Creative Tone Curves in Lightroom

Who’s ready for a mimosa? Well, it’s February and the cold weather just won’t quit. That’s why we are serving up sunshine and mimosas for our post today. We are going to show you some of our tone curve presets that we offer in our Premium Collection: The Creative Flow. Tone Curves allow you to control the lightness and darkness of various parts of your photo. Our tone curve presets control the range and depth of how the tones will appear in your image. This is a photo that I took while we were away on vacation a few weeks ago. I took this shot on one of the last days of the trip. We woke up early that morning and we were offered mimosas at breakfast. The drinks were so lovely, I had to grab my camera and snap a few shots while the sun was rising. I went back to the hotel room and grabbed my Cannon 5D Mkii and my 50 mm lens. On my way down to the beach area I plucked a hibiscus flower from a nearby tree to add a bit of color to the shot. It was about 8:00 am and the sun was just starting to give me the type of lighting that I wanted. I settled on this location, a rock wall that divided the main land and the ocean. I set up the shot and starting shooting. Some of the other guests and employees looked at me funny as I put myself in multiple positions to get right angle. I must have looked like I was doing my best impression of a pretzel as wiggled around and tried to find the perfect backdrop for the shot. If you’ve ever taken photos like this before, you can probably relate! I ended up taking a series of shots over a 20-minute period to provide a range of different lighting. This shot was the best of the series.

The three presets that I am sharing today are: Coffee, Crush and Retro. Each preset gives you a vastly different look: The Coffee preset adds a darker curve to the shot, which produces contrast and definition. The Retro preset provides washed out green tones for that perfect vintage look. Finally, the Crush preset offers a warm tone curve, which I think works perfectly with the stone. So there you have it, one photo, three presets! Try out these presets along with 1000+ others when you buy The Creative Flow.