Creativity is a process

It’s a combination of not only your talent and skills, but also your life experiences, how you’re feeling during that moment, and even the people that have inspired you.

It’s not an overnight, one-and-done kind of thing but an ongoing, ever-changing, destination-less kind of thing. It’s an iterative cycle of trying new things and learning new skills to constantly challenge yourself and grow. Throughout the past months partnership with @AdobeStudents, I’ve shown you a couple of techniques that goes on in my editing process and hope that it has been insightful.

But now it’s time for you guys to shine! I’d love to see you guys show off your #AdobeCreativeSide and use the tips I’ve given you to hone in on your style. As a gift, I’ve created a basic preset based on the principles that were previously covered. My intention is for you to use this as a learning tool to build on your own skills and creative style.

Camera Calibration in Adobe Lightroom.

Subtlety is always what I keep in mind when I edit, as each correction compounds to make a powerful, unique look. In continuing my series with @AdobeStudents to help you guys unleash your #AdobeCreativeSide, I wanted to add another subtle, but essential tool to your editing repertoire - Camera Calibration in Adobe Lightroom.

This is a tool that helps me tweak my colors to dial in my look. HSL allows you to adjust individual colors while the Camera Calibration tools adjusts all colors deriving from the RGB primaries. For example, changing greens in HSL will target areas of the image that appear green, whereas changing greens in Camera Calibration will affect all pixels that contain green. I, personally, love making my greens more blue so my adjustments here involve pushing the green hue slider more towards the aqua side. See below in detail how I use the Camera Calibration panel to dial in my colors.

Split Toning in Adobe Lightroom

I want to help you guys find your creative style and hone in on your editing skills to better uniquely express yourself through your photos this school year. To continue helping you guys try new tools in LR, I wanted to highlight another simple, yet powerful tool - Split Toning.

This is a tool that I use constantly to get the tones in my photos that really make my images unique to me. By adding subtle color into your highlights and shadows, you can really dial in on your "look" and make your images really stand out from the crowd. For most of my photos, I go for the classic blue and orange split tone. Rule of thumb is to go for complimentary colors, but it's more important to go with what looks best to your eyes. In this image, there's a ton of dark shadows and bright highlights to play with.

By adding some orange colors to the highlights, I can make the image appear a bit warmer in the bright areas, and then adding blues to the shadows help counter balance that. Swipe for a before/after and check out my stories to see in detail how I use the Split Tone panel to obtain subtle tones in my image to help me dial in my look.

For me, nailing the composition and story is key.

An image with great composition and story will always draw in your viewer. Furthermore, having a unique color grade is crucial to really make the image “belong” to you and stand out amongst a sea of images.