Today’s Lightroom tutorial is all about enhancing the color in your images, and we want to start with a question: What Lightroom tools do you reach for when tackling this common task? The answer from many photographers is Hue, Saturation, and Luminance (HSL). Some users may also add Lightroom’s new Point Color tool into the mix.

But guess what? HSL sliders aren’t the only way to make effective color adjustments, and today you’ll learn three alternative methods that one pro says, “make a really, really big and nice impact.” These techniques are very straightforward and may deliver superior results than the workflow you’ve used until now.

Instructor Lori Lankford is an accomplished photographer specializing in nature, flower, and macro imagery. She’s also a professional photo editor with more than a few tricks up her sleeve. So forget about HSL sliders for the next nine minutes and learn how she employs a trio of other tools to get the job done with precision.

Lankford’s first recommendation is to consider Color Temperature, and Tint, “which is an important part of color and white balance.” She demonstrates how Color Temperature and Tint modifications enable you to easily change the tonal values of an image by making them warmer  cooler, greener, or a bit more magenta.

She also explains a how to use simple masks in combination with Temperature and Tint tools to create a soft, ethereal effect. Next on the list is editing color with Lightroom’s powerful Tone Curve tools—an approach Lankford uses frequently. The advantage here is the fact that there are three color channels that can be adjusted: red, green, and blue.

Another benefit of the Tone Curve is that it’s particularly useful for making “micro-adjustments” to color. She provides the example of adding more red tones to just the highlights of a photo—in this case a bright white blossom. Likewise, it’s easy to target the background of the same shot by slightly darkening the greens to draw attention to the key subject in the foreground.

The video concludes by explaining a color grading method that you may find very helpful, depending upon the types of photos you shoot most. Lankford doesn’t use this approach often for her style of shooting, but it could be very powerful for you.

After watching the view pay a visit to Lankford’s instructional YouTube Channel where there are many more helpful tips and tricks to be found.

We also suggest that you check out the tutorial we featured recently, in which another pro explains what he considers to be Lightroom’s “most powerful masks” for maximizing the quality of just about every photograph you capture outdoors.
 

If you’re one of those photographers who uses the same metering mode for every photo you shoot you’re making a big mistake that we hope to correct with this very helpful guide from C4 Photo Safaris—an instructional site full of helpful tips for shooters of all skill levels.

The bottom line is this: Choosing a metering mode should never be a set-it-and forget-it affair, otherwise your images will rarely reach their full potential.  This 12-minute episode is targeted at wildlife shooters, but everything you’ll you learn will prove equally valuable for all sorts of photography in the field.

The video explains the best metering modes to employ and their applications for capturing varying subjects under different types of light. You’ll also see how composition factors into the equation. Instructor Danielle Carstens is a wildlife photographer, educator, and photo safari leader based in Africa, who insists that your ratio of keepers to rejects will significantly improve by following her straightforward advice.

Carstens introduces the dilemma like this: “Light metering is one of the most crucial concepts to understand. When I’m out I the field with my guests, the wrong setting is definitely responsible for many missed opportunities.” In other words, the mode that delivers perfect results in one situation may be totally inappropriate for another.

The lesson includes helpful graphics and images help to demystify the differences, and Carsten reveals the metering mode she employs most frequently. Depending upon the camera you own, the various options may be identified with different nomenclate. For example, Evaluative Metering may also be called Matrix, Digital ESP or Multi Metering depending upon the brand.

After describing the advantages of Evaluative Mode Carsten moves on to the other options available with most modern cameras. You learn when the oft-ignored Spot setting can really save the day, and why Center-Weighted metering might be a better choice. And then there’s Highlight-Weighted metering along with a few other tricks.

So what’s Carsten’s preferred approach? You’ll likely be surprised to learn that it’s using Evaluative Metering in combination with EV-compensation! Check out her reasoning and her comparison photos and you’ll discover the magic of this unusual approach. Then pay a visit to the C4 Photo Safaris YouTube channel for more shooting and image-editing tutorials.

And on a related note,  be sure to watch the recent tutorial we featured with another expert who takes a deep dive into the camera’s Spot Metering mode, when you should use it, and how to avoid making image-killing mistakes when doing so.

The Nikon Z6 II and Nikon Z6 III are two full-frame, 24-megapixel Z-mount mirrorless cameras from Nikon. In some ways, the Nikon Z6 II was a fairly incremental upgrade to the original Z6, which addressed the main problems of the Z6 such as the single card slot. The Z6 III, on the other hand, is a completely different beast with its new partially stacked sensor. So, is the Z6 II enough for you, or do you need the Z6 III? Read on to find out!

Nikon just announced the Z6 III, building upon the earlier Z6 II substantially. Some of the Z6 III’s features aren’t found anywhere else in Nikon’s lineup, like the partially stacked CMOS sensor. This article breaks down the top 5 things you need to know about the Z6 III that aren’t obvious from the specs alone.