Lightroom Split Toning vs Color Grading: What Changed
~5 min read
If you learned Lightroom before 2020, you learned split toning. If you learned after, you have never seen it. Here is what changed, what carried over, and how to think in the new panel.
What split toning was
Split toning was two color wheels: pick a hue and saturation for the highlights, pick a hue and saturation for the shadows. It came from darkroom toning, where paper was soaked in chemical baths that tinted the light or dark parts of a print. Digitally, it was how photographers added warmth to skin and highlights while cooling shadows – the foundation of the film-inspired look.
What replaced it
The Color Grading panel keeps the highlight and shadow wheels and adds three things: a midtones wheel, a global wheel that tints the whole frame, and blending and balance sliders that control how much the tonal ranges overlap and where the midpoint sits. Everything split toning did still works; the new controls just remove the old panel’s biggest blind spot, which was the midtones – where skin and most of the frame actually live.
Why the old model still matters
Nearly every popular grade is still a split-tone idea at heart: warm highlights, cool shadows. The teal-and-orange blockbuster look, the warm-fade portrait look, the moody cool-shadow landscape look – all of them are two colors assigned to two tonal ranges. Learn the new panel’s controls, but think in the old panel’s terms. It keeps grades simple, and simple grades survive trends.
Migrating old presets
You do not have to. Lightroom maps legacy split-tone settings into the color grading wheels automatically, and old catalogs and presets render as they did. The one habit worth updating: when you build new presets, build them in the color grading panel so the midtone and blending values are saved too. A preset built only on the highlight and shadow wheels leaves the new panel’s best controls empty.
Two starter recipes
Warm film look: highlights wheel to a soft orange around 5-10% saturation, shadows to a faint teal at similar strength, midtones untouched. Cool editorial look: shadows toward blue at 10-15%, highlights nearly neutral with just a hint of warmth, then nudge the balance slider toward the shadows to widen the cool range. Start at half the saturation you think you want; these wheels are felt more than seen when they are working.
Frequently asked questions
Where did split toning go in Lightroom?
It was replaced. Lightroom’s old Split Toning panel – two color wheels for highlights and shadows – became the Color Grading panel in late 2020. Your old edits still render correctly, and the new panel does everything split toning did, plus midtones, a global wheel, and blending controls. Look for Color Grading in the Develop panel, below the tone curve.
Did the change break my old split-tone presets?
Mostly no. Lightroom automatically maps old split-tone settings into the new color grading wheels when you apply an old preset or open an old catalog, and the results are very close to the original look. Where things drift is in edge cases with heavy luminance adjustments – worth a spot check on any preset you rely on for client work, but everyday split-tone presets carry over fine.
Should beginners learn split toning or color grading?
Learn color grading – it is the tool that exists now – but understand the split-toning idea, because it is still the right mental model. Coloring the shadows one direction and the highlights another is the core of almost every popular grade. The new panel just adds a midtone wheel and finer control over how the ranges blend.
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