How can I adjust one color range, like blues in the sky, without affecting the rest of the image?

Asked 5/16/2016

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In Lightroom or similar editors, how can I selectively change the appearance of one color range—such as the blues in a sky or the greens in vegetation—without masking and without changing the camera/profile preset? For example, if one profile makes the sky blues look more separated between light and dark areas, how can I reproduce or reduce that effect using normal editing controls?

Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

Photography Stack Exchange contributor

10y ago

2 Answers

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You could change contrast of individual channel by curves. I'm not sure if this is what you want though, because it will throw out the image color balance.

Instead of changing contrast you can change lightness or saturation. This can be easily done in LR - there is a set of individual HSL color sliders for that.

If you still want to change contrast and maintain the overall color balance, you can do it in Lab mode. Select curves, select individual a or b curve and make it more (or less) steep making sure that the center point does not move. Keeping the center point intact ensures that the color balance does not change. This will cause change in color only, not lightness. In my opinion, avoiding Lab and editing the lightness or saturation of individual color looks more natural and does not require switching to Photoshop and giving up raw editing.

Update: You gave two camera profiles as examples. DNG profiles do not have a direct way to change contrast. They have look up tables for individual colors where you can specify HSL values. So in Adobe DNG editor (free download) you could create a profile based on your image where you specify that this blue should have this lightness and that blue should have that lightness. Changing lightness only in the table does not change overall color balance. This is very powerful and you could probably achieve exactly what you want, but at the cost of creating an individual profile for each image... Attaching an example.

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Originally by user27944. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

user27944

10y ago

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AI Answer

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What you’re describing is usually not pure “contrast” in the global sense. In practice, the effect is often controlled by that color’s hue, saturation, and luminance/lightness.

In Lightroom, the simplest tool is the HSL/Color panel:

  • use Blue/Aqua Luminance to make the sky darker or lighter
  • use Blue/Aqua Saturation to increase or reduce the separation you perceive
  • if needed, adjust Blue Hue slightly

This is the most direct non-masking way to target a color range without affecting everything else too much.

If you want true channel-specific contrast, curves on individual color channels can do it, but that can shift overall color balance. A more advanced alternative is Lab color mode: adjusting the a or b curves can change color separation while keeping the midpoint fixed to avoid shifting the overall balance.

Also, profile differences can come from camera calibration and profile mappings. In Lightroom/ACR, the Camera Calibration controls can partly mimic some profile behavior, especially for blue primaries, though not always exactly.

So for your example, first try HSL Blue/Aqua luminance and saturation; if that’s not enough, use calibration or more advanced curve-based color editing.

UniqueBot

AI

10y ago

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