what the heck is midtone contrast well inside this video I'm going
to show you one crazy lightroom technique you can use to add so much pop and color
to your images without it feeling unnatural you ready let's get into
it all right guys Ryan here at signature edits we're going to dive right into this image taken
by Mr Davey gravy awesome YouTuber and add some punch to this image by adding contrast and you're
going to see there's some issues that happen as we take this higher and higher and higher our blacks
in this image getting completely clipped and our whites are getting really blown out it just
doesn't look nice here's where midtone contrast comes in because we don't want to actually add
contrast to our shadows or to our highlights we just want to add it to the rest of the image so
what I'm going to do is I'm going to hit shift Q on my keyboard you can also go up here to where it
says create new mask and just go select luminance range okay from there you get this little eye
dropper and we're going to look for an area in the image that isn't super bright and isn't super
dark so something kind of in the midtones let's grab this field over here and just click okay so
Lightroom made a selection and it selected all the similar brightness areas in that image and you can
adjust it with these little sliders here this is kind of the Feathering to extend that range down
this is the main selection here which you can enlarge or Shrink and here's the top end where
you can really dial in how much of the brights you want to grab and how much you want to leave
alone let's stick with this for now I'm going to take that same contrast slider on this mask now
I'm going to drag it up up up up up and you're going to see that we're adding pop and color
to the image but we're not affecting the sky and we're leaving those Shadows completely alone so
we can really add some pop and some punch to our images without it making any drastic changes to
our highlights which we don't want to blow out or our really really dark shadows which we don't want
to affect and what's so cool about this technique is you can actually use it for different areas of
your image so that was on the midtones but now I can do a totally separate one by hitting shift Q
on my keyboard and just select the sky this time let's go with the brightest parts of the image
okay we've grabbed the brightest parts now I can maybe dial the highlights back I'm going to add a
little contrast drop the blacks we've added some punch to our sky without blowing it up so here's
before and here's after in that one little mask do it again with shift Q on my keyboard or create
new mask down here to luminance range and let's select the darkest parts of the image so I'm going
to click right in there Lightroom said here's all the Shadows Ryan perfect thank you Lightroom I'm
going to take the Shadows up to make them a little bit brighter but then I'm also going to add some
contrast to them so by doing this you can get really really specific on the contrast you want
to add to your image and where you're doing it so I've taken this really far intentionally to
show you one last little trick that comes with this you can grab all of these and put them on
a little slider up here and dial in exactly how much you want so if you take it too far it's like
oh that's unnatural in the shadows I just dial it back a little bit and I always always seem to take
things too far so this is perfect for me because I can dial it in where I think it looks good then
take it back to like 70 80% I'll get a much more natural result so let's take a look at a couple
other images and see some other ways we can add selective contrast and if this video is helpful
so far hit that thumbs up and leave me a comment below did you know this existed and if so why
didn't you tell me okay here's another image very very similar also taken by Davey gravy awesome guy
so here it is and if I add contrast same problem but if I hit shift Q on my keyboard and then I go
in here and find an area of midtones let's go with these Cliffs back there it's going to select just
the midtone areas and I can add some contrast and you're going to see that if I take this too far
it starts looking just not good I can't tell you exactly the physics of how Lightroom has set this
up but I can tell you that it's going to start smooshing things instead of adding contrast it'll
feel like you're losing contrast and we don't want that here's a much better way to do this that
I found works a lot better than just using this contrast slider grab your highlights and take them
down a little bit take your shadows up a little bit and then dial in your contrast by increasing
the white and decreasing the blacks and by doing this we can add a lot more punch to our images
and get a much more natural result than just using that contrast slider so we've added that
same amount of punch without losing anything and we can dial this in specifically so that we can
even recover some highlights and get some extra Shadows back and get more information in the image
and then just add that contrast as much as we need with the blacks and the whites so here's before
and here's after and of course I've gone too far so I can grab that amount slider overall and just
slide that back until I get a natural result so here's without and here's with much better than if
I just went into Lightroom and added with this one slider okay let's look at some other examples and
I want to show you one other way you can use this in a technique that doesn't just use a luminous
range slider but uses a color range slider so let's take this photo here there's Davey sitting
in front of the leg looking like the gentleman that he is so we'll adjust our brightness just a
little bit and let's use our same technique I'm going to hit shift Q on my keyboard I'm going
to grab the midtones let's go with this area on the lake okay I'm going to lower my highlights a
little bit raise my Shadows a little bit bit raise the whites lower the blacks and we've
added a ton of punch to the midtones right there okay that's looking good but we've also affected
our sky and we don't really want to do that so there's two options one option would be to go in
here and dial back our highlights a little bit to make sure we're not affecting them too much or we
can go up here to our luminance range slider we can actually just toggle this back and forth to
find exactly what part of the image we want this to affect so somewhere around there feels a lot
better to me there's before and there's after now this is a super powerful tool and using luminance
ranges is definitely a great way to edit your photos but here's another thing you can stack
on top of it instead of hitting shift Q on your keyboard try hitting shift J that's going to pull
up the color range mask so I can use the same ey dropper tool and place it on my friend Davey here
now you're going to see it selected his jacket and I can go in here and add some contrast or
take it away I can make my highlights brighter on his jacket the White's brighter on his jacket and
I've added contrast to the image but only to a specific color in the image the same thing can
be applied to this yellow set of trees so let's hit shift J again on our keyboard or go create new
mask and go down here to color range I'm going to select these yellow trees this time and add
some contrast just to the yellow in the image and really make those fall colors pop at the same time
let's raise the highlights raise the whites and you can see that I've really made those trees just
shine in a way that they weren't before and that just by doing a luminance mask we wouldn't have
been able to because it would have added contrast to everything instead of selectively to one part
of the image cool so if this is helpful for you so far again hit that thumbs up button for me
leave a comment how can you see this applying in your images because I am finding a million ways
to apply it in mine let's check out a few more images and if you do want to grab practice files
you can head to Signature edit.com free-- photos and that'll give you free raw files that you can
practice on yourself to work on your Lightroom skills okay let's head over here take a look at
this photo we're going to apply our luminance range mask so I'm going to go up here create
new mask luminance range and let's just start by selecting our midtones now I can take my Shadows
up a little bit just to make those areas brighter maybe take my whites up a little bit and my blacks
down just a little add a little bit of contrast and you can see the difference that just that one
little mask made but I'm not really losing a ton of detail by blowing up my highlights or losing
information in the shadows so let's try again we're going to go shift Q this time I'm going
to select the dark parts of the image of these trees here and I'm actually just going to take
those Shadows right up I'm going to add a little bit of contrast raise the whites just a little
bit and drop the blacks very very slightly okay so now I've gotten all that detail back in those
trees without actually having to go through and make a mask it's super simple just by using this
luminance range mask rather than trying to do it just with an auto mask or something like that and
of course everything is always too extreme in my edit so I'm going to dial that back I'm going to
take this edit and I'm going to dial that one back you can see we've gone from here to here
with just a couple of masks no presets required all right this is a great one because we've got
so much dynamic range I'm going to show you what it's capable of so I'm going to grab a signature
edit base set apply that and that'll give us a decent look We'll add some warmth to our image
that's looking pretty cool to me we're definitely having some issues when it comes to the actual
dark parts of this image and the bright parts we really want to kind of control that dynamic
range so let's hit shift Q on our keyboard and we're going to grab our midtones probably this
Lake area that's what I'm looking for we can recover the highlights a little bit raise the
Shadows a little bit raise up those whites just a little and blacks down a bit so here's what we've
done in the midtones we've added some contrast it's looking great and we haven't blown out any
highlights we haven't clipped any Shadows now we'll do another one this time I'm going to
hit shift J on my keyboard this time let's just select this blue water here and I'm going to let
Lightroom think select all the blue in this image let's try again somewhere else on the image right
there grab all that blue and we're just going to try and make it more of a teal and less of like
a sky blue so we'll add some green to it adjust the white balance a little bit we can even grab
our contrast bring that up Shadows bring it down a little bit white spring it up we've added a ton of
blue color to our Lake here really made it pop do one more we're going to go with shift Q This Time
select these trees let's try and recover some of the information in the shadows I'm going to
bring the contrast down highlights up whites up a little bit okay that's looking a little bit better
to me and then I'm going to dial it in cuz I've taking it too far somewhere around there okay so
here's before we did anything with our masks and here's after so this is a super handy powerful
tool especially when you're adding contrast selectively to different parts of your image
whether you're selecting by color or by luminance by doing this you can stack these little changes
one by one and make much more natural images rather than trying to do a big effect on one
mask at a time so in this photo here obviously it's got a ton of contrast to begin with and if
we add any more contrast we're going to lose this Sky we're going to really clip the dark parts of
this image so instead let's go up here hit shift Q let's start by just selecting the midtones in
this image I'm going to go with somewhere around there the gray on the lake okay that looks pretty
good let's take our highlights down our shadows up a little bit our whites up and our blacks down
so we've added a bunch of contrast just to the midtones really made the image pop but you can
see we've left the sky more or less alone and we're not affecting any of the Shadow areas
now we can go in here and go shift J that'll do a color mask and let's just select the Blues in
this image go into color let's add some greens so that Lake really gets popping cool the temperature
down a little bit and we've totally added a ton of color to the lake and to all the Blues in the
image perfect now let's go shift Q again we're going to grab the highlights of this image this
time okay just the bright parts of the image so I actually want to recover some of those highlights
to get some of the sky information back so let's go with something like that and you can see that
if I take this too far you're going to get issues with your mask where it's just not blending and
that's where these tools come in handy you can adjust the feathers so that you're really getting
a nice blend and it's not an obvious mask but but that only matters if you've got intense effects
if you're not noticing the blend then you're probably all right okay so let's just pull
the exposure down a little bit highlights down a little bit you can see we've recovered that
entire sky and it took like two seconds I didn't have to do a ton of masking ton of complicated
adjustments but we've really recovered a lot of dynamic range and then last of all let's go
shift J and try selecting just this orange color because I find that's kind of too saturated in
the image overall so I'm going to take the color and just take the saturation down in the oranges
a little bit and maybe take the contrast down just a slight amount okay so in just a few masks
we've gone from here to here awesome added so much color but I don't think it looks over edited the
way that it would if I had gone in here and tried to adjust my contrast adjust my saturation to the
entire image at once let's look at a couple more images so this one's an interesting case because
we can go shift J grab their skin tones and on the skin tones let's try taking the contrast up
perfect now let's go shift J again and let's grab the greens in this image let's take the contrast
up the Shadows down the blacks down just really make those greens poot shift Q this time that's
going to do a luminance mask we're going to grab this part of the beach that's kind of grabbing
all of the tan tones in this image we'll take the exposure down a little bit maybe add a little bit
of contrast and then let's go shift Q again and I'm just going to select the yellows in this image
and we're going to be able to find we can add some temperature add some warmth so again this is just
showing you a really quick edit what's possible I've gone way too far here but if I actually go
in with my masks you can see the amount of changes we can make in just a few clicks let's look at a
a couple more because I find this really fun um if you're finding it helpful or you have other
questions leave those in the comments below I'd love to hear where you can see this being used
and where I might have spent a little bit more time explaining things I'd be happy to do that
in the comments okay so this one overexpose we'll adjust that and you can see that there skin tones
not looking super super great two ways we could adjust those we could try using a luminance mask
with shift Q go in here click on their skin you can see it's doing an okay job but it's
not really masking just their skin so let's try shift J and then we can just click on their skin
one perfect we've selected it now we can grab our contrast bring that down highlights bring
that down a little bit to recover those let's go into color bring some saturation down and then
I'm going to add some color up here I'm going to add some orange back into their skin somewhere
around there okay so now we've done this with our skin we've added some color now let's do the same
kind of mask trick we're going to go shift Q select these kind of Shadow areas of the greens
and we can go in here maybe make the whitee balce a little bit cooler add some more green to them
desaturate maybe increase the contrast and we'll get some more pop in that image just a little
bit right and so you can see it's easy to screw this up and so that's where you can play around
with these sliders you can adjust them you can dial back the amount so that it looks
more natural it's all about just practicing and seeing what you can discover for yourself
because that's the easiest and fastest way to learn is actually applying this so grab
some of the free raw files at the website signature.com free- ra- photos and give this
a try for yourself because you'll learn so much more than just watching me in this tutorial so
hopefully you found this tutorial helpful and I've shown you a couple of new tricks
you can use when it comes to adding Vibrance and really nice saturated colors to your image
without making it look super unnatural if you want some free presets you can check those in
the link below give this video a thumbs up if it brought you some value And subscribe if you want
more content like this I'll see you in the next video in the meantime create something awesome
peace