Fashion editorial bold: firm contrast and rich, clean colour

A magazine finish: neutral white balance, firm contrast with clean blacks, and reds and blues with a bit more depth. Skin keeps its own colour.

Groom seeing the bride for the first time in a garden, in True to camera Groom seeing the bride for the first time in a garden, in Fashion editorial bold True to cameraFashion editorial bold

Drag to compare. Left of the line is True to camera, the plainest look; right of it is Fashion editorial bold at full strength, rendered from the same file.

Portrait of a woman in a charcoal coat, in Fashion editorial bold
A portrait in even studio light
Couple dancing among sparklers at night, in Fashion editorial bold
Sparklers on a night dance floor, under string lights
From the list of all 54 looks
What it doesNeutral whites, firm contrast, crisp blacks, richer reds and blues
Good forFashion and bridal editorials, styled shoots

When we'd reach for it

Fashion and bridal editorials, styled shoots, brand portraits and couture details.

When we wouldn't

Soft natural-light family sessions, where firm contrast looks staged.

The recipe

These are the settings stored in the look, drawn rather than listed. They sit on top of your camera's own colour and the exposure and white balance CullTone sets for each photo, so the same look lands a little differently on every frame.

Tone curve Dashed line: no change. Points are where the look bends the curve.
Colour grading Dark dot: the tint in the shadows. Light dot: the tint in the highlights. Further from the centre means stronger.
  • Contrastmore
  • Highlightsless
  • Warmthless
  • Vibrancemore
SlidersEach bar starts at the centre: right means more, left means less. The scale is CullTone's own, so it doesn't map one to one onto Lightroom's sliders.

Every look has a strength from 0 to 1.5. At 0 you get the plain camera-matched edit, at 1 the look as drawn here, and above 1 more of everything it does. More on reading curves in tone curves for photographers.

Close to this one

All 54 looks side by side

Try Fashion editorial bold on your own photos

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