EVOL 05 — DAYLIGHT
Open shade, and sun and shade in one frame. Free Lightroom presets.
rezaevol.com


WHY THESE EXIST
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Open shade doesn't just make skin blue. The blue cast is the part white
balance fixes. What's left after that is the actual problem, and it's two
things happening at once in opposite directions.

SKIN LOSES COLOUR. Even after a perfect white balance, skin in open shade
comes out about 15% less saturated than the same skin in sun, and drifts
toward yellow. That isn't a white balance error — it survives a correct
one — which is why no amount of pushing the Temperature slider brings the
life back.

THE GREENERY GAINS COLOUR. In exactly the same light, foliage gets more
saturated, not less.

So someone standing in open shade in front of a hedge is being drained at
the same moment the hedge behind them is being boosted. They meet in the
middle, and that's why shade portraits look sallow and flat even when the
white balance is right. That's what this pack is for.


HOW TO USE IT
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Set your white balance and exposure first, as always. Then:

    00a  Open Shade    a subject in the shade
    00b  Sun & Shade   both in the same frame
    00c  Full Sun      direct midday light

Or build it yourself:

    01  Shade    a Light, b Full   — takes the green out of shade
    02  Skin     a Natural, b Warm — puts the colour back in a face
    03  Greens   a Tame, b Green Wall
    04  Sky
    05  Shape    a Soft, b Full    — gives flat light some form

Same number = same job = pick ONE. Different numbers stack freely.

The three colour slots are deliberately independent — 02 only touches
skin's hues, 03 only greens, 04 only the sky. So you can fix a face
without the grass moving, which is usually what you want.


SUN AND SHADE IN ONE FRAME
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This one isn't a white balance problem, and no global setting will fix it.

A sunlit subject and a shaded one in the same picture are 3 to 4 stops
apart in brightness and — the part people miss — a long way apart in
colour. Whatever single white balance you pick, one of them is wrong.

For scale: correcting open blue-sky shade to daylight is about the same
size of colour shift as converting tungsten film to daylight. The old
trick of putting an 81B warming filter on for shade closes less than 40%
of the gap. It was always a partial fix; the arithmetic just says so out
loud.

Since the problem is local, the fix has to be local. That's what M1 in the
masked folder does — it warms only the shaded part of the frame, using a
LOCAL temperature that doesn't touch your own white balance at all.


A FEW THINGS WORTH KNOWING
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  02b is stronger than darker skin usually needs. Shade rotates light skin
  a fair way toward yellow and darker skin barely at all, so the same
  correction isn't the same correction on every face. The presets taper by
  tone to allow for that, but check 02b before you commit to it.

  Open shade has almost no modelling, and there's a number behind that: a
  surface turned fully sideways to an open sky still gets half the light,
  so the whole range across a face is only about one stop. Under sun it's
  effectively unlimited. That's what 05 is stretching back out.

  A clear sky sits at a hue exactly between Lightroom's Aqua and Blue
  sliders — both act on it, neither is centred on it, which is why moving
  one alone always looks wrong. 04 moves both, in opposite directions, to
  pull a big sky together into one colour instead of a cyan-to-blue smear.

  A bright sky in the same frame as a sunlit subject routinely clips its
  blue channel. Once that happens the sky goes flat cyan and the gradient
  across it disappears. 04 pulls it back off the ceiling.


WHY THERE'S NO GRAIN IN THIS PACK
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Every other pack in the line is imitating a film. This one isn't — it's a
correction for something cameras genuinely get wrong in daylight. Adding
grain would be pretending it's a look.

It stacks cleanly under any of the other four, so take the grain from
whichever of those you're using.


WHAT THEY WON'T TOUCH
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    White Balance · Temperature · Tint
    Exposure · Contrast · Highlights · Shadows · Whites · Blacks
    Vibrance · Saturation · Sharpening
    Camera profile · Lens corrections · Crop
    Colour Grading — so Nightfall's presets still work on top
    Masks — the main pack has none at all


THE TWO MASKED EXTRAS — READ THIS FIRST
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The bonus folder has two presets that add a MASK, and masks work
differently from everything else:

    LIGHTROOM ADDS PRESET MASKS. It never replaces them.
    NO PRESET CAN REMOVE A MASK. Not these, not anyone's.
    APPLY ONE TWICE AND YOU GET TWO. Delete the spare by hand in the
    Masking panel.

That's how Lightroom works, not something wrong with these files. It's
also why the main pack has no masks and none of the one-click looks
contains one. The two folders are separate, so you can install the main
pack and never see a mask.

Needs Lightroom Classic 11 or newer, or Camera Raw 14 or newer.

  M1  SHADE LIFT
      Selects the shaded part of the picture and warms it on its own, so
      both halves of a sun-and-shade frame can be right at once. Uses a
      local temperature — your own white balance is untouched.

  M2  SUN HOLD
      Closes the same gap from the other end: cools and holds back the
      sunlit part instead of lifting the shade. Use it with M1 when the
      split is wide, or on its own when it's the bright half that's the
      problem.


INSTALLING
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LIGHTROOM CLASSIC
  Develop → Presets panel → the + button → Import Presets.
  If nothing appears, quit Lightroom completely and reopen it.

LIGHTROOM DESKTOP (cloud)
  File → Import Profiles & Presets → select the zip.

LIGHTROOM MOBILE
  Open a photo → Edit → Presets → tap "Yours" → three-dot menu →
  Import Presets. The import option only lives under "Yours".

No paid Lightroom plan needed.


USING IT WITH THE OTHER PACKS
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This is the one that goes UNDER the others. It's a correction, so run it
first and put a look on top.

  · With Emulsion or Reversal: those write the tone curve, so use their
    curve rather than 05 Shape — whichever you click last wins.
  · With Nightfall: no conflict worth worrying about. This pack leaves
    Colour Grading alone specifically so Nightfall's illuminant presets
    still work.
  · With Silver: 01 through 04 are colour corrections, so apply them
    before converting to black and white — the mixer reads the colours
    underneath, so the correction still feeds the conversion.


LICENCE
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Free. Use it on anything you shoot — personal, client, prints, commercial.
No attribution required, though it is always nice.

Please don't resell the files, include them in a paid bundle, re-host the
download elsewhere (link to rezaevol.com instead), or repackage them under
another name.

Provided as-is. You keep every right to the photographs you make.

© 2026 Reza Evol · rezaevol.com
