3 Editing Tricks for Warm Skin Tones in Lightroom

Do you struggle to get the skin tones you want when editing your photos? Or maybe there’s a photographer you follow who always seems to have the perfect, warm organic skin tones and you just can’t quite figure out how to achieve the same look?

Well, you’re in the right place! As someone who LOVES a warm, natural-looking edit, I’m sharing my…

3 SIMPLE TRICKS FOR GETTING WARM SKIN TONES IN LIGHTROOM.

1. Once you have your photo uploaded into LR and have adjusted your exposure, temp, & tint as desired, the first thing you’ll want to do is scroll down to the Split-Toning tab, and add some warmth to both your Highlights and Shadows.

Below, you can see which settings I chose. The image on the left is the original image, and the image on the right is the one I’m adjusting. You can easily see the impact of the split-toning and how much it warmed up my image.

2. Second, you’ll want to adjust luminance in the HSL Tab. Focus on the luminance of yellow and orange until you get the tones just right. I typically decrease the luminance of orange and increase the luminance of yellow, as you can see in the screenshot below. Unfortunately, there isn’t one magic number for each color, so you’ll need to play around with these sliders until you get it just right for your image!

3. Lastly, after adjusting your split-toning and your luminance, you’ll want to go back and re-visit your temp, tint, & exposure. Shifting each of these settings slightly will help you put the final touches on your skin tones and insure you are maintaining your white-balance. Some people tend to like their images warmer than others, so adjusting temp & tint will help you find your own particular “style.”

And that’s it! Below you can see the final “Before” and “After” of my image just from using these 3 simple tricks in Lightroom!

Happy editing, my friend!

PS. If you’ve tried these tips, and you’re still struggling to get the look you want… I get it. I’ve been there! It’s taken me years and editing thousands and thousands of photos (+ watching endless Youtube videos) to feel like I can easily get the style I’m looking for with any particular image. For that reason, I’ve saved my go-to settings for editing warm, golden photos like this in a set of 5 Lightroom Presets called the Vermilion Collection, which is available for purchase now! They will help you easily get consistent beautiful images in seconds with minimal adjustments needed, all while streamlining your workflow and saving you so much time! Shop the Presets here.

LOVE THE WARM & MOODY EDITING STYLE?

Come and join our “Warm & Moody” Photography & Editing Facebook Group! It’s a community of photographers all sharing tips, tricks, questions, and learning from one another (all skill-levels welcome), and we’d love to have you!