When creating a campaign, or multiple iterations, of images it is important to make sure they visually match each other – this is where subtle colour grading can come in handy.

You can use colour grading to create different moods & tones, once you have your image how you like it you can then carry those settings over to other relevant imagery.

I started colour grading my image by bringing it into photoshop, it’s a dark image which I want to make lighter and add an effect to make it look like she is looking at a sunset.

On photoshop I used the half-circle icon and clicked on it where I was given a list of options and effects I could add but for this, I only needed curves at this point. After this I had to limit the outer gates, each s different per image so you have to make sure that low and high start at either part of the graph. After this, I used the curves and dragged down the RGB to make changes to the lighting in my images but not too much as I want to keep it subtle. I then created fill layers to add different colours to the image, added red and orange to add the sunset tone and lowered the opacity of these to 5% with the blending mode set to colour burn. I then grouped the colour fill and curves layers together in a folder so I could re-use them in other images which I could simply do by copying and pasting it into the other photoshop file I would be using with the other image. This was the result of these changes.

I am very happy with the outcome of my image and believe it gives off the sunset vibe I was going for.

In future I would try and make the lighting in certain parts of the image different as in my example they all look the same brightness.

I think colour grading is a great skill to know and can be used in photos that a designer may take or one they have got off the internet which they may want to manipulate the lighting. I will use this skill again in the future as I found it easy to learn and use.