How to Create DRAMATIC LIGHT in Lightroom (Raw included)

Learn how to creaty dramatic light with #Lightroom Classic in this quick video Tutorial.

To follow along you can get the raw file here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FoxX...

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0:00 Intro
For this shot I wanted to create a more dramatic scene with rich contrast and warmer, golden light. Almost all of the editing was done in Adobe Lightroom, while I used Photoshop to clean things up, do a bit of dodging and apply a few nik collection filters.

0:18 1. Basic Adjustments

I started by switching the camera profile to Adobe Landscape for more saturation, then adjusted the white balance temperature to give the image a warmer look and fix the slight purple-ish color cast. To make the photo more dramatic, I dropped the exposure to make it darker. To add contrast and not loose too much light, I increased the highlights and the whites. For even more contrast I then dropped the shadows.

Finally, I added a bit of texture and clarity to give the image a sharper look and dropped the vibrance slightly.

3:08 2. Local Adjustments

One thing that bothered me was the bright sky. I used two linear gradients over it to make it a bit darker by dropping the exposure. This leads to a yellow color cast up there, so I also dropped the white balance temperature to counter that.

4:27 3. Color Grading

As I have a feeling my camera sometimes adds a subtle purple tone to blue colors, I started in the hue panel dropping the purple hue and thus fixing the blue color tones especially in the sky. Next, I increased the blue saturation and dropped the purple one.

For the split toning I simply added a warm tone to the highlights and a blue tone to the shadows. For both of them I used a rather low saturation strength.

6:40 4. Photoshop

Using the spot healing brush, I removed sensor spots first. Then, I used an overlay layer together with the TK panel plug in (to target the highlights of the photo) and dodged the bright mountain faces a bit.