Is anyone dreaming of a White Christmas..., waking up in the morning and looking out the window to see a blanket of bright and white snow...? ❄️☃️
I guess many people do and associate Christmas and the holiday season with snow, even if we hardly ever get snow where we live. But never say never...! If you love this kind of scenery, you can easily get a White Christmas look in your photos only by adjusting the whites, the highlights, the colors and other settings. In this tutorial we will see together how to get a "White Christmas" look in your photos and finally you will be surprised to find that dreamy magical touch in your Christmas memories!! 🎄❄️
NOTE: In this tutorial I’ve chosen 2 sample photos.
We will see first how to adjust a winter scenery OUTDOORS. The snow abundance here helps a lot and we have only to boost its white effect. What we have to be aware is keeping colors, we need to avoid a final result in "black and white".
Then we're going to adapt the same settings to a typical Christmas INDOOR photo: with the Christams tree, the yellows from the elecric lights and the traditional Christmas reds.
The final result will be two brighter and lighter images with a consistent White Christmals look, perfect for your instgram feed!!
Step 1: Basic Adjustments - Outdoor Photo
Much of that White Christmas effect we are looking for happens to properly using the lights panel and the Tone Curve. By adjusting settings in lights panel we're going to balance the withes and the highlights, like shown here below:
Exposure +0,59, contrast +35, highlights -82, shadows +56, whites +14, blacks -15.
Then, by adjusting the Tone Curve we're going to boost the whites and increase the contrast.
Step 2: Colors and HSL panel
We'll see now how to adjust settings for enhancing the white effect, saving colors and avoiding the "black and white" effect:
Temp -5, Tint +1, Vibrance -30, Staturation -5.
Well done, you’re there! Refine now calibrations adjusting settings in the HSL panel:
RED: hue -21, saturation -10, luminance 0
ORANGE: hue -20, saturation +28, luminance -60
YELLOW: hue -14, saturation -22, luminance -28
GREEN: hue +60, saturation -40, luminance +31
BLUE: hue -4, saturation -34, luminance -23
PURPLE: hue -40, saturation -40, luminance 0
MAGENTA: hue +40, saturation -40, luminance 0
Step 3: the Final Touch
The last adjustment I’ll make to this image is giving a small boost to the contrast by increseang Clarity (+33) in Effects panel.
Here you are now!! Have a look to the "Before & After" result:
Step 4: Create a Preset
After you made the edits, you may want to save your work as a preset so that you can quickly apply it to other photos! Here’s the tutorial video if you don't remember how to make it:
👇👇👇
Step 5: How to vary Settings for Indoor Photo
Use now the White Christmas Preset you have just created and apply it to the indoor sample photo.
Ehm... not exactly what I was expecting... 😐
NO PANIC now, we'll see how to adapt it to our new image, by varying some few settings in:
PANEL LIGHTS: increase exposure in order to get a lighter image (Exposure +1,32)
PANEL COLORS: because of the more yellow tones of the electric lights, we need to add blue and decrease yellow. Play around with Temp and find the best setting (Temp -20).
PANEL EFFECTS: it's always a good idea increasing the Clarity for lanscape photo, but not for portraits and indoor photos where it's better adjusting only Texture. So, the new settings will be: Clarity 0 and Texture +21.
Et le voilà... here is how it looks now! 🤩🤩
👉Final NOTE: referring to photos taken indoors, as the light is worse than outdoors, some more noise might be found in your images. We recommend to use the noise reduction tool to get a better image. Here are my best settings in Details Panel: Sharpening 10, Masking 18, Noise Reduction 25, Noise Color Reduction 62.
HAPPY EDITING and MERRY WHITE CHRISTMAS to ALL!!
✨🎄❄️🤩❄️🎄✨
– Chiarik22 ♡
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