Nowadays, there is a growing outlet for photographers and content creators to sell their existing presets. I will be honest and say that I have purchased or been given freebie presets, but there hasn’t been a single one I have found that fits when it comes to coloring my photographs.

Usually, the person selling the preset has a different camera body, different lenses, different exposures, color temperature, quantity, and quality of light, and sometimes even different Picture Profiles than you will have before applying this preset. These variables all affect the end result. Therefore, there is still a lot of work needed to achieve the same end result.

That said, having a cohesive look in terms of your finished photos across a series and across your entire Visual Branding Experience will only make your business look more polished. Need a bit of guidance with your Visual Branding? Check out my *freebie* guidebook here.

Ways to Affect the Colors.

If you are new to editing photos or are curious to learn more about ways to impact the look of your photos, go ahead and open some photos in Lightroom CC (Mobile iOS has a free plan). Then, using these two controls at the same time, see what effect they have.

Pairs I use together.

Exposure and Levels

Color Temperature and Hue

Blacks and Dehaze

Texture and Grain

Vibrancy and Saturation

Color Balance and Luminance




Find a Good Balance and Keep Consistent

So much can affect the feeling and look of a photograph with regard to the post-production process, particularly with color. Knowing how to balance all these components can be a time-consuming process, but once you see how each part affects the whole, it becomes much more rewarding. I find it easiest to start with exposure, then highlights, shadows, and color.

I’m less rigid about making each photo have the same look across all of my work and more concerned with having a visual preference for the basics like color temperature, hue/saturation of specific colors (my greens are almost always warmed up and desaturated!), contrast, highlights, shadows, and blacks.

It can be fun too to consider seasons of your life or business with various color stories where one accent color that *pops* is featured in various ways throughout your visual storytelling, be it a yellow umbrella, a yellow banana, lemons, or a yellow hat featured in a portrait series. These images, together with their matching hue of yellow, can pull the images together into one story.

Nothing but creative possibilities!

Coloring your photographs is an art form that requires quite a bit of practice, but once you get the hang of it, it’s pure magic! I’ll never forget the first photos I printed from the darkroom and the color lab. I’m incredibly grateful that I began as an analog shooter in a time before the technology of digital cameras.

Nowadays, images become works of art in the lightroom, which is a software application designed to emulate the experience of developing photos in the darkroom but for digital imaging. I use primarily Adobe Lightroom for high volumes of photo editing and Capture One for more controlled, tethered studio shoots.

Curious to know more about my post-production process? Click here to learn more.

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