I’ve said it a million times, the tools used in the video industry are simply better than the tools we use for photography. I bet that every hybrid shooter would love to have something like a vectorscope or a waveform readout inside Lightroom from time to time, but all we get in Lightroom are the histogram and some clipping warnings. And since I started doing YouTube, I began to appreciate how video-oriented tools can enhance technical accuracy as well, and how much they can help in transforming a good shot into a great one. This realization sparked my interest even more and made me look for a way to bring videography-oriented tools into my photography workflow. So today I’m talking about False Color and the way you can use it inside Lightroom.
What is False Color?
False color is an exposure monitoring tool, mostly used by videographers and cinematographers. It works by applying something similar to a heat map on top of your images, so you won’t have to guess your exposure levels anymore. It turns the brightness levels into colors, so you can instantly see which parts of the frame are clipping or underexposed without relying only on histograms or clipping indicators, and with a lot more granularity
My version turns shadows into cool tones and tones that are brighter than 50% gray into warmer colors. I tailored this first iteration to what my brain finds easy to interpret, but I do plan to create a few more versions in the near future. And it doesn’t just use cooler tones for the shadows, progressing through a neutral gray zone for perfect exposure and then into warmer tones for the highlights and brighter areas, but I also tried to give the colors a pleasant look that’s not fully saturated, so it won’t hurt your eyes while working with it. This makes it intuitive to see the contrast and exposure levels across the entire frame while also making it easy to understand. And while there are similar scales out there, I didn’t want to infringe on anyone’s patent, so I designed this one from scratch.
How to get false color in Lightroom?
It all started in DaVinci Resolve. I set up a false color look by mapping different brightness levels to specific hues, using a huge nod tree and finely tweaking it until it looks right to me. A few hours later, when I had the mapping working the way I wanted, I exported it as a 3D LUT in .cube format. That file essentially holds the color translation instructions, so I could carry it into other software. This step can be skipped, as there are a bunch of False Color LUTs available online, either for free or for a small fee. But I wanted to make my own, so down the line, I can adjust and perfect the colors and the transition point between them.
From there, I opened Adobe Camera Raw and baked the LUT into a custom camera profile. To do this, all you need to do is hold ALT or Option while creating a preset in Adobe Camera Raw, and a completely different page will appear. Here, you can save any setting you have applied to a raw file and mix it with a LUT. And while saving, ACR automatically places the profile in the right CameraProfiles directory. So afterwards, when I re-launched Lightroom, my new false color profile showed up in the Camera Profile Browser, letting me toggle it on anytime I need to evaluate exposure in my RAW files using the same False Color scheme I created in Resolve.
Use Cases for False Color
False Color for Monitoring
Most people in the video industry use false color to monitor their exposure while shooting. To do this on most cameras, you will need an external monitor that will superimpose the false color LUT on top of the live preview. This comes in handy for monitoring exposure or getting a quick readout for the intensity of the lights in the scenes.
Photographers, however, rarely want to deal with an external monitor. But if you shoot theater, you can use the FalseColor Pro camera profile inside Lightroom as an alternative. It lets you analyze exposure after taking the shot, without any extra gear. False color can also help you set up lights. For example, when working with multiple lights, it can be difficult to spot hotspots in the background or match the intensity of lights that have different hues. Just take a test shot, apply the FalseColor Pro profile in Lightroom, and you can fine-tune your lighting with precision.
False Color for Editing
And while using False Color for monitoring is the norm in video, I think the real benefit of False Color inside Lightroom comes when trying to get the best exposure out of a RAW file.
Back in the day, most of us would lift the shadows and pull down the highlights in an effort to stretch the dynamic range and maximize the amount of details in the shot. In theory, that worked, but in practice, it often made the image look flat, and sometimes it led to that HDR look that became ultra popular on IG but died off pretty fast. The technique of brightening the dark areas and toning down the bright spots reduces natural contrast and muddies the midtones with too much information that is hard to control afterward. Not to mention that we lose some of the stuff that gives an image its depth and dimension in our chase for details.
So instead, if you switch your image to False Color after fixing the white balance, you can instantly see the contrast, the highlights, and the shadow areas you have in your shot. This way, it’s easy to tell what basic tonal sliders to adjust and where they will have the most effect in your image. This means no more guessing, and you can make sure you have the entire dynamic range in the shot, while maintaining proper contrast throughout the image. Moreover, with the modern AI-based masking features that LR offers, it is super easy to create tonal separation between the subject and the background to give your images that 3d popping effect.
For example, in the photo above, False Color showed me how close the rider and the background were in terms of exposure, so I added some background separation with a mask inside of which I increased exposure and raised shadows. This way I got a bright area behind the subject that helps the composition, brings some highlights into the image, and makes it much easier to color grade the shot afterward.
For me, False Color is also super effective for cinematic portraits, where the strength of the image comes from the contrast ratio between the subject and the background. Instead of forcing every part of the frame into the mid tones, here is much better to let shadows stay rich and keep highlights bright, creating that filmic tension between light and dark. I think this is the real difference between a flat image and one that feels like a still from a movie. I know I did a good job when the light sources in the shot feel bright and the shadows feel rich and contrasty. And using false color made dialing all this in much easier. Since I can instantly see where my tones are falling, and how far apart on the scale they are. It’s quicker to spot if my highlights are creeping too high or my shadows are getting crushed or too bright. That extra layer of precision helps me control the balance between zones without second-guessing, which keeps my recent portraits looking intentional rather than over-processed. And to be honest, this new workflow makes me want to go back and re-edit some of my old photos with this approach.
False Color for Learning
False Color is also one of those tools that can be great for learning. Because it turns the photo into simpler and easier-to-understand shapes. False Color can help photographers figure you patterns of exposures that work for them and their style, and I also find that False Color also helps with judging composition in relation to exposure values.
You know that moment when you look at a photo and you can’t tell why it’s just not looking that great? This might be because all the tones in the photo are too close to each other or because the background does not complement the subject. Things that might not be immediately obvious to a photographer without lots of experience, but luminance values have a super-tight relationship with composition. For example, in the photo below, it might not be immediately obvious how distracting the sun is or how many details are in the snow or the bright sky, as they look rather natural. But when you turn on false color, it becomes obvious in just a second that they are all distractions, and you need to tone them down if you want a cleaner look.
False Color for harmonizing multiple images
Finally, false color offers a simple language to understand. And if you enable it across multiple photos, it will uncover why they might look inconsistent when you put them together. Take my online portfolio, for example. By turning it into False Color, you can immediately see why some photos in there stand out as mistakes, look weak, or are simply distracting, not to mention that the portfolio doesn’t have a cohesive look to it.
- This photo has way less contrast than all of the shots around it. It also has almost no deep shadows and little to no highlights –
- The black point between these 2 photos is different, the one on the right having the black point of the cinematic bars lifted, and when you look at them together, this second one seems to have lower contrast, and it looks a bit washed out.
- The shadows in this silhouette photo are way deeper than the shadows of the images around it
- This shot has lifted black and lowered highlights. I edited this photo like that because I was working on my Filmic Tone Limiter: https://vmoldo.gumroad.com/l/filmictone . On its own, the photo looks great, with those faded tones, but in this context, it tends to look washed out because the photos right next to it offer deeper blacks to compare it to.
And you can see all these observations hold true if you visit my website and look at it without False Color – vmoldo.com
Who is False Color for?
So, after all this, who actually needs a tool like this in their photography workflow? If you’ve made it this far, it’s probably you. Otherwise, you would have probably closed this article a while ago. This isn’t a tool just for the tech-obsessed or the video shooters who want to use a video-oriented tool in Lightroom. This is probably usefull for any photographer who’s ever felt that their edit by guessing what’s right and wrong, who is tired of the endless back-and-forth with sliders, only to end up with a flat, HDR-looking mess.
It’s for the portrait photographer who wants to craft images with cinematic depth, where the light feels bright and the shadows hold onto their mystery. It’s for the studio photographer who wants to set lights with precision and doesn’t like guessing. It’s for the learner who wants to see exposure and composition in a new, intuitive language, moving beyond what the histogram alone can show. It’s for anyone who believes, like I do, that we should be stuck with the set of tools provided by a company
I built this because I was tired of waiting for the photography world to catch up to the video world. I wanted better tools for my photography. And honestly, after I started seeing my RAW files in this new light, I’m wondering how I ever edited without it.
If you want to support my work, you can grab my version on my Lr preset store: https://vmoldo.gumroad.com/
