Duplicating Joker(2019) Color Grading in Lightroom

In this series, I will be attempting to replicate the color grading of a specific scene in a movie using Adobe Lightroom.

Hi there, my name is Alfredo Ryelcius. I am a photographer based in Singapore. I am also interested in movies, especially the color grading inside them. Hence, I’d like to share with you my color grading technique to mimic a specific look in a film. Today’s movie is Joker (2019).

Image Analysis

Today, we will refer to the above image. Firstly, let us notice the prominent aspects of this color grading.

A very warm tone

We can see that yellow is very dominant across the image, starting from the color of the sunlight to the color reflected by the car. To replicate this image, we can either increase the temperature or introduce yellowish tint to the picture. I prefer the latter option since it can be applied to lots of images, hence making a preset easier.

To introduce the yellowish tint, we can use the tone curve. In the tone curve, we have red, green, and blue curves (RGB). Have you ever heard about CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, black)? RGB is the addition of color, while CMYK is the subtraction of color. Hence RGB is the complementary color of CMY. If we reduce red, we introduce cyan. If we reduce green…