Using Lightroom can be tough if you don’t know what you’re doing, especially when you want to try and create a certain look. Fortunately for you, many others have tried and succeeded at creating the looks they want in Lightroom, and some are so kind that they’ve shared how to do it.
If you’re here, you want to learn how to create a rustic, bohemian look to your images. Don’t be intimidated by the wide array of customization options that Lightroom gives you – it’s easy to work with when you have a guide. There are even boho presets that can help you achieve this look with ease!
The Boho Look
Before we get started, it’s worth mentioning what the boho look is and how you achieve it. In Lightroom, you’ll need to do the following things to create a bohemian style:
- Shift color hue to find vintage colors.
- Lighten curves with both bright and matte tones.
- Add an ethereal glow to the image.
Step 1: Load Your Image
To start work on any image, you first need to load it into Lightroom. If you’re trying to nail a bohemian style, it’s best to use an outdoor image that includes foliage, so you can better appreciate the vintage color scheme and general ‘airiness’ of the image.
Step 2: Change The Hue
Then, to get started with editing the image, find the ‘Edit’ panel and click on it. There should be another panel called ‘Color’ and, after clicking on that, ‘Color Mixer.’ There will be a field saying ‘Adjust:’ next to a drop-down menu, which you should click on and choose ‘Hue.’
Now that you’re altering the hue of your image, you need to pay attention to the Aqua and Green colors. Move both of them to +50, or anywhere near that part of the sliding scale, as long as it produces the kind of boho color scheme you’re going for. The closer to blue you get when sliding them, the more bohemian coloration you get.
Step 3: Change Saturation
You’re not done yet. Next, you need to alter the saturation of the image to bring out the colors more. You do this by clicking the same Color Mixer Adjust settings and finding ‘Saturation.’ Leave red and orange at 0 but, from yellow to magenta, make them -50 or somewhere near that figure.
The reason we leave the reds is that they keep skin tones looking natural. By now, the other elements in the image should look lighter.
Step 4: Tone Curving
The sharpness of edges and curves can tell us a lot about an image. When an edge/curve is distinct, it makes the image look harsher and individual objects stand out more than others. This is great for certain kinds of photography but, if you’re after a bohemian style, it can be noisy and distracting to the eye.
Instead, you want to harmonize with your natural background by smoothening those edges. It’s often referred to as a lighter, airy look as opposed to ‘heavy.’
To do this, find the ‘Light’ panel and ‘Tone Curve’ inside that. There will be a gray scale that you can set to ‘Point Curve’ mode. This lets you tone curve the image with a greater degree of accuracy. Somewhere in the middle of the line that is represented, add a point and then slowly drag it upwards.
You should see the image brightening, gradually smoothing edges without sacrificing other valuable details in the image. Next, you need to drop the whites in the image by clicking the right end of that line and moving it downwards. This adds the matte effect that is useful for darker hues in boho images.
Of course, you could keep the whites if you really like the results. It’s all about what you like for your images.
Step 5: Ethereal Glow-Up
Lastly, we need to add an ethereal glow to your image. You need to click the ‘Effects’ panel and bring the ‘Dehaze’ setting down. However much you set it down, you need to do the same in the opposite direction for ‘Clarity’ to bring back some detail. So, if your de-hazing is minus 30, you should add 30 to clarity.
Conclusion
There you have it, you should have the ideal bohemian-style image in Lightroom. Of course, our steps are guidelines that can be altered by you whenever you want. Try experimenting with your image to produce the exact results you want!