It’s that time of year. Most people think nature is taking a beautiful turn. I think it is at least. Trees are budding, early flowers are starting to show, and grass is waking back up.
Unfortunately for photographers we are plagued with the color of the new grass. It’s often neon and frustrating to get the colors correct.
Sometimes that neon grass is caused by too much yellow and if you warmed up your photo any in processing, you’ll notice the greens probably jumped out at you even more. So usually I concentrate on the green and yellow colors in processing.
In processing you can correct for the neon grass by going into the hue and saturation levels. Here you’ll play with the yellows, greens, aquas, and blues in the luminance, saturation and hue sliders. If you are in Photoshop rather than Lightroom or ACR then choose the hue and saturation adjustment layer and choose the color from the drop down that defaults to master and choose the colors you want to work on.
Typically I start with luminance and bring down the yellows and greens. I adjust by starting with the yellows which sometimes make all the difference. I might try a little on the aquas and blues too.
Then I move to the hues and play with moving the yellows to more green. I’ll also play a little with the greens and blues to get the colors I want.
Then I’ll move to the saturation sliders and desaturate a little of the yellows, greens, blues, and aquas, depending on their prevelance. Personally my style is a bit desaturated anyway so if you like more saturation you may find you don’t touch any of these.
After that I’ll flip between the three sliders to tweak it until I get what I want.
While you play, you want to pay attention to the skin color of your subject and if you’re in Photoshop you can mask off the effects if needed.
I sincerely urge you to try using these sliders yourself, but if you need a quick adjustment and find these work for you – I’ve included 3 neon grass Lightroom presets for immediate and free download for you! There are three – a light touch, medium and strong correction. They are below!
Original
My Go To
Light
Medium
Strong
I used the same photo on these, but I would expect you would use the preset according to the one you needed – whether your grass is only a little neon or a lot. Also pay attention to what it does to the rest of your colors – make sure it doesn’t make anything else wonky. And please adjust to your liking!
You can download them here!
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