DIY Photography

Hacking Photography - one Picture at a time

  • News
  • Inspiration
  • Reviews
  • Tutorials
  • DIY
  • Gear
Search

Submit A Story

Creatively Editing an Ordinary Landscape Image in LR4

Oct 3, 2012 by Udi Tirosh Leave a Comment

  • Share
  • Tweet
  • Flipboard
  • WhatsApp

A while back I shared that fact that I was enjoying SLR Lounge’s A-Z Lightroom video tutorials. One of the chapters I liked most is dealt with tweaking and adjusting an image which was hard to expose, turning it into a great landscape image. I asked Post Production Pye and the team over at SLRL for a tutorial on that technique which they gladly shared.

Creatively Editing an Ordinary Landscape Image in LR4

In this tutorial, I want to take an image that was shot several years ago on a Canon 40D in RAW, and show you just what we can do to artistically edit this very plain “walk-up” shot.

Step 1 – Expanding the Dynamic Range

1-creatively-editing-an-ordinary-walk-up-shot

We are going to bring out the dynamic range in our shot in order to really make the detail pop. Bring down the Highlights and Whites by -80 each and lift up the Shadows and Blacks by +80 each. This will shift the majority of our tonal range towards the middle of the histogram to retain more detail in the highlights and shadows. By doing this, we lose the overall contrast of the image, so bring up Contrast all the way up to +100 for this shot. Next, because our image is slightly overexposed, we want to dial down the Exposure by half a stop by sliding the Exposure to the left to -0.50.

How your settings should look:

Creatively Editing an Ordinary Landscape Image in LR4

Here is the image after the base adjustments:

5-creatively-editing-an-ordinary-walk-up-shot

Step 2 – Enhancing the Image with the Brush Tool

Now select the brush tool and adjust the settings to the values below. Increase the brush size and brush over the entire image. This will give us more detail and clarity in the overall image.

creatively-editing-an-ordinary-walk-up-shot

Doing this added a bit too much clarity over-exposes the mountains in the background as well as over some of the clouds. In order to get rid of unnecessary boost in Clarity in these specific areas, hold the ALT key in order to reverse the effect with your brush tool as you paint and erase from the desired area. At any point in time, hit the O key to take a look at the masking Overlay to ensure there were no areas missed (as shown below). Click O again to get out of the mask Overlay view.

7-creatively-editing-an-ordinary-walk-up-shot

Step 3 – Cooling Down Parts of the Image

I want to cool the image a bit in certain areas to enhance the blue tones in the scene. To do so, decrease the brush Temperature to -50 with everything else zeroed. Before brushing, check the “Auto Mask” box at the bottom of the brush settings. This feature will allow Lightroom to provide assistance when painting over edges. Now brush along the ridges of the mountains in the foreground and you should end up with something like the picture below.

The problem with using the Auto Mask feature is that often times Lightroom will not get the mask correct. However, in certain situations like this one, it can still save some time even though we will have to do a little bit of clean up as you will see below.

8-creatively-editing-an-ordinary-walk-up-shot

Click O again to view the mask Overlay, and you will see that the Auto Masking didn’t get the ridges quite right. We need to manually go in and touch up the areas of the ridge that haven’t been brushed completely. We also have to remove areas on the mountainside that have been brushed unintentionally (We only want to be cooling the background, not the foreground).

9-creatively-editing-an-ordinary-walk-up-shot

After cleaning up the ridges of the mountain, brush over the rest of the areas in the sky and background, making sure with the mask Overlay that you aren’t missing any spots.

10-creatively-editing-an-ordinary-walk-up-shot

You will see that the area we just painted is far too cold, so adjust the Temperature slider back towards the warmer side, to get a much more subtle cooling effect. Also, drag the tint just a tiny bit towards the right, about +10, so we can get a little bit of magenta in the clouds and also slightly enhance the blue tones.

11-creatively-editing-an-ordinary-walk-up-shot

Step 4 – Warming Up Parts of the Image

Now we want to do almost the exact same thing for the foreground, but with a warmer brush instead. Adjust the Temperature to +50, again with everything else zeroed. Paint over the mountains just until you get to the sharp ridges on the right side.

At this point, check the “Auto Mask” box again and paint right along the ridge. We have to clean up the ridge, just as we did before. So uncheck the “Auto Mask” box, and while holding ALT, start cleaning up the areas on the clouds where the warm brush may have touched.

12-creatively-editing-an-ordinary-walk-up-shot

We want a richer and warmer yellow to come out of this mountainside, so add some pink by adjusting the Tint slider towards the right (+20 should be just about right). We can also increase the Temperature slightly more (to about 28) to enhance the effect we’re going for.

The image we have so far:

13-creatively-editing-an-ordinary-walk-up-shot

Step 5 – Using the Graduated Filters Tool

After adjusting the colors, click on the graduated filter icon right next to the brush. Select “Exposure” in the dropdown menu, and then slide the Exposure down to -0.5 (with everything else zeroed). Now hold and drag the graduated filter from top to bottom, just enough to darken the skies a bit.

14-creatively-editing-an-ordinary-walk-up-shot

Do the same thing, but this time from the bottom up with the Exposure at -1. Go back to the brush tool and select again Exposure at -1 and paint in the bottom corners, so that the viewers attention is pulled towards the center of the image. Don’t darken it to a complete black, but just brush the corners a bit to slightly darken the edges of the frame.

15-creatively-editing-an-ordinary-walk-up-shot

Step 6 – Final adjustments

Unclick the brush tool, and go back into the basic adjustments panel to make some final tweaks to the image. Boost the Vibrance to +20 to get a subtle boost to the overall colors. Some of the clouds or mountains may have too much of a clarity effect on them so go back to the brush tool and select “Clarity” in the dropdown menu. Decrease the value of Clarity to -40 and start brushing over the areas that have too much of the clarity effect.

Lastly, go under the “Lens Corrections” panel and hit “Manual”. Adjust the “Lens Vignetting” Amount by -15 with the Midpoint at 10. We want a very slight vignette effect for a very natural darkened look to the edges.

creatively-editing-an-ordinary-walk-up-shot

Final Before and After Images

So here is the before and after image of our ordinary walk-up landscape image.

RAW Image

17-creatively-editing-an-ordinary-walk-up-shot

Final Image

18-creatively-editing-an-ordinary-walk-up-shot

Purchase the Lightroom 4 Workshop Collection

For those interested in mastering Lightroom 4, SLR Lounge has developed the Lightroom 4 Workshop Collection which contains all of the education, resources and tools that one would need to operate an entire studio using Lightroom 4. The Lightroom Workshop Collection is composed of the following:

Lightroom 4 A to Z Tutorials DVD – With nearly 14 hours of A – Z video instruction, this workshop on DVD is designed to turn anyone at any experience level into a Lightroom 4 expert.

Lightroom 4 Preset System + DVD – 218 Presets, including 186 Develop Presets, 32 Brush Presets and 30 Mixologies make up the most comprehensive, intuitive and powerful Lightroom 4 Preset System ever created. Color correction, vintage fades, black and white effects, tilt-shift effects, faux HDR, retouching, detail enhancing and virtually any other effect can be created with just a few simple clicks.

Lightroom 4 Workflow System DVD – For advanced Lightroom 4 users, the Workflow System DVD features 7 hours of HD video tutorials teaching exactly how we can cull and process images at over 1,500 images per hour using just Lightroom 4, your keyboard and mouse. The goal is to help you spend more time shooting and working on other aspects of your business and less time in front of the computer.

About This Article

This tutorial is a demonstration of the techniques taught in the Lightroom 4 A to Z DVD and the Lightroom 4 Preset System, both of which are part of the SLR Lounge Lightroom 4 Workshop Collection. The Workshop Collection has become the standard in LR4 education and tools. It contains nearly 30 hours of education and the most comprehensive and powerful preset system developed for Lightroom 4.

One of the reasons that we shoot in the RAW file format is to give us the opportunity to have more control over image processing. The great thing about photography is that techniques, tools and our overall skill set are all improving over time.

FIND THIS INTERESTING? SHARE IT WITH YOUR FRIENDS!

  • Share
  • Tweet
  • Flipboard
  • WhatsApp

Related posts:

Default ThumbnailCreatively Using A Snow Globe In Time Lapse Know The Difference Between Correct Exposure And Creatively Correct Exposure Photographer Creates Mesmerizing Macro Images of Water Droplets on Ordinary Objects Turn ordinary objects into extraordinary photos using only a UV light

Filed Under: Inspiration Tagged With: light painting, Software

About Udi Tirosh

Udi Tirosh is an entrepreneur, photography inventor, journalist, educator, and writer based in Israel. With over 25 years of experience in the photo-video industry, Udi has built and sold several photography-related brands. Udi has a double degree in mass media communications and computer science.

« Portfolio Building: Shooting SomthingCons
How To Build A Rain Machine »

Submit A Story

Get our FREE Lighting Book

DIYP lighting book cover

* download requires newsletter signup
DIYPhotography

Recent Comments

Free Resources

Advanced lighting book

Recent Posts

  • Tokina announces shoe-mounted red dot finder for long telephoto lenses
  • Laowa announces the super wide FF 15mm f/2 Zero-D for Leica M
  • How I took challenging Aurora photos on a steep “platform” cliff at -20 °C
  • How I shot abstract light orbs with a 360 camera and camera rotation
  • Color theory, RAW files, and RAW developers

Alex Baker is a portrait and lifestyle driven photographer based in Valencia, Spain. She works on a range of projects from commercial to fine art and has had work featured in publications such as The Daily Mail, Conde Nast Traveller and El Mundo, and has exhibited work across Europe

Dave Williams is an accomplished travel photographer, writer, and best-selling author from the UK. He is also a photography educator and published Aurora expert. Dave has traveled extensively in recent years, capturing stunning images from around the world in a modified van. His work has been featured in various publications and he has worked with notable brands such as Skoda, EE, Boeing, Huawei, Microsoft, BMW, Conde Nast, Electronic Arts, Discovery, BBC, The Guardian, ESPN, NBC, and many others.

John Aldred is a photographer with over 20 years of experience in the portrait and commercial worlds. He is based in Scotland and has been an early adopter - and occasional beta tester - of almost every digital imaging technology in that time. As well as his creative visual work, John uses 3D printing, electronics and programming to create his own photography and filmmaking tools and consults for a number of brands across the industry.

Dunja Djudjic is a multi-talented artist based in Novi Sad, Serbia. With 15 years of experience as a photographer, she specializes in capturing the beauty of nature, travel, and fine art. In addition to her photography, Dunja also expresses her creativity through writing, embroidery, and jewelry making.

Copyright © DIYPhotography 2006 - 2023 | About | Contact | Advertise | Write for DIYP | Full Disclosure | Privacy Policy