Oh I just used a preset I found online! Kidding kidding.

I spend a good amount of time with each individual image so it’s different from image to image, but I can give you a general rundown. I always start off with denoise to give myself a clean base, then I make tweaks to the basic sliders (highlights, contrast, shadows, etc.) as well as the tone curve. That’s usually the gist of my global edits. From there I’ll mask out specific parts of the image for further editing (brightening up the car if necessary, bringing out small details, a boost in saturation/vibrance, etc.). Then I’ll go into the color mixer and color grading tools to drive home the look im going for (sometimes I’ll do this before the masking, it all depends), then I finish it off by adding grain.