I edit my photos National Geographic style. You'll be able to edit yours the same way in less than five minutes. Okay guys, first of all, what do I mean byNational Geographic style? When I think about National Geographic, I think abouticonic photos. The only problem is that most of those photos were shot on film. Now, if you wantthat film look specifically just shoot on film because you can try to simulateit with Photoshop and presets but it will never look the same. So, what I wantto show you is how I edit my photos to create that feeling of exploring theworld and experiencing cultures. That's what I mean when I say NationalGeographic style. It's not a film look but it's adding extra warmth andcontrast–atmosphere–to your digital photos and at the end you can saveeverything we did in a preset and edit your photos the same way in less thanfive minutes.
Now, I'm going to use the Camera Raw plugin from Photoshop but youcan do exactly the same in Lightroom. So, it doesn't matter what you use. Okay,let's get going. Okay, so I have opened one of my favorite photos from India inCamera Raw and I'll use this one as an example. We'll start here in thecalibration window now this is normally where you set the calibration for yourcamera but I found that the settings I use worked good for my Pentax camera aswell as my Canon cameras. So, try it out and see what it does if it doesn't lookgood then skip this step. And I set the Reds to 15. Saturation minus 5. GreenPrimary plus 25. Saturation minus 20. The next thing that we need to do is herethe HSL adjustments. Here we can change all the colors the hue, saturation andluminance now just follow my lead and put thesettings in. You can experiment here but don't do it too long at a time becauseafter half an hour, you can't see the difference anymore. So, here we gothe Reds, we'll go for plus 15. We're talking about a hue tab now. Make sureyou're in the right tab. The Orange is minus 6.We go on. No, I'm sorry +6. The Yellows minus five. The Greensplus fifteen.
The aquas zero. The Blues we'll go for plus five and the two othersliders we're leaving zero. Then on to the saturation. The Reds were going forminus 30 and the Orange is plus five. The Yellows zero. The Greens minus 50. Don'twant too much green in there. The Aquas was minus 25. The Blues plus 10. The Purplesminus 30 and the Magentas minus 30. Then, the last tab. The Luminance. The Redsminus 20. Oranges minus 5. Yellows minus 15. The Greens minus 10. TheAqua zero. Blues minus 20. And the magentas minus. Okay. That's it for the HSL adjustmentsand then we come at the part where the magic happens the tone curves.Now, there's one, there's two different curves. A parametric one and the pointcurve. For the parametric one, I'll just set a basic slight S curve. Now,you can just use the same settings here. For lights we set it to 10 and theshadows go to minus 20 and then you see those little triangles here. We're goingto adjust these two. The first one we'll slide to 18. The second one to 45.
There,and the last one to 75. Now, the difference between those two curves isthe parametric curve is a simple curve where you can adjust the basichighlights, shadows and mid-tones of your photo. Now, the point curve isgets interesting because there you can change the curve per channel. You can usethe red, blue or green channel and change it accordingly. That's what we're gonnado here. We'll just leave the RGB channel alone and we'll ju... we'll go for the redchannel. So, what I want to do first is set the same curve for all threechannels. You can use the input and output to get exactly the same curves. So,we'll start with the first point. Just click on the curve and it will add ananchor point. The first one will set at 31 and the output at 8 then createanother one and we'll set it at 48 and 19. And then, here in the middle we'll setanother one that goes to 114, 123 and then the last one here goes to 185 and 199. Okay, and we'll do exactly the samefor green. First one, thirty one. Second one, wait, sorry, 31, eight. The second pointwe go for 48, 19. The third point 114 and 123 and the last one 185. 185 to 199. Then the blue exactly thesame. First, 131 eight. Second, 148, 19. The middle one 114, 123 and the last one it'sabove here 185 to 199. Now, what I want to do is leave theblue and the green the same curve and I'm gonna change the red one slightly.The top point here, I'm gonna pull it down a little bit because I don't wanttoo much red in the highlights.
So, pull it down a little bit. You can also usethe input/output just put it to one seventy nine and one nine one. Okay, sothat's the point curve. It's basically the most important thing of my editinghere because you can change the whole look of your photo by dragging the curveslightly up or down. The whole feel of the photo changes and now we come to thelast part and that's the basics of the photo. Now, we can see here his faceit's way too dark. So, I want to up the exposure a little bit to 35 maybe. Thenthe shadows because his face is too bright and maybe also the highlights.Take those down maybe. White a lot. The contrast a little bit less and that's it.That's how I like to edit my photos to get this 'National Geographic style' iswhat I call it. Now, once you've done all these steps just save it in a preset youcan do that here. And go to save settings. There. Just saveit give it a name and then you can use this preset for different photos. I'llshow you how. So, we have this photo and we can just apply the preset that wemade here. I called it NatGeo.
You click on it. You'll see it's way too dark now. Theonly thing we have to do now is work with the basics and we can do everythingfrom here now. You don't need to mess again with the point curves or theparametric curves or all those luminance, saturation and hue settings. Just leavethose alone just work with the basic settings.for this photo you'll see it's dark so, I'll go brighter with the exposure. Iwant it a little bit warmer so we can change the temperature and maybe also alittle bit... and maybe also bring back the shadows a little bit more. And you can use this preset forlandscapes, portraits, street photos. It really doesn't matter. I'll show youanother example with the photo I took in Kuala Lumpur. Heavily underexposed by theway because I wanted the detail in the street sign. So, apply the preset go backto the basics. Let's go for a little bit more exposure and also contrast for thisone. A little bit warmer and maybe for this one we can up the saturation also alittle bit more. There you go. Okay, guys and that's it. Once you have the presetit's super easy just apply the preset and work with the basic settings.
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