we're going to bring up the saturation on that to maybe a little bit more. So on the yellows and the photo looks like it's mostly on this on these buildings on the left here. We're going to make them more on the orange side. Just like that. We're going to bring it down. Let's see how far we can take it. Called. That looks good. All right, so we're going to mess with the cool colors now. We have grains, but it looks like the trees are already pretty, pretty dark. It looks like the yellows took care of that a bit. So we're going to drop it down like that. Got some green up here, got some green in the trees. So what we're gonna do is shift the hue over to around halfway. Plus 50 is good. And we're going to drop that saturation all the way. And we're gonna go down to UCLA. I don't think there's going to be much of it. And here, I like to go back and forth on the saturation just to see if it's affected at all. So it doesn't look like it is. I'm just going to drop down the saturation. All right, so for the blues, looks like it's just a sky. So I'm going to put it to minus 100 and I'm going to slowly bring it up till, and I think it looks good. Yeah, around there's good. And for purple and magenta is, I don't really see much going on with those colors in here. So what we'll do is just bring him down all the way. Great. So I'm going to turn on and off the HSL tab to see how it looks. Great. So it's coming together pretty well with the color. So we're gonna go a little bit deeper into it. We're gonna go down to the color grading section, and let's go to shadows. We're going to put some blues and the shadows just to give the darker parts of the image a little bit more of like a deeper blue tint to it. So I like to go to 220. That's usually a pretty safe bet for darker shadows. Sweet. So that looks pretty good. What we're gonna do last for color is go down to the color calibration. This stuff is optional. Not every Lightroom application has it. It's only on Lightroom Classic. So Lightroom CC and CC mobile will not happen. But basically what color calibration does as fine tunes the colors in your photos. So what we're gonna do is kinda mess around with it. We're gonna go down to the blue primary and we're going to bump up the saturation of this makes the colors really pop in the photo. And we're going to drop down a hue a little bit to the left to bring out the teal and orange kind of vibe to it, but not too much, just a little hint of it. I like to work backwards. So we're gonna go back to green. We're going to see what this does over here. Right there looks good. I bump up the saturation a bit and then we're going to go to the red primary. Bring that down. Okay, So that looks good. And the final lesson, we're going to talk about the final touches that we can make to this photo to really bring it to life. 7. Lesson 06: Final Touches: There are still a few things that we can do to this photo that will give it that dark and moody feel just by making a quick couple adjustments, what we will do first is add a vignette. So we're going to scroll down to the Effects tab. And we're going to move the vignette over to the left dot right here is good. And we're going to bring in the mid point a little bit on it, just to really bring in that vignette deep into the photo. Great, Thanks, awesome. So next we're going to use the adjustment brush and paint over the street and the buildings to make those sections pop in the photo. So we're gonna go over to the adjustment brush right here. And then we're going to bring up the exposure a bit. And the clarity. And what we're gonna do is paint on the street. Just like this. This will help brighten up the street because everything else is kinda dark. So we're also going to paint on the sides of the building where it's white. Just like this. We're going to go over here just to highlight those sides of the buildings. And then we're gonna go over here. Just like that. So this is without and with. Lastly, we're going to use the graduated filter to add more vignette on certain parts of the edges of the photo. So we're gonna go up here to Graduated Filter. We're going to drop down the exposure. And we're going to drag on the sides here. Just like that. I'm going to zoom out, cut that bottom part right here. And I am tilting the graduated filter to this line right here, just to make it feel like it's a part of the image. So now with those adjustments that we made, it really makes the viewer look to the street and to the buildings. There's many things going on in this photo. So we want to highlight certain things to make it feel more dynamic and more enjoyable to look at. And then the very last thing that we're going to do is make some last minute adjustments just to make a little bit darker. We're going to bring the exposure down a bit about right there. Bring up the shadows, bring down the blacks. Great. So this is the final photo. This is before and after. And that is how you edit a dark and moody photo in Lightroom. 8. Conclusion: In today's class, we talked about how to edit a dark and moody photo in Lightroom. I taught you some tips and tricks, shows you my personal editing process and how to achieve that dark and moody look. I hope that I taught you some valuable information and that you will use the techniques that I showed you and apply them to your work. Don't forget that there is a class project in the projects and resources tab down below. I encourage you to show me and the rest of the class your work so you can receive constructive feedback as well as show off your skills that you learned from this class. I'm really excited to see what you all come up with. I'll see you next time. Thank you for watching.