Monday, January 22, 2018

How to add a trendy shadow fade in Lightroom (and ultimately be a poser)




Let's assume the following: 

1. You're a photographer. 
2. Or at least you tell people you are, even though you probably still have to keep your day job. 
3. You're on Instagram. 
4. You're sick of filters, because everyone knows #nofilter is a $&@T$%* thing now. 
5. You wanna add a fade to the shadows in your photos. 
6. It's not because you actually like it yourself.
7. It's because you've seen that all the popular photos on Instagram these days, the ones that aren't women taking their clothes off, have a fade in the shadows.
8. You use Adobe Lightroom, but you just haven't got the right look so far. 
9. And that's why you're here.

Still with me? 



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It's pretty easy to get the effect you're after, so I won't waste your time reading meaningless words. Starting.............. now.




Step 1: Open the photo you want in the Develop module in Lightroom.


Step 2: Find the Tone Curve adjustor, make sure the Point Curve is on Linear






Step 3: With the RGB channels selected, GENTLY raise the bottom selector, the part of the line stuck deep in the black curve range, until you like what you see. Keep in mind that a little fade goes a long way.






Step 4: Optionally, then select an individual color channel (in my case I played with the Blue channel) to give your fade a little tint to it.






Step 5: Make any other adjustments you need (I adjusted brightness and contrast just a bit), and then export. Presto! You're a trendy IG poser!



Before





After

(Slight improvement! Very trendy for some reason!)