Let’s face it, Color Grading and Color Theory are hard topics to grasp. Without a solid foundation for them, though, all of our colorwork is left hanging in the balance.

While having a great understanding of color is important, that is a long-term goal.  It takes a lot of time, experimentation, and studying to understand Color Theory truly.  For now, I want to teach you things you can start doing RIGHT NOW to get better at working with Color and Color Grading on your photos.

These are more theory than technique, which makes them easy to implement.  I’ll list out these strategies below, but please watch the video and see examples for each tip.

1.  Go Heavy Handed – Start heavy-handed with ALL of your color adjustments to see just how much color is in your image and where those colors are, then slowly taper back until it looks right to your eye.

2.  Limit Your Color Palette – When working with color, our first inclination is to take all the colors and blast them in the viewer’s face because we want them to see all of them!  Well, that may not be the best approach.  Try to limit your color palette to two or three dominant colors and let the rest be accents.  This will help create more harmony in your work and make the image much more pleasurable to your viewer.

3.  Walk Away – Yep, you read that correctly.  Once you are happy with your colorwork, walk away for 5-10 minutes.  This gives your brain some time to adjust to other colors so when you come back to your work later, you can see any faults in your tones, colors, or composition.

Here’s the video!  Enjoy 🙂

Blake Rudis

f.64 Academy and f.64 Elite are the brainchildren of Blake Rudis. While he is a landscape photographer, he is most passionate about post-processing images in Photoshop and mentoring others.

For Blake, it's all about the art and process synergy. He dives deep into complex topics and makes them easy to understand through his outside-the-box thinking so that you can use these tricks in your workflow today!