HOW I EDIT FOR INSTAGRAM: USING HSL
WELCOME TO SUMMER!
In the winter months, I'm inside because it rains a lot, so my photos tend to be darker or monochromatic. It's easier for those photos to match on a grid. Lately, I've been posting a lot of greens, blues, and varying colors. I've been looking for ways to tone down my photos so that neither of them overwhelms my grid with color (because yes, I'm one of those people who has to have a somewhat similar feed)!
The colors that pop most when I edit are those in the additive color model RGB (Red Green Blue). Those tend to overtake saturation in my photos. They get too bright and too distracting. Green is my biggest problem. Have you ever seen a photo where you know the saturation is so high that the grass turns a neon-yellow green?
Well, I'll sacrifice myself with one of my photos edited with an online photo app in 2010:
I don't think I've ever seen greens so unrealistic!! Let's use this same photo to edit the greens back down using HSL. The basic of HSL is that it stands for Hue, Saturation, and Lightness. With this, you can edit each color to the exact specifications you'd like in terms of each of those three aspects. We'll use Lightroom for this. Here's the finished photo at the top. Look below at the photos and I'll explain in the description below.
As we see in the second photo, if we look at the histogram on the right green and yellow are clipping. Note the yellow triangle on the left side and the green triangle on the right. Basically, they're clipping because they're too bright. If we scroll down and look at the HSL tab on the right side, I made adjustments to both yellow and green. Lightroom makes it easy to tell what adjustments will be made when using the slider.
For H in HSL: HUE I adjust the yellows towards green to get a more natural look. For the green hue, I adjust green more towards blue. The main aspect that changes the look in this over-saturated photo is... You guessed it, S in HSL: SATURATION. We need to tone that down! I adjusted both green and yellow to be less vivid.
Now we'll check the histogram again:
You'll see that because I toned down the yellows to green, only the green is clipping. That's due to the parts of the leaves that have turned white because of the uneven exposure.
Now, let's look at a recent photo I took. Now that you know how I edit the greens, take a look at this photo! It's a little dark, the colors are fine, but it needs to be a bit brighter.
Can you see the difference? Try to start thinking in terms of edits. You may even save the above photo to try to get it to match the below. The saturation is upped on oranges, the green hue is shifted blue and saturation is toned down. I left the red because it has a beautiful contrasting pop of color, and it's the main focus of my photo. I tried to make the edits a little more dramatic so it would be easier to tell, but normally I'd tone saturation down on the orange and green a lot more.
Fake Tip: If you want to look tan, most skin tones are "Orange" hue. Bring down the luminance and up the saturation a little to get your desired "fake tan"
In the FINAL photo I took it into another photo editing app, which I'll go over later, that continues to tone down certain colors. Here's the finished product:
That was a very brief lesson on HSL but I hope it helped!
- Kaycee