Editing Tutorials

HSL Adjustments Are the Reason Your Colors Look Flat (And How to Fix That)
Editing Tutorials

HSL Adjustments Are the Reason Your Colors Look Flat (And How to Fix That)

Last week I was editing a portrait session shot at golden hour, the kind of light that should basically edit itself. The skin tones looked orange enough to rival a spray tan, the greens in the background were fighting with everything, and the whole image had this muddy quality that no amount of tweaking the temperature slider was going to fix. The Basic panel was completely maxed out in all the wrong ways.

HSL in Lightroom: The Color Control Most Editors Treat Like a Mystery Box
Editing Tutorials

HSL in Lightroom: The Color Control Most Editors Treat Like a Mystery Box

I was editing a set of golden hour portraits last spring, and the skin tones looked like the subject had been standing inside a traffic cone. The overall white balance was fine. The exposure was good. But somewhere between the warm light and my heavy-handed orange push in the tone curve, everything had gone sideways in a very specific, very unflattering direction. The fix took about forty-five seconds once I opened the HSL panel.