Normalising image within Lightroom.

KRSTF  wrote Hello Jao! What you are describing is exactly how I approach it at the moment. But that doesn't sound like the proper way and you will always end up with a colour cast, incorrect saturation and might also end-up in situation, where there is just no reference for eye-dropper. So at the end I alway take it to PS, but that is time and storage consuming. But I believe you do understand my issue precisely! All the best. Thank you so much for your energy Krystof

Krystof,

if you choose a neutral profile and don't touch the saturation sliders, you will get consistent saturation as long as your white balance is good. In Lightroom this is most accurately done by eye if you don't have a white reference and your camera tends to misjudge white balance. It is helpful to use some reference images on your screen to do this. The CMYK trick that people used to do in Photoshop doesn't work as there is no CMYK readout in Lightroom. That method is fraught with major issues anyway (it doesn't work for anything but caucasian skin). I know digitaldog is an expert in this field and is not a fan to say it mildly. Personally I have not really been in a situation in which doing this by eye is a problem. I see problems when I shoot with two different cameras that judge white balance differently and in that case I often just select all images from one camera that is off a bit and warm or cool all images and that takes care of most of it. I then refine individual images if necessary.

the best way to approach what you want is to calibrate your camera using a color checker chart and generate a new standard profile based on the camera. Typically you would do this under two lighting conditions - tungsten and daylight - and combine them in a single camera profile that you call in Lightroom. I use a color checker passport and use its built-in software to generate profiles that work well in Lightroom. The difference with the standard profiles is very minor though in my experience and I only do it when accurate color rendition is essential. That rarely happens in landscape photography which is more my bailiwick. Then if you have profiles such as that, you want to always shoot a grey card in the conditions that you are shooting and sync the white balance over your images in Lightroom from the same shoot location and light condition. This will get you consistent color at least as a starting point.

The workflow in Lightroom Classic (and Adobe Camera Raw) is similar to Photoshop. Like many photo editing applications, Lightroom doesn't have a waveform/vectorscope.

In Lightroom, you can get color value readouts of the pixels under the pointer by looking under the histogram when in the Develop module. However, these are RGB values, so you must know the typical RGB values for subjects such as skin tones.

You can then approach your overall and local corrections using any set of color tools in Lightroom, such as:

• Tone curve
• Individual RGB tone curves
• HSL sliders to target specific color ranges and adjust their hue, saturation, luminance
• Graduated Filter, Radial Filter, and Adjustment Brush to apply a local color correction
• Range Mask to limit corrections to a range of tones or colors within a local adjustment

For example, you could correct skin tones in Lightroom by doing the following:

1. Check RGB values under the histogram
2. Adjust RGB curves until they are correct

If you wanted to apply corrections only to the skin tones and not the rest of the image, you could apply a Radial Filter or Adjustment Brush to the areas with skin, then apply Range Mask to isolate and automatically mask the skin tones, then make your color corrections using the local adjustment options. This is similar to the secondary color correction feature in video editing applications. Unfortunately, RGB curves apply only to an entire image and are not available as a local adjustment, so you'd have to use the Temperature, Tint, and Color options to make color changes to a local adjustment.

If your display is calibrated or at least profiled, and you have a profile for your final output conditions, you can use the soft-proofing feature to simulate how the final colors will look. Unfortunately, only RGB profiles can be used at this time, so you can’t soft-proof CMYK output. If you need to work in CMYK most of the time, you’ll need to edit images using Photoshop.

KRSTF  wrote Questions like: How to get the white balance just spot on without reference? How to know ho much saturation should you add or remove to have faithful image? How to get my skin tones perfect and without any tint of that or that. Because there is an equation for that in Photoshop.

You work on a calibrated and profiled display and you subjectively alter the tools (sliders, WB tool etc) to produce a rendering you visually and subjectively desire. There is NO faithful. There is a desired rendering. For print or display:

http://www.lumita.com/site_media/work/whitepapers/files/pscs3_rendering_image.pdf