The Variance Slider within the LightRoom Point Color tool
Lightroom tip
For those of you who use the Adobe tools for your photo editing- Adobe just released their Fall update- with a host of new features.
One of the most significant is a new function within the Point Color Tool. The new function is called "Variance" and it helps to either make similar colors merge to something more uniform, or to accentuate subtle color differences to help a scene pop. This can be useful in a few different scenarios.
Did your Polarizer make a portion of your sky darker than the rest? Just select the sky, go to Color Mixer- Point Color- and pick a sky tone you want to use as your reference. Then just slide the variance slider to the left to even out your sky tones.
Did you take a portrait of someone and they have uneven skin tones? Just create a skin mask, then use point color to pick a preferred skin tone, and again slide the variance slider to the left to even out the tones in the skin.
Do you want your fall foliage colors to either be more uniform, or more varied? Just create a landscape mask for your foliage, and then use Point Color to either accentuate the existing color variances in the foliage, or to make them more uniform.
A brief one minute YouTube video by @AustinJamesJackson quickly demonstrates the use of this tool. It can be found at https://www.youtube.com/shorts/aNoCge6zil8
There is also a 4 minute podcast below which discusses the new tool and ways in which it can be used. A slideshow of images accompanies the audio.
A four minute podcast discussion of the new Variance slider within the Color Picker portion of the Lightroom Color Mixer.
