Autumn all year round
George Cairns demonstrates how you can add an attractive autumnal look to your out-of-season shots
How to colour grade in Capture NX-D
Each season supplies us with plenty of attractive and unique photographic opportunities, from blossom and bluebells in spring, to the supremely lush green foliage of summer.
However, if you’re limited to photographing a place at a particular time (while you’re on holiday, for example), then you may only be able to capture that location during a specific season. Fortunately Capture NX-D can actually enable you to travel through time and convert a spring or summer scene into an autumn one!
No, it doesn’t use a timemachine, it does this by utilizing Capture NX-D’S powerful LCH (Lightness, Chroma and Hue) panel. With this you can selectively target the colours of green leaves and grass and then can change their hue to a more autumnal russet red. This allows you to create a season-specific portrait of a location without having to visit there during a particular time of year.
We’ve supplied you with a summer-sourced shot for you to work along with, but you can apply these creative grading techniques to your own photographs if you prefer.
Capture NX-D’S selective colour tweaking tools can be applied to Raw files or JPEGS, so there are no format limitations to the type of photos that you can process using this method.
Open LCH panel
In the Folders panel browse to our supplied autumn_start.jpg. Doubleclick the image’s thumbnail to maximize it. Choose Window>edit. In the Edit panel, click on the LCH icon. Click on the fly-out icon at the top right of the LCH panel and choose Undock to make it float.
Change the hue
Drag the square anchor point downwards until it overlaps warmer, more autumnal, colours. To include a wider range of grassy greens in the adjustment increase the Width slider to 0.14. This changes the grass’s summery green hues to an autumnal russet red.
Sample the green
In the LCH panel set the default Master Lightness dropdown to Hue. Click to select the crosshair-shaped Add Anchor Point tool. Click to sample a stem of green grass. A square point will appear on the horizontal line above similar green pixels in the LCH panel.
Selective colour boost
Set the LCH panel’s dropdown to Chroma, then use the Add Anchor Point eyedropper to sample the autumn grass. Drag the curve’s anchor point upwards to boost the saturation of the autumn colours without oversaturating the child’s skin tones. Increase Width to 0.11.