Grading

     For this entry, I'll be showing you a few of the grades I have created.

Before - After

 

     As you can see, it's the same scene from my previous post.  But this time, I applied different grading on this one. My goal is to make it look interesting and a bit edgy since it was shot in Cambodia. I wanted it to have that ruins kind of look/feel.

     The very first thing I did to achieve this kind of look is I balance the image first. Then I added some warm tones and some green tint. I added some blue to the temperature so it wouldn't look too greenish and then I increased the lift a bit and added a little magenta to it. The next thing I did is I adjusted the luminance of the image using curves then I added a vignette and a Power window to brighten the child.

Before - After

 

     I wanted this scene to look very interesting with a bit of strong colors but not too saturated. For the primary color correction I did is first, I balanced the image to get that right amount of blacks and whites. Then  I added some blue tones to give more colors to the sky. I added some orange and teal colors as well to balance it without over-grading it. 

     For the secondary color correction, I added more blues and orange and teal to make the sky and ocean look cerulean. I added orange to gamma to balance the amounts of blue. I then added a vignette and decreased the amount of shadows and increased the amount of highlights. I added more orange to gamma and increased the amount of the overall contrast. Lastly, I brighten the whole image using the curves.