Four Seasons Hotel Hong Kong celebrates its remarkable culinary success with the reinstatement of its prestigious eight Michelin stars status in the recent Michelin Guide Hong Kong Macau 2024. Caprice shines brightly with three Michelin stars for the sixth consecutive year, while Lung King Heen and Noi elevate their status to two Michelin stars each.

Create a statement in your kitchen

Earlier this month we featured a Lightroom tutorial explaining how to edit sunset photos to enhance those gorgeous golden colors so your photos are as captivating as the scene you saw through the viewfinder. Today we’re taking a different approach to maximize the impact of Blue Hour images.

Blue Hour is that magical time just before sunrise and immediately after the sun drops below the horizon in early evening when the landscape is bathed in blue light that imbues photos with beautiful soft, cool light that conveys a sense of peace and tranquility. For some reason sunset photos are more common among landscape photographers, but images shot at Blue Hour are just as captivating.

We often turn to German landscape photographer Christian Mohrle who isn’t shy about sharing the editing techniques that contribute to his stunning imagery. You may want to download today’s demonstration image so you can follow along and mimic his edit as the steps are explained.

With most post-processing techniques it helps to make a few basic adjustments before jumping into selective enhancements like color grading and masking, and that’s what Mohrle does here to embellish his pretty Blue Hour seascape. He first changes the profile from Adobe Color to Adobe Standard, which immediately lessens contrast.

Other preliminary adjustments are geared toward improving exposure because the overall shot includes areas with very deep shadows, while highlights in the sky also need to be enhanced. It’s important to take a subtle approach when increasing exposure in images like this to avoid overexposing highlights in key elements and their reflections on the water. Otherwise details will be lost.

Mohrle walks you through the initial global adjustments and then turns his attention to making  selective enhancements to specific area within the frame. He applies a linear gradient over the top of the image to darken the sky, and another liner gradient to make reflections clearer and enhance the tones of the water in the foreground.

Now it’s time for some simple color grading, and Mohrle pulls up Lightroom’s Color Mixer for some quick and easy refinements. All that’s left to complete the job is a bit of sharpening and cleanup. The final result is very impressive as you can see by comparing Mohrle’s before/after images.

Landscape photographers owe it to themselves to explore Mohrle’s instructional YouTube channel where’s there’s much more great advice for elevating their work.

And be sure to watch the tutorial mentioned above, so you understand how to bring out the best in every unset photo you shoot.

One of the first things we do when configuring a new camera is deciding whether to set the Color Space to Adobe RGB or sRGB. And this isn’t a set-it-and-forget-it choice because the mode you select depends upon how you plan to use the photos you capture.

Instructor Vlad Manea is a Romanian pro based in Germany who specializes in shooting and editing tutorials with beginning photographers in mind. In this four-minute episode he demystifies the concept of color space so you can make the best choice every photo you shoot..

Most cameras offer a choice of two Color Space settings—Adobe RGB and sRGB. As Manea says, “In this video I explain it all for editing, printing, the Internet, and sharing so you get the very best and consistent results.”

Manea explains the concept like this: “Color Space is essentially the range of colors that are available on your camera. As you may already know, the term “RGB” stands for red, green, and blue. These are the three colors that are represented in every color image that you capture. The common default setting is sRGB—a more limited color space than its big brother Adobe RGB.

So why wouldn’t you just set the camera for Adobe RGB and move on to other matters? Pardon his language but Manea says that approach is “totally crap.” His reason is this: “The Adobe RGB color space is primarily intended for people who do a lot of prints or for applications like magazines where the end result is printed commercially.”

Manea reinforces this view by explaining that Adobe RGB is more akin to the CMYK spectrum (cyan, magenta, yellow and black) than the smaller sRGB color space. He also discusses the importance of using the same color space across your various image-editing apps and the camera. This also holds true when exporting your files.

According to Manea this is the problem: If you mix different color space settings you won’t have any color consistency with the images you share, print, exhibit, or share online.

Manea’s advice is simple and based upon the end use of an image: “if it’s online, shoot sRGB, if it’s for print, shoot Adobe RGB.” He also notes that even if you shoot in Adobe RGB, the color space is often automatically changed to sRGB when posting these images online.

There are a few more tips worthy of consideration, and Manea also illustrates where to find the Color Space options within a cameras menu. The bottom line: Be smart and be consistent when making an appropriate choice for the specific task at hand.

There are many more lessons for budding photographers on Manea’s informative YouTube channel, so be sure to take a look when you have time. And on a related note, don’t miss the tutorial we posted earlier from an accomplished outdoor shooter, explaining a simple Lightroom technique for enhancing landscape photographs with dull colors.