Create a Beautiful Dark Green Moody Look in Photoshop – Copycat Wednesday #2

One of Photoshop Training Channel’s subscribers creatively suggested recreating Lightroom’s splash screen with the beautiful dark green moody look in Photoshop.

The shoutout goes to George Rotan who did the original work—you should check out his portfolio!

In this tutorial, you will only be using the Camera Raw Filter to replicate the lightroom splash screen color grading.

Tutorial Image

If you want to follow along step-by-step, you can opt to use the same photo used in this tutorial by clicking the link here!

Let’s begin!

Crop the Photo

Cropping the image can help you center the subject and make it easier to upload on Instagram once you finish editing this image.

Go to the Toolbar and select the Crop tool.

On your Options bar, click on the drop-down menu for Original Ratio and set the new ratio to 1:1 (Square).

Reposition the framing of the Crop tool to center the dog, and click-and-drag on the corner handles to resize the frame as needed.

On your Layers panel, right-click on the layer and select Convert to Smart Object. By converting it into a Smart Object, we can add Filters, Adjustment layers, and edit it non-destructively.

Adjust the Image’s Brightness with Camera Raw

Next, go to Filter > Camera Raw Filter.

What was before a plug-in, the Camera Raw has been integrated into Photoshop as a Smart Filter!

You can now enhance saturation, contrast, clarity, vibrance, and more in your images while preserving the original properties of your file.

Since you are aiming for a moody photo, start by adjusting the Exposure to bring down the brightness of the image. 

With the image darkened down a bit, it’s time to add more Contrast to make the dark pixels darker and make the bright pixels brighter.

Next, decrease the Highlights to avoid the whites from becoming super white.

By increasing the Contrast, you may have lost essential details from the darker pixels, but you can retrieve the details by increasing the Shadows and adjusting the slider to the right.

Adjust the Texture to Make the Image Pop

Since the Texture accentuates the details of the skin, hair, or bark, we can further enhance the richness of the dog’s fur by increasing the Texture slider.

Next, increase the Clarity as well since this adds contrast to edge pixels and further enriches the details of the photo.

Make a Vignette with the Radial Filter

Adding a vignette helps to draw the attention of the viewers solely to the subject, but do not be using the Vignette from the Effects panel. Instead, select the Radial Filter.

Then, click-and-drag on your image to expand the circle frame.

Then, click on this icon and select Reset Local Correction Settings. 

At the bottom of the Properties panel, set the Effect as Outside so the effect applies outside the circle frame.

Decrease the Exposure, even more, to darken the parts of the image outside of the circle frame, and reduce the Sharpness to soften these parts as well.

Use the Graduated Filter to darken the bottom of the image.

On your Options bar, select the Graduated Filter.

Then, click-and-drag the rectangular frame, which depicts the range of the gradation.

Next, double-click on the Sharpness slider to reset it if you don’t like a blurry adjustment.

Reduced the Exposure to half of the current value and reduced the Shadows to reveal more details in the darker pixels.

Use the Adjustment Brush Tool to Darken the Photo Selectively

Double-click on the Shadows to reset it. 

Then, decrease the Highlights even more.

Using the Brush tool, paint over certain areas such as the leaves right below the dog’s muzzle to make it darker and ultimately make the subject stand out.

Use the Calibration Tab to Recreate the Green Moody Look in Photoshop

To go back to the Basic color correction panel, you can double-click on the Hand tool for it to reappear on the workspace.

You should be able to see the adjustments you made earlier. Since the temperature of the image looks too “cold”, you can add more warmth by increasing the Temperature slider.

Now that it looks too saturated, decrease the Saturation until it looks similar to the image in Lightroom’s splash screen.

Go to the Calibration tab, and from there, adjust the Green Primaries by dragging the slider to the right and achieving a cooler tone of green.

Decrease the Saturation value by dragging the slider to the left.

Use the HSL Sliders to Fine-Tune the Color Correction

To truly achieve the green moody look in Photoshop, use the HSL Adjustment to gain more control over the colors of your image by adjusting the Hue, Saturation, and Luminance of each color.

On the Hue tab, adjust the Greens by dragging the slider to the right to match with the green hue in Lightroom’s splash screen.

Then, adjust the Yellow slider to the left for a cooler hue.

Now, you can work with Luminance to control the brightness or the darkness of the color.

On the Greens slider, drag it to the right to make them brighter. 

The Saturation tab is where I can manually adjust the intensity of the color, whether to be dull or vivid. For the Greens, I will reduce the Saturation by dragging the slider to the left.

Now that you have completely set the color of the vegetation, it’s time to color correct the dog!

On the Saturation tab, increase the intensity of the dog’s fur by dragging the Orange slider to the right.

Increase the Yellow as well since the fur has a faint tint of that color.

On the Luminance tab, you can genuinely make the dog the focal point by brightening it than the rest of the image through dragging the Orange slider to the right.

If you adjust the Yellow drastically, you might notice how the color is both in the vegetation and in the dog’s fur, so adjust accordingly. 

Change the Dog Tag’s Color

Since the dog tag looks a bit distracting in contrast to the rest of the image, tone it down by selecting the Brush tool and selecting Reset Local Correction Settings.

The next step is to paint over the dog tag.

Then, go back to your workspace and then decrease the Saturation.

Click on Color to bring out the Color Picker window. From there, you can select a shade of green that perfectly matches the rest of the vegetation. Once you have found the perfect color, press OK to exit the window.

If the painting process has affected other areas such as the fur, go to Range Mask and click on the drop-down menu. From the list, select Luminance.

On the Luminance Range, drag the slider to the left, so it only affects the brighter areas and not on the darker leaves.

If the dog tag is too bright, subdue it by decreasing the Luminance or the Exposure.

Going back to the Luminance tab in the HSL Adjustments, make the dog darker by dragging the Oranges slider to the left.

Add Selective Highlights with the Adjustment Brush    

Using the Adjustment Brush tool, brighten the dog and make him stand out more.

Select Reset Local Correction Settings first before proceeding to paint.

On the bottom of the Adjustment Brush panel, you can customize the Size, Feather, Flow, and Overlay of the brush to control its properties.

Then, start painting over the dog while adjusting the Exposure, Clarity, and Texture for it to stand out more among the vegetation.

By only using the Camera Raw Filter, you can create a dark green moody look of Lightroom’s splash screen in Photoshop!

I hope this tutorial has been informative for you and that you may use some of the techniques I used for your future photo edits.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for more free Photoshop video tutorials.

You can also find us on Facebook and Instagram.

Final Image

Drag The Slider To See Before & After