[R129] 🥾 Lightroom Finally Fixed The Colour Problem

The best editing feature is the one that disappears so you can focus on the image. (my favourite quote this week) Hello Hello 👋 Quick Catch-Up From Last Week From the JustDraft Archive about Strategy Canvas . Read our LensLetter Archive about Photography Is More Than Just Clicking . Adobe releases a new Lightroom feature. Most updates are boring. Slight UI tweaks. Bug fixes nobody notices. Features that sound cool but change nothing about how you actually edit. This one's different. The Colour Variance Slider actually solves a problem that's annoyed me (probably you as well) for years: messy, uneven colours that take forever to fix. Let me show you what it does and why it matters. 🚀 The Problem It Solves You shoot a fall landscape. Beautiful scene. Yellows, oranges, greens all mixed together in the trees. You get home, open Lightroom, and realise the colours look chaotic. Five different shades of yellow. Three types of orange. Greens that don't match. Normally, you'd spend twenty minutes adjusting HSL sliders, trying to wrangle all those colours into something cohesive. Tweak yellow. Adjust orange. Fine-tune green. Back to yellow because that broke something. It's tedious. The Colour Variance Slider fixes this in seconds. Technology advances when it solves real problems, not when it adds impressive-sounding complexity. 🚀 What It Actually Does Simple concept: it controls how much variety exists within a chosen colour. Pick a colour with the eyedropper. Then move the slider: Slide right (+100) : spreads colours apart. Your greens shift toward yellow-greens, blues, even orange hints. Creates variety and pop. Slide left (-100) : pulls colours together. All those messy greens become one unified shade. Instant harmony. You're not just changing hue or saturation. You're controlling how much that colour spreads across the spectrum. 🚀 Where To Find It Open the Develop module. Go to Colour Mixer. Look for Point Colour tool. You'll see the usual Hue, Saturation, Luminance sliders. The new Variance Slider sits right there with them. Difference is, HSL sliders move colours around the colour wheel or adjust brightness. Variance controls how far that colour spreads from your chosen point. 🚀 3 Ways This Actually Helps ⛵ Unifying Fall Colours Fall foliage looks amazing in person, messy in photos. Too many competing yellows and oranges. Pick a representative yellow with the eyedropper. Lower the Variance Slider slightly, not all the way to -100, just enough. Watch, Greens align with your chosen yellow. Oranges shift toward it. The tree suddenly looks cohesive instead of cluttered. One slider. Five seconds. Done. Better tools don't make you creative, they just get out of the way faster when creativity strikes. ⛵ Fixing Uneven Skies Wide-angle landscape shots give you rich blue at the top of the frame, pale washed-out blue near the horizon. Pick a neutral blue from the sky. Lower Variance. The sky unifies. Rich and pale blues blend into one consistent tone. Sky looks smooth instead of striped. Watch for colour banding if you push too far. Keep it subtle and adjust the Range slider if needed. ⛵ Controlling Forest Greens Forest shots need either moody harmony or vibrant pop, depending on your vision. Pick a representative green. Set Range slider to 100 to include all green shades from shadows to highlights. Lower Variance : all greens pull together. Calmer, moodier, more cohesive. Raise Variance : greens separate. More yellows and oranges emerge. Livelier, less uniform. Sweet spot is usually somewhere in the middle. Around +70 or -40 works better than extremes . 🚀 The Masking Trick Here's where it gets powerful. When you adjust sky blues, foreground blues change too. Blue rocks, water, whatever. Solution: create a Sky Selection mask first. Then use Point Colour only in that masked area. Now you can unify sky tones without touching foreground blues. Precise control over specific parts of your image. This turns the feature from neat trick to actually useful tool. 🚀 What You Need To Know It's Not Magic Variance won't fix bad photos. It just makes colour harmonisation faster and easier. Subtle Works Better Pushing sliders to extremes (+100 or -100) usually looks fake. Moderate adjustments work best. Use With Range Slider Range controls which shades get affected by Variance. Adjust both together for best results. Combine With Masks Applying Variance to specific areas gives you way more control than global adjustments. Most Lightroom updates don't change my workflow. This one does. Also, not every photo needs it. But when you need it, nothing else works as well. Bonus Tip: Before using the Variance Slider, always pick your colour sample from a neutral mid-tone area of that colour, not from the brightest highlight or darkest shadow. Sampling from extremes gives you weird results because you're basing everything on an outlier. Also, after adjusting Variance, step away from your computer for five minutes. Colour fatigue is real, your eyes adjust to changes and you stop seeing problems . Fresh eyes catch when you've pushed adjustments too far. Adobe doesn't usually ship features I actually use every day. This is one of the rare exceptions. If you edit in Lightroom, try it. You'll know within three photos whether it solves problems you actually have. Travel teaches you how colors feel, not just how they look. 🟢 Until the next one, Keep chasing horizons, one frame at a time and let's be mindful of our environment. Cheers!! 🍾 Photo of the week For Print of any photos please reply here with photo link/url. Image From Yamagata, Japan | All Rights Reserved | Photo by RGWords 🚀 Planning Trip, Check 🔻 [product_category category="itinerary,checklist"] A quick personal update first - 🚀 The Clarity Playbook is now live! 📘 It’s our debut book, a 91-page guide for busy professionals to think better, decide faster, and lead with clarity. Packed with 7 high-leverage frameworks used in global boardrooms, it’s built to help you act with focus today. 👉 Read more here or check online marketplace Amazon US | Amazon UK | Amazon India | Amazon Japan | Google Play Books | Apple Books | Barnes & Noble | Rakuten Kobo | Everand (Scribd) | Smashwords | Thalia (Germany) | Vivlio (France) | Fable | Buy Directly ⛳ Other fun stuff ✔️ New prints are available in the shop, check it out . ✔️ Rahul's Newsletter - Learning & Sharing Concepts Beyond Text Books. The JustDraft is a free newsletter to receive ideas shared with 2400+ people each week directly to your inbox. Join now to start practising change. ✔️ Buy Ready To Use Itineraries - Hand curated travel plans, maps, guides, photo editing presets and many more. ✔️ UK Weekender - Wondering where to go next weekend. Join Weekender and receive travel insights from the UK, epic photography spots every week in your inbox. 🚀 Here are the tools I found interesting in last few weeks and still exploring 🎋 Magnific is an AI-powered image upscaler and enhancer that allows users to increase the resolution and detail of any image. It can also add more details by increasing its "Creativity" slider. 🎋 Pixelcut's AI Photo Shoot tool is a virtual photo studio that allows users to quickly and easily create professional-quality product photos with AI-generated backgrounds. 🎋 Descript makes editing video and audio as easy as editing text. Record, transcribe, edit, and publish in one tool. 📆 Product update/offer In this section, I share any cool new product, feature released in past few weeks or newsletter subscriber only offers 🎁 Luminar Neo Cross-device Perpetual license (Luminar Neo + Luminar Mobile) 🎁 [Offer for you] Epidemic Sound introduced Sync to video - Cool feature if you want to quickly make video with great sound collection. 📚 Popular posts in the blog 📌 Adobe Lightroom vs Photoshop which one is better 📌 Master Light in Landscape Photography: Golden Hour, Blue Hour 📌 Best Place to See Cherry Blossom and Enjoy Spring in Japan 📌 Top free things to do in Tokyo 📌 Recommended cameras in 2025 for landscape photography

[R129] 🥾 Lightroom Finally Fixed The Colour Problem

RG

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