Change ANY Color In Lightroom!

Master Color In Lightroom With This Unreal Lightroom Trick

Changing specific colors in Lightroom has always been possible with the HSL panel and camera calibration, but until recently that only let you adjust groups of colors, and then only a certain amount. Changing a yellow bus to a red bus just wasn’t possible. But using this new color brush function in Lightroom takes color editing to a whole new level.

You see, here at Signature Edits, we’re BIG fans of simple. That means when it comes to editing photos, we’ll do almost anything to avoid using photoshop. Just kidding… Kind of!

The truth is when it comes to developing an effective workflow, time is money. And when you find out a way to do something in Lightroom that used to require photoshop, its a pretty big deal! Don’t go another day without checking out this epic trick, which lets you change ANY specific color in Lightroom.

Now you may be asking – Can’t I already change colors in Lightroom using the HSL panel, white balance, or camera calibration?

Yes, you absolutely can! But sometimes the HSL panel has some limitations. For example, it won’t let you turn green trees pink, or change a red shirt to a blue shirt. That’s where using adjustment brushes combined with the color brush allows you to take your creativity and your Lightroom color editing to the next level.

Have a Lightroom Trick we haven’t covered? Share it in the comments below!

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Hey guys, Ryan here at Signature Edits
and today I’m gonna save you a ton of
time in Photoshop by showing you how to
change the color of pretty much anything
inside of Lightroom. Let’s get into it.
Alright so when I found this technique
out it blew my flippin mind. Why? Because
it saves SO much time, and it just
unlocks a feature I had no idea existed.
So let me show you what I’m talking
about. To do this we are going to go to
our adjustment brush layer and we’re
going to use the auto mask feature in
Lightroom okay so if you need a deeper
tutorial of how the auto mask brush
works just go and watch our tutorial
I’ve got a little link in the
description here and what we’re going to
do is just click here on the bus and
Lightroom is automatically going to mask
this I’m gonna make sure my flow is all
the way up Auto mask is enabled I’ve
zoomed out so that I can cover the
entire image with my brush and I click
once on that bus that’s basically going
to sample the color wherever I click and
everything within that color kind of
color brightness range librum is
automatically going to mask out so now
you can see I’ve pressed oh so I can see
my mask that my entire bus has been
masked out I could go in here and see
there’s some shadows right here in the
inside of the bus that aren’t quite
captured we could just clean that up
really quick zoom in go in there and
paint right I could do that but for the
sake of this tutorial we’re just going
to very generally mask out this bus okay
so we’ve got that masked now to change
the color of anything in Lightroom
here’s all you have to do I’m going to
take my saturation all the way down
press o again so I can see what I’m
doing now the bus is white so if you
want to turn something white or gray in
Lightroom and there’s your answer all
right now let’s look at the color
version all I’m going to do is take my
saturation all the way down then I’m
going to go down where it says color and
I’m going to hit this little X E box
great now I’m going to use my little
dropper tool to just decide what color I
want to fill that mask in with
mindblowing right so now I can change
this bus to be whatever color I want so
let’s say I’m going for a lime green bus
that looks pretty good if I want to
actually get that color more saturated
more pronounced all I have to do is
right-click on my mask and go duplicate
and every time I duplicate it Lightroom
is going to stack another layer of that
mask on top and I’m going to get greener
and greener and greener until you can’t
even take it it looks like lime green
radioactive kool-aid okay so that is how
you do it with this particular image let
me show you another one so this one is
another creative effect that we can use
this for we’re going to zoom out use the
same technique with
automatic feature turn that on flow up
make my brush nice and big and click
once in the sky here’s how you do a sky
replacement well replacement a sky edit
add some effects really quick in
lightroom by pressing o so I can see my
mask great looks like I got everything
and I can actually just hold alt that’ll
toggle my eraser and just erase the mask
on his shirt and down here in the ocean
I just want to replace the sky for now
if I want to make that mask a little
cleaner I can turn my feather up on the
eraser and my flow down and just sort of
gradually decrease that transition here
great now you get the gist of it we’ve
got that masked out I’m gonna press o
again so I can see what I’m doing here
take my brush and reset it because for
some reason the effects are not correct
I’m gonna take my saturation down click
here in the colors I don’t let’s say I
want to make this guy red well we can do
that now all I have to do is click
perfect just like that and if I want to
exaggerate that effect I can just
duplicate now you can see it’s not
absolutely perfect in every way because
we’ve still got you know these waves
kind of coming up and looking a little
bit unnatural but I mean it’s a red sky
what do you expect it’s gonna be a
little unnatural we can play with that
by either using our eraser and just sort
of making that transition a little bit
more gradual oops that’s the wrong
that’s my eraser there we go do that
maybe take our brush and we can take our
flow down auto mask off and if we wanted
we could just brush around here on these
hard edges and just soften them up so
there are ways and you can tinker from
there but you can see how fast it is to
go in change the color of pretty much
anything let me show you another shot so
let’s say we want to get some really
creative effects with the forest can we
do it with this technique well there are
some limitations inside of Lightroom
because it really only works for images
where you’ve got one specific area of
brightness or color if you’ve got a very
complicated mask it’s going to look less
natural so let me show you what I mean
let’s zoom out grab this I’ve got my
flow up click once and let’s say I want
to change the color of the water so I
click the water it’s doing an okay job
we’ve got most of the water but you can
see it’s also showing up in the trees
here so if I try and do the same
technique take my stature
down let’s say I want it to look like
lava in here let’s grab an orange it
looks okay but we’re also going to run
into some issues with the trees here
because there’s similar shade so I would
either have to go through and erase
those like this or I just have to
embrace it and say okay well there are
some limitations here and I still I mean
let’s be honest this is pretty flippin
amazing to be able to do inside of
Lightroom in about two seconds and then
I could do this again if I wanted let’s
make another adjustment brush layer new
one Auto mask out this I don’t have to
zoom out because I can cover the whole
area with my brush great I’m just
clicking there so messed up the water
saturation down color and let’s grab
maybe a purple here so you can see
because this area is white it’s actually
not adding color it was all blown out so
I just have to take my exposure down to
fix that and we’re just going to
duplicate a couple of times and now we
have the world’s weirdest looking nature
photo so there you go if you want to
edit photos to look entirely unnatural
you can do that with this trick let’s
move on one more quick shot just to show
you how cool this is I can grab this guy
really fast zoom out got my flow up
autumn askon click click great just keep
clicking on areas that haven’t been
masked if it’s not working for you the
first time and then I’m just going to
erase down here because I don’t need any
of this section to be affected great
take my saturation down press o again so
I can see what I’m doing and let’s make
this guy green or let’s say that I’ve
blown out this guy I can’t get it back
inside of this edit I can actually just
add blue to the sky if I want so that is
a super easy quick technique that you
can use to edit your images inside of
Lightroom and make them look awesome so
that’s how you can get super crazy
unnatural looking blue skies or go a
little bit more moderate and make some
great effects quickly simply and easily
let’s change the color of his shirt here
so we’re gonna do the same thing new
adjustment brush did it unclick there
just keep clicking until we’ve brushed
out his whole shirt and you can see it’s
picking up the desert because it’s not a
very specific color will work
with so let’s just delete that try once
more we’re gonna zoom out turn my
feather down and click again on his
shirt and you can see there are
limitations this technique in that
you’re only going to be able to work
with specific color ranges so if he was
wearing a red shirt it would be super
easy to actually mask out that shirt or
a bright green shirt but since it’s
white Lightroom’s gonna have a tough
time masking out just that shirt it’s
going to want to mask out all the other
similar tones in that area so we’re a
little more limited I can’t take his
shirt and turn it you know completely
green because it’ll affect other areas
of this image so there are some
limitations but honestly what an amazing
technique when it comes to really
quickly and easily adding effects or
just changing colors in Lightroom you
don’t have to go crazy and make it look
unnatural but really quickly you can go
from having a blue bus to a nice pastel
green bus and nobody would ever know
that this wasn’t the original color of
the bus if you’re taking your time and
getting a nice mask so I hope this
tutorial was helpful for you if it was
please smash that like button don’t
forget to subscribe and come back for
more great content and hey if you’re
looking for some awesome Lightroom
presets we have a few packs out now you
can download some free sample packs in
the links below and I’ll set you up
alright take care see you in the next
one
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