Tutorials

The Tone Curve Isn't a Mystery — You're Just Using It Wrong
Editing Techniques

The Tone Curve Isn't a Mystery — You're Just Using It Wrong

I spent the first two years of my Lightroom life completely ignoring the tone curve. I’d drag the Basic panel sliders around until the photo looked okay, then close the develop module and tell myself I was done. The curve panel was just sitting there, that little graph with the diagonal line, looking complicated and vaguely threatening. I figured it was for professionals. Then I shot a set of live music photos in a venue with genuinely awful lighting, and no combination of Exposure, Highlights, and Shadows was saving them.

HSL in Lightroom: The Adjustment Most Editors Use Wrong (And How to Fix That)
Color Grading

HSL in Lightroom: The Adjustment Most Editors Use Wrong (And How to Fix That)

I was editing a portrait last fall and something was bothering me about the skin tones. The overall exposure was solid, the white balance was dialed in, but the subject looked vaguely radioactive. That particular shade of orange that creeps into skin when you push a warm preset too hard. My first instinct, the instinct every beginner has, was to reach for the Temperature slider and walk it back. That would have fixed the skin and wrecked everything else in the frame.