Practise The Power Of Color Mixing

Explore these invaluable tools in Camera Raw, and make stunning colour shifts in photos

- James Paterson

Available in both Lightroom and Photoshop’s Camera Raw filter, the Hue, Saturation and Luminosity tools within the Color Mixer box give you a fine degree of control over the colours and tones in your images. Whether you want to subtly alter a colour or change it completely, these tools can help.

Here we’ve made use of the Color Mixer tools to re-colour the backdrop without affecting the subject. This takes mere seconds with a targeted Hue adjustment, and doesn’t require any complicated selections or cut-outs. You simply enable the Hue sampler, then drag over the backdrop to alter the colour.

If you want to delve deeper into controlling the hue, saturation and luminosity of colours in the image, you can experiment with Camera Raw and Lightroom’s local adjustment tools, which enable you to change colours over a specific part of the image. We’ll progress to using those tools here to make a vibrant multi-coloured backdrop for a portrait.

Useful colour changes