Lightroom 4 Tutorial | Color Correction Rules | News | Forum

As we embark on our new journey through the awesome and powerful software of Adobe Lightroom 4, there are a few basic rules to color correction that we should continue to follow. It's easy to open a new toy and jump right into playing with it; but there are important steps to take even before importing the photos that will improve your color correction quality and efficiency.

This tutorial has been transcribed from the SLR Lounge Lightroom 4 Tutorials on DVD, a 14 hour Lightroom 4 A – Z guide with over 130 tutorials for mastering Lightroom from start to finish. The Digital download can be purchased from SLR Lounge while the physical copy is available through Amazon Prime.

1) Remember that color correction is subjective
This is an opportunity for you to be creative and explore your style. You can turn up the warmth of the photo to make it look like a sunset/dusk type image or you can cool the image to make it look like a winter type scene. You can also make the image black and white. Here is an example of the same image, one color corrected for warmer tones and the other for cooler tones. There certainly isn't a "correct" version; and it depends entirely on preference and style.

Warmer Version:

Cooler Version:

2) Make sure you color calibrate your monitor

In order to do this, you would have to buy a color calibrating device. The spider pro and elite devices work great for this purpose but there are several great products on the market. Now color calibrating your monitor once is not a one-time fix-all. For the best results, set up a reminder on your calibrator software to color calibrate your monitor every 30-60 days because your monitor tends to dim and this changes the colors.

3) Use…