I wanted to share a few photography tips, but this time related to editing, using Adobe Lightroom. This is the keystone to achieving my dramatic and atmospheric style in my photos.

Tip 1 – Tone curve fade

This is a standard tone curve in a typical S shape, you may be familiar with the S curve and I use a variant on this for most of my edits. This dampens the blacks and whites, creating a more matte look.

You can adjust the strength of curve to suit your style, by bringing up the darks on the left side (creates a more matte look in the blacks) or bringing down the top right of the curve to fade the whites to a more flat look. The overall effect is creating a more subtle tonal balance.

Tip 2 – Detail & sharpening

In order to retain the crispness of an image, despite the reduced clarity from the basic panel adjustment, I tend to add an increased amount of sharpness, which is applied on all my presets also.

The secret to doing this without introducing noise is to hold alt / cmd key and drag the masking slider to see where the sharpening is being applied to. I typically hover around 50-70 which is usually the edges only. Now the image will be looking almost painting like whilst retaining sharpness on the edges!

Tip 3 – Colour Grade

I wanted to show the power of colour grading using just 1 colour slider – in this example, the green slider in Lightroom. My adjusting the hue to the left, (more yellow) and reducing the saturation and luminance we can achieve a totally different atmosphere, a more natural colour yet far more visually appealing and cinematic in my opinion. Check the images below of the Tigers to see the difference!

Tip 4 – Adding Dynamic Light

The last thing I do to an image is work with the graduated filter controls to add depth and dynamism to an image through playing with the lighting. Typically I will lighten / darken certain areas of an image to lead the eye in the frame and create a sense of atmosphere. In the image below you will see it looks quite flat before adding a darkening to the foreground and sky and after it really leads you into the centre of the frame to capture all your attention on the important aspects of the photo.