Lightroom’s Color Grading panel is sadly neglected. It complements but does in any way not duplicate the Color Mixing panel and White Balance. It can be used to produce monochrome, sepia, duotones and even trio-tones from grayscale images. In color images, it casts different colors for the shadows, midtones, and highlights, kind of like a souped-up White Balance for each! It can evoke a particular mood. So it is certainly a great technique that photographers can use to expand their repertoire. For comparison’s sake, we discuss white balance as a preface.

I’ll show you some ways to shift the hue, saturation, and brightness of colors to make your images more dramatic.

First, I will show some simple ways to make a dramatic nearly Black-and-white image.

Then I will edit photos with a cinematic color scheme inspired by the movie Asteroid City.

Wes Anderson’s movie Asteroid City debuted in June of 2023. Scenes in the film were often shot mid-day in very harsh lighting. In processing, the contrast was lowered dramatically, leading to a “flat”, soft look, in which the dark shadows almost disappear. The colors were manipulated by hue shifts that moved reds to an orangish red and blues moved towards teal, producing dramatic teal skies over a warm desert. Please watch the movie’s trailer to see the style.