How Make A Moody Feel For Photos Filter Editing

Moody Photography – The Ultimate Guide

How to create moody portraits & photography using light, posing, limerick & editing.

What do you think of when yous think about moody portrait photography & editing techniques? Perhaps yous call up most your favorite moody instagram photographers. Photographers like Fursty or Alessio Albi are known for their moody landscapes & portraits.

Simply how practise yous get that aforementioned moody look to your photos?

The truth is it all comes down to using the correct photography techniques.

Unpacking Moody Photography Techniques.

Within this tutorial we're going to unpack all the techniques involved in creating moody portraits and photography.

When taking moody photos, we can separate the process into two separate steps:

#one – Capturing the right look & experience in camera

#ii – Enhancing that mood with editing

It's important to sympathise that the look and feel of your photo is largely adamant IN Photographic camera. Editing your photos is more than about enhancing what is already there. Yous're going to accept a very hard or fifty-fifty impossible time editing your photos to expect nighttime and moody if they weren't moody to begin with.

That's why getting your original photo right is the nearly of import step to getting that moody await and experience.

Getting it right in camera:

First it's important to learn how to take moody photos and get those moody vibe in your camera using lighting, composition, and other essential photography techniques.

This moody photo tutorial from Mango Street does an amazing chore explaining how you can use lite, posing and framing to produce moody photography:

4 Tips For Capturing Moody Photography:

Tip #one: Use a directional light source

Directional light creates more intense shadows and textures, aiding in the moody look.

A window indoors is often the all-time possible option every bit information technology gives very flattering directional light in a nighttime setting.

When going for a dark and moody photograph, its important your photo actually has areas of darkness and shadow.

Tip #two: Select a darker properties.

Moody photos rarely take identify in front of a vivid + light background. Y'all'll have a far easier time getting that moody photography wait by selecting a darker backdrop. This can be a backdrop with a dark color, or only a background that has less light hitting information technology than your discipline.

Tip #3 Shoot your photos slightly underexposed.

Moody photos feel moody considering they are dark. Dropping your exposure so that your highlights are closer to where midtones would sit down will aid with getting a more than nighttime & moody vibe, while likewise ensuring yous don't accept any clipping in your photo from losing highlights.

(Clipping is when information is lost in the lightest or darkest parts of the epitome. Generally clipping is far more common in the highlights, as shadows tin can recover item much more easily than highlights.)

Tip #4 Shoot broad open + driblet your sharpening

Moody photos have a more bawdy & organic vibe. Old school movie cameras experience more moody partially because vintage lenses are far less sharp + optically perfect than our modernistic camera lenses, which adds character and softness to your photos.

Modern lenses are at their softest when you lot open up the discontinuity (f-end) all the way.

Also worth mentioning: I'd highly recommend shooting in RAW if possible, but if yous are photographing in jpg, make sure to reject your sharpening and clarity settings in your camera flick profile to assistance with this effect.

Past post-obit these key concepts you lot'll be well on your way to developing moody photos. In one case you lot've captured your shots in camera, its time to heighten the vibes and bring out even more moodiness in your editing software:

Editing Moody Photography

There are many, many tutorials out at that place for editing moody photos that you can check out on Youtube. While you could certainly purchase a moody vibes preset pack and apply dark and moody edits instantly, you'll have much better results by first understanding how to edit moody photography without presets. Once you lot know what different effects and techniques you lot tin can employ to add mood and vibe to your photography, then you'll be able to get the very most out of presets if you decide to get that route.

Lets starting time with this video tutorial on how to give your photos a dark and moody edit without presets:

Tips For Editing Moody Photos Without Presets

Moody Edit Tip #one: The tone bend panel.

While the tone curve panel can be intimidating, it's also incredibly powerful once yous know how to apply it, and it's really non that complicated. Check out this piece of cake tone curve tutorial. Using the tone bend is a quick way to add filmic fades and dial in the wait and feel of your edit in a very selective way.

Moody Editing Tip #ii: Private color tone curves

Most photographers effigy out how to use the basic tone bend panel in Lightroom, merely its the individual RGB colour curves that concur the undercover sauce! For an instantly moodier photograph, try calculation a bluish or green film fade to blacks / shadows in your photos. If this sounds too complicated or doesn't make sense, make sure to sentry our total length tone curve tutorial

Moody Editing Tip #3: The HSL panel

Moody edits more ofttimes than non use monochromatic color schemes. Try to limit your color palette to simply i main color and different shades of that color if possible. In editing this effect can be emphasized using the HSL console. You lot tin do this by changing the shades of unlike colors to better alloy with one another, and past desaturating whatever color other than your primary colour theme. For instance the photo in the video tutorial is mostly fabricated upwards of yellows & greens, with a picayune orange and blue. Just desaturating the yellows and greens makes a massive departure in the feel of the photograph. Taking it a pace further by adjusting our hue so that the oranges and the yellows blend more closely and you've made a dramatic modify to the vibe of the image.

Moody Editing Tip #4: Split Toning

Another way to get closer to that monochromatic color scheme and bring more unity to your edit is by using the split toning tool. This gives you the ability to add a certain color to the shadows and another to the highlights of your prototype. In that location are two different methods to this:

1) Use similar colors to tint your photo in a certain direction.

For instance, adding a nighttime blue to your shadows and a slightly lighter blueish to your highlights will make your entire photo experience colder, which tin can sometimes give it a more moody feeling. Or vice versa yous can add together some oranges and reds to brand the entire photo experience more warm.

2) Use contrasting colors to add more pop to your image

Generally this is won't be the approach yous're looking for when going for a moody photograph with a more monochromatic color scheme, simply sometimes a footling nuance of blue in the shadows and oranges in the highlights tin assist separate your subject from the groundwork and add some actress spice and flavor to your epitome.

Moody Editing Tip #5: Emulate Film

Film photography might be the moodiest photography out in that location. The key is understanding WHY film feels so much more moody, so that we can emulate that movie wait in our editing as much as possible.

Some of the about obvious reasons are film grain, lower clarity and sharpness, and that film fade we all acquaintance with vintage cameras.

This video tutorial covers 5 Tips To Make Your Photos Wait More Similar Film In Lightroom:

Applying these editing tips to your moody photos will assist you heighten the vibe of your images dramatically. One time you sympathise how to edit moody photos without presets, you'll be able to get far better results out of your editing if y'all cull to requite lightroom presets a try.

Tips For Using Presets For Moody Photography:

Editing moody photos starts past getting information technology right in photographic camera, and then knowing how to give your photos a moody vibe without using presets. But in one case yous have these skills mastered, presets tin can be extremely handy in speeding upwardly your workflow and getting you lot those organic, moody images in a fraction of the editing fourth dimension.

If you've ever used presets earlier though, you'll know that they don't always behave the way you await them to! This video tutorial walks through 5 tips for getting the all-time possible results out of moody presets:

Editing Tips For Moody Photography Presets:

#one – Brand sure y'all become it correct in camera.

Editing is meant to enhance what is already there in your photo – Not turn it into something it never was! Matching the prototype to the mood is very of import. Applying a moody preset to a vivid sunny solar day merely won't feel right, no affair what preset pack you endeavour. The all-time investment you lot can make in yourself as a photographer is non some other piece of gear, preset pack or editing tutorial – Its mastering photography fundamentals. Once you larn to work with light, composition and posing, you can create beautiful photos with any mood you like – No fancy editing or presets required.

#2 – White residue & exposure are EVERYTHING

Changing the white balance and exposure in your epitome effects everything in your photo. White balance doesn't only make your photo warmer or colder, it really determines how your editing software interprets shadows and highlights and the tones of individual colors. You'd exist amazed how frequently a elementary change to the white balance and exposure in your image volition take a preset from looks-like-trash to totally awesome!

#iii – Dial in the contrast

Every lighting situation is unique, and because of this information technology'south incommunicable for a preset to know how much contrast you'll need for your specific photo. Oft a elementary contrast adjustment can make-or-pause whether a preset works or not with your photo.

#four – Edit in batches

The easiest way to speed upward your workflow and better the consistency of your edits is to outset editing in batches. Rather than editing each photo from scratch every time, start by selecting i photograph from your set. Employ a preset to this photo and get information technology dialed in perfectly, then sync those settings over to all the other like photos in your shoot. From there, all you have to do is tweak each photo for white balance / exposure as required – Normally this only takes 5-x seconds per photo. Presto!

#v – Utilise adjustment layers

Lighting conditions in existent life are rarely perfect – Which is why using aligning layers in your editing tin be then dang helpful! One of the keys to a moody edit is a nice dark background – Preferably a blurry i. This can be hands enhanced using a unproblematic radial filter or local adjustment brush to paint the background and bring downwards some of the exposure, clarity and saturation. The best photographers out there don't stop with global adjustments like exposure, tone curve etc – They go deep into local adjustments to individually enhance and tweak different parts of the image to tie everything together.

Following these v preset editing tips will give you better, more consequent results when you apply presets to give your photos that dark and moody await.

BONUS TUTORIAL

For portrait + wedding ceremony photographers out in that location, this video tutorial gives a proficient demonstration of an editing workflow for moody portrait photography:

Decision

By now y'all should have a thorough agreement of what it takes to create moody photography, and some practical tools, tutorials and strategies to go out and outset taking moody photos today.

Think, moody photography comes down to 2 main steps:

#1 – Capturing the right look & feel in camera

#ii – Enhancing that mood with editing

The nearly important affair you can do to improve your photography and get better at taking moody photos is to go out and do everything yous tin can do to go the await y'all're going for in your camera without whatever editing.

If you can pull this off, and so editing moody photos is a breeze – You're simply enhancing what is already there, not trying to turn your photo into something its non.

If this tutorial was helpful, do me a huge favor and share it on your fav social platform:

Now get grab your photographic camera and go create something crawly!

-Ryan

p.s

Accept questions? Get out em in the comments below – I respond to every single i!

Click hither to download a free moody vibes preset to practice your editing.

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