Using color balance while editing

Color balance controls the mix of colors in your photo's shadows, midtones and highlights. By placing warmth in the highlights and coolness in the shadows, for instance, you give your image mood and cohesion. It's a classic way to color grade.

If you want a set of photos to share the same warm or cool feel, try adjusting the color balance. Work on the shadows, midtones and highlights separately so you can control where the color goes. Small changes can already make a clear difference. You don’t need to use every wheel at once.

Open the Color Grading panel in Lightroom Classic. Still looking for Split Toning? This is the panel that replaced it.

Start with the Shadows wheel. Choose a hue and keep the saturation low to begin with. Then move on to Midtones, followed by Highlights. At each step, look at what the added color does to your photo. Each wheel also has a luminance slider for adjusting the brightness of that tonal range.

To adjust the color across the whole photo, use the Global wheel. Below the wheels you’ll find Blending and Balance. Balance shifts the transition between shadows and highlights. Set the colors for each tonal range first, then see whether that transition needs adjusting.

A common mistake is pushing the saturation too far in the wheels. Skin tones in particular can start to look unnatural, so check them whenever there are people in your photo. A bit of warmth is nice. An orange face probably wasn’t the plan.

Many presets use this panel to set the color mood. If you want to tweak a preset, check which hues and saturation levels it uses here. Adjust the tonal range you want to change. Sometimes a small shift is enough.