HSL

HSL Adjustments Are the Reason Your Colors Look Muddy (And How to Fix That)
Color Grading

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

I was editing a batch of golden hour portraits last spring, and everything looked slightly wrong. The skies were beautiful, the skin tones were warm, but the greens in the background had this sickly yellow cast that made the whole scene feel off. I’d already pushed the global white balance as far as it could go without wrecking the faces. The HSL panel was the only move left, and within about four minutes, the problem was gone.

Split Toning Is the Reason Your Photos Look Flat (And How to Fix It in 10 Minutes)
Color Grading

Split Toning Is the Reason Your Photos Look Flat (And How to Fix It in 10 Minutes)

I was editing a set of golden hour portraits last fall, and everything looked wrong. The exposure was right, the white balance was dialed in, the skin tones were clean. But the images still felt like a rough JPEG from a point-and-shoot. Flat. Lifeless. The kind of photo that gets polite likes but not shares. I’d already run through my usual checklist. Curves, check. HSL panel, check. Then I opened the Color Grading panel and realized I’d never actually touched the shadows wheel.

RGB Curves, HSL Masking, and the Lightroom Features You're Probably Sleeping On
Video Tutorials

RGB Curves, HSL Masking, and the Lightroom Features You're Probably Sleeping On

Every few months I sit down with a tutorial from someone whose eye I trust, not to be told what I already know, but to get rattled a little. That’s what happened when I watched Watch the full tutorial on YouTube from Peter McKinnon, where he casually drops two Lightroom techniques that I either glossed over or genuinely never noticed hiding in the software I use every single day. The man is sipping a questionable espresso and somehow still teaching circles around most photography content out there.

HSL Adjustments Are the Most Underused Tool in Lightroom — Here's How to Actually Use Them
Color Grading

HSL Adjustments Are the Most Underused Tool in Lightroom — Here's How to Actually Use Them

The Edit That Made Me Stop Ignoring HSL A few years ago I was editing press shots for my band on a borrowed laptop, trying to make a dingy rehearsal space look like somewhere a real band would actually want to be. I’d done my usual thing: pushed the whites, pulled the blacks, added a little warmth in the tone curve. It looked fine. But “fine” doesn’t book shows. The problem was the walls.

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)

I was editing a set of golden hour portraits last spring, and something was wrong. The exposure looked right. The white balance was dialed in. The highlights were pulled back, the shadows were lifted — all the usual moves. But the image still felt like it had a film of gray gauze stretched over it. Flat. Lifeless. Like the color was embarrassed to be there. The problem wasn’t my global adjustments.

How HSL Adjustments Actually Work (And Why You're Probably Using Them Wrong)
Color Grading

How HSL Adjustments Actually Work (And Why You're Probably Using Them Wrong)

I spent three hours last month trying to fix a portrait where the model’s jacket was this aggressive, almost neon coral. Global adjustments weren’t touching it the way I needed. I’d pulled the vibrance down, nudged the HSL orange slider, and the jacket looked better, but her skin had gone muddy and flat in the process. It’s one of those situations that makes you realize how much overlap exists between colors that look completely distinct to the human eye.

Split Toning Is the Reason Your Photos Look Flat (And How to Fix It in Lightroom)
Color Grading

Split Toning Is the Reason Your Photos Look Flat (And How to Fix It in Lightroom)

I was editing press shots for my band at 1 a.m., vinyl copy of Rumours spinning in the background, when I realized something was wrong with every single photo. They were sharp, exposed correctly, white balance was fine. But they looked like nothing. Like stock photos of a band rather than an actual band. I spent an hour dragging sliders I didn’t understand before I accidentally landed on something that changed the whole image.

Split Toning Is the Reason Your Photos Look Flat (And How to Fix That in 10 Minutes)
Color Grading

Split Toning Is the Reason Your Photos Look Flat (And How to Fix That in 10 Minutes)

The Problem With “Neutral” Edits I had a photo last spring that I’d spent about 45 minutes on. Exposure was dialed. Skin tones were clean. Sharpness was exactly where I wanted it. I sent it to the client and got back the most deflating reply possible: “It looks a little flat, can you make it more… cinematic?” Cinematic. The word photographers love to hear and hate to interpret. What they were actually asking for, without knowing it, was split toning.

Split Toning Is the Secret Your Flat Edits Are Missing (Here's How to Actually Use It)
Color Grading

Split Toning Is the Secret Your Flat Edits Are Missing (Here's How to Actually Use It)

I used to think split toning was a filter. One of those things you slap on a photo to make it look “cinematic” and call it a day. I’d see other editors’ work with those warm golden highlights and cool blue shadows, assume they had some secret preset, and move on. It wasn’t until I spent a weekend reverse-engineering a look from a photographer I admired that I realized split toning wasn’t a shortcut at all.

How to Actually Use Color in Lightroom (A Breakdown of Nigel Danson's Best Techniques)
Video Tutorials

How to Actually Use Color in Lightroom (A Breakdown of Nigel Danson's Best Techniques)

Color is the part of editing where most people either overdo it or give up and call it “done” too early. I’ve been on both sides of that. When I first started editing seriously, I treated the color sliders like a dare instead of a tool, and the results looked like a fever dream. It took years of working through other people’s workflows to develop a framework that actually holds up across different images and lighting conditions.

HSL Adjustments Are Doing the Heavy Lifting in Your Color Grade — Here's How to Use Them Right
Color Grading

HSL Adjustments Are Doing the Heavy Lifting in Your Color Grade — Here's How to Use Them Right

The Panel Most Editors Treat Like an Afterthought I spent the better part of a year editing portraits by reaching for the Tone Curve and calling it a day. My images looked fine. A little flat sometimes, a little inconsistent across a session, but fine. Then I started paying real attention to the HSL panel and realized I had been leaving the most surgical tool in Lightroom mostly untouched, like someone who owns a chef’s knife and only uses it to open Amazon boxes.

Stop Over-Editing Your Photos: What Peter McKinnon's Leica Workflow Taught Me About Restraint
Video Tutorials

Stop Over-Editing Your Photos: What Peter McKinnon's Leica Workflow Taught Me About Restraint

There’s a version of me from about six years ago who would have wrecked these photos. I know this because I still have the hard drives. Too much contrast, greens cranked to neon, a heavy-handed preset slapped on top like a bumper sticker. I thought volume equaled quality. I was wrong, and it took years of editing other people’s work before I figured out why my own stuff looked so processed.