Since I began my career as a photographer, I have been fascinated by moody images. Of course, in the beginning, this style was hard to achieve as I had zero experience in photo editing. But I practiced a lot, especially trying to find myself surrounded by cloudy, foggy, and rainy conditions. After years of practicing and trial and error, I finally achieved what I wanted a couple of years ago, and my style even changed how I plan my trips. So this would be my first tip to create moody images.

Then, finding the right balance between hue, saturation, and luminance is crucial. Having complete control over these factors in post-processing lets me create the kind of look I want. If you are a beginner, the following steps can help you with your first moody photograph:

1) Start by adjusting the highlights, whites, shadows, and blacks sliders. This way, you can better control the brightness of your image with each exposure range. I often use a lot of contrast and shadows and bring down the highlights and the blacks.

2) Use the tone curve to emphasize the shadows. Start by changing the tone curve type: Use point curve – this tool allows you to manually add anchor points along the curve, offering better control over your adjustments.

3) Move on to the HSL tool to target and desaturate the most dominant colors in the photo. Scrolling down to the HSL adjustment, start things off by adjusting the hue of your colors as needed.

If some muted tones still are present in the image, try to desaturate the most dominant colors while leaving the less significant ones untouched. Then you can move on to the saturation option.

4) Next, by clicking on the luminance adjustment in the HSL panel, you can brighten desaturated colors with luminance. By targeting the previously desaturated colors, you can help make them pop by increasing their luminance value.

5) You can increase the contrast slider slightly to finish your first moody edit. This adjustment helps to darken some specific shadows and make your overall image pop a little more