Color Grading in Photoshop 2021 – New Features – Camera Raw 13.0

This tutorial is on the color grade tab feature new in Photoshop CC 2021 ACR 13.0 interface. This new color grading feature will be explored in-depth in this video, as well as including a lesson on how to use this new coloring tool. Camera Raw 13.0 now includes an amazing coloring tool similar to the color wheels found in many editing programs for video. Color grading in Photoshop is fun and easy.

In today’s video, I’m gonna show you how to use the new color grading tab in Photoshop 2021, Adobe Camera Raw interface. We have some new color tools to play with. I’m gonna show you what they can do and how to use them.

If you’ve used split toning in Adobe Camera and Lightroom it has been replaced by the new color grading tab. When you’re working in the new Adobe Camera you can see there are a lot of panels to work with, even if they’re all collapsed. One thing you can do is if you right-click in the panels area, you’ll see something called Edit Panels to Show. So when I click on that, if I click on any of these, they are not gonna show up. So that’s gonna give you some more room to work. So I’m gonna uncheck all these for right now. And so that puts us in our Adobe Camera Raw color grading tab with plenty of room to work.

When you first go into the color grading panel by default you will see the three-way icon. This icon right here. The three-way icon shows you all three color wheels at the same time. You have your mid-tones, your shadows, and your highlights. You may be familiar with the color wheels here. They are in a lot of video editing programs.

How to Use the Color Wheels – Color Grading in Photoshop

So the way these color wheels work, this centering if you bring it from the middle to the outside is a saturation. And you could see the values changing right up above the shadow color wheel. S being the saturation. The dot, that’s the hue. You can bring it around and adjust your hue. In this case, I’m adjusting the shadows on this image here. And the slider below the shadow of the color wheel is your luminance which adjust the brightness of your color. There’s the luminance at 100%. And there it is at -100%. The values are showing right above the color wheel. Double-clicking on this ring brings your values back to zero.

Color Grading in Photoshop

With this image that’s up right now, I’m gonna show you how to use these color wheels actually, how to color grade. And we’re going to bring this circle down and put some blue into the shadows. And I’m gonna put some red into the highlights and some green into the mid-tones. And I’m gonna make the colors a little bit stronger here. Use my luminance to make it a little bit darker. And like I was saying before, if I wanted to zero out these values, I can double click on the circle or this dot or the luminance slider. And it will put any of those values back to zero.

Now, to give you a little bit more control over some of these adjustments, I’ve got some shortcuts here. If I hold down the Command or Control and adjust my hue, you see that circle there that’s added. So, it’s keeping me locked into that saturation while I adjust my hue. If I hold down the Shift key, you see now I have a line. I can adjust my saturation and not affect my hue. These shortcuts are good because they help you maintain your adjustments a lot easier. Color grading in Photoshop 2021

Another thing I want to point out is this eye up here on the top right hand side of the color grading tab. If you hold that down, it gives you the before and the after of the whole panel. Let’s look at these other options we have up here. Right next to the three-way is the shadows option. So, where you’re gonna see just a shadow color wheel. And you have one for each of the mid-tones and the highlights.

Now, if you don’t like coming in here and sliding the ring or the dot out here for your hue or saturation, clicking on this arrow right here it will show you adjustments that will give you better control over any colors that you want to adjust to. For instance, here’s my hue and the shadows. I can adjust my saturation. You could see that on my image and you have your luminance. And so you can adjust, each one individually, with a lot more control and probably a lot easier this way. And the same for my mid-tones. We had put it at green and I can adjust my hue and my saturation and my luminance, and the same for my highlights. Also, I want to point out that on each of these color wheels, when you see them individually there’s an eye right here, where if you hold that, you could see the before and the after. And that is on. Each one is adjustments. You have the eye right here. Color grading in Photoshop 2021

Now the two sliders down here at the bottom. So I will start off with the blending slider. When I move the blending slider to the right it’s going to blend all these colors together more. And you can see they’ve just kind of blended in so much that the green is almost gone. And if I take it all the way to the left it gives the colors more separation. So again, to the right, blends the colors in more. To the left, it gives the colors more separations so you can see more blue, green, and red. Again, double-clicking on the slider will put it back to the middle or zero. And I might add that if you use just the shadows and the highlights on the wheel, it’s more how using the split toning was. And the balance slider, it gives you the option of linking say the shadows. If you move the balance to the left, it makes the shadow colors more important. As you can see more of the blue colors, the mid-tones, kind of making that more important. Color grading in Photoshop 2021

And if you move the balance slider to the right then you could see that the highlight color got moved over to the left, making it more important. Like it says, it’s balancing out the colors and you can see I’m going from left to right. And you can see what that does. So showing one color wheel at a time and having this arrow down shows you all your controls so that you have actually more precise control over your hue, saturation, and luminance. Let’s get into some real examples. Color grading in Photoshop 2021

So after the new update, when you first open up Adobe Camera Raw, you notice that the film strip has your image down here at the bottom. If you right click on the film strip and come down here to film strip orientation, select vertical. That puts your thumbnail up on the right-hand side giving you a lot more room.

Landscape Example – Color Grading in Photoshop 2021

So this image here was shot in the morning, and I probably should have gotten up earlier to get the sunrise. We’re gonna use color grading to kind of help that out. And color grading is a creative process. So it’s going to be however you want it to look. Color grading in Photoshop 2021

So let’s try and make this photo look like it happened a little bit earlier in the morning. So I’m gonna do this with the single color wheel and do the shadows first. Something you need to remember is, if you change this hue and you don’t see anything, usually, it’s because the saturation is at zero by default. So I’m just gonna put the saturation up just a little bit so I can see the hue change. And as I change the hue, you can see that I’m gonna go for more the reds in my shadows, and I’m gonna play with a saturation. I don’t want it to be too overbearing. Leave it right about there and I’ll leave my luminance where it’s at. And there’s my before. And there’s the after, a subtle change. I’m going to go to my mid-tones, bring my saturation up a little bit just so I can see my hue change. And I’m gonna stay within the reds or my mid-tones, something like that. And my saturation, I’m gonna bring this up a little bit more like about 30. And my luminance, I want to make my reds a little bit darker. So, right about there. And move to the highlights, bring my saturation up a little bit so I can see my color highlights. I’m gonna see this more in the sky area. So, that’s more of the blue bringing my saturation up pretty good and my luminance right about there. Color grading in Photoshop 2021

Something we haven’t talked about is this last view, the global. So when I click on that, the global is gonna affect the whole image. The global will let you make a hue change and it will affect the entire image. So globally, I want to have this image have like a reddish or gold tone to it because this is supposed to be early in the morning at sunrise. So I’m gonna bring up my saturation first so I can see my color and bring up my hue, something like that. My saturation, I want to bring it up right about there. I’m gonna leave my luminance there. So that is before the global and after, you can see that. So, I’ve got that cast of the entire image it’s kind of like the reddish orange. And up here to the eye on the top, there is before and there’s the after. And I think what I want to do is blend it a little bit more and have the colors be a little bit more separate. So I’m gonna take my blending down to like 25 and balance and make this a three. I want the shadows to come in and be a little bit more of a priority. So there is before, and there’s the after. Color grading in Photoshop 2021

Portrait Example – Color Grading in Photoshop 2021

Here is a portrait example, we’re going to color grade. This has, the more work that I had done on this image. I had gone through done some retouching, some frequency separation. That’s why you see all these layers here. But if you’re gonna color grade, the best point in your workflow to do it is at the very end. The layer where you start your color grading should be a stamped visible layer and make it a smart object. You can also get to camera raw up here, filter, Camera Raw filter. Color grading in Photoshop 2021

And I’m gonna start again with the shadows, bring my saturation up a little bit just so I can see my colors. And I’m gonna throw this more to the blue somewhere around there. And I think I’ll leave my saturation right about there and darken up those blues right about there. So I’m trying to cool this image down. That’s why I’m going for the blues and the shadows. And let’s go to the mid-tones next. I always bring my saturation up a little bit so I can see what I’m doing. And, but the same thing, I’m gonna take this and get this more closer to cyan. My saturation. There’s good. And my mid-tones, I’m gonna make it lighter ’cause I don’t want to mess too much with the skin tones and go to highlights, bring up my saturation so I could see my hue change. And let’s see right about there. I’m gonna bring up my saturation, something like that. And then I’m gonna bring my luminance up so it kind of lightens my colors. Here’s the before. Here’s the after. So we cooled it down and we don’t need to go to the global and that should do it, before, after. Color grading in Photoshop 2021

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