One common concern when photographing outdoor photos under challenging light is that the images we capture don’t appear as impressive on the computer as the scene we witness through the viewfinder. If that sounds familiar today’s five-minute Lightroom tutorial will set you straight in a hurry.

Instructor Neil Borg is a self-taught pro specializing in travel and landscape photography, and he’s an expert behind the computer. He kicks off this episode with a quick description of the problem. “One of the most important post-processing skills is the ability to extract color from photos.” He explains why shooting in Raw provides maximum control and versatility when tackling this essential task.

The goal is to achieve vibrant tones while keeping things looking natural, and Borg demonstrates simple global and selective enhancements for “adding some POP” without going overboard and risk messing up the shot. This involves taking time to carefully evaluate an image to determine a strategic plan before jumping into the enhancements.

Borg’s sample image is a flat and uninspiring seascape shot with dull colors and less than optimum composition, but it does have potential. He’s working in Lightroom, but everything you’ll learn can be easily accomplished with just about any other post-processing software you use. His goal is to “increase the vibrance of colors individually in order to make certain tones stand out more than others.

He begins with a few global adjustments, the first of which is to change the profile from Adobe Color to Adobe Landscape, and that immediately makes his image slightly more vibrant. Then he significantly reduces highlights and increases shadows. You might expect him to also crank up Vibrance, but Borg avoids this step for now because doing so “will increase color everywhere, and that’s not something we’d like to do.”

The real magic of Borg’s approach occurs with the selective enhancements he makes to various portion of the photo, and he uses a number of Color Range masks to accomplish this straightforward task. As you’ll see, “this allows us to select a range of colors in order to be able to affect particular areas that need to be enhanced in indifferent ways.”

Borg walks you through the step-by-step process that makes the image far more compelling, and then demonstrates a few tricks for refining the result. The tutorial concludes with a bit of careful cropping that improves the composition of the shot.

There’s much more to see on Borg’s instructional YouTube channel that has almost two million devoted subscribers. So make a point to take a close look and see what he has to offer.

We also recommend watching the related tutorial we posted with another pro who demonstrates the best way to shoot and edit beautiful spring flower photographs for images that pop off the screen.

Lightroom is jam-packed with transformative features, and some don’t get the attention they deserve. According to instructor Brian Matiash, one good example is the oft-ignored Intersect Masking capabilities.

Matiash is a post-processing expert whose instructional YouTube channel has a simple motto: “Making pictures better” with straightforward image-editing tools that anyone can master. He kicks of this episode by explaining how to enhance images with Intersect Masking—a lesser-known technique he says, “could be Lightroom’s most powerful tool.”

In barely 15 minutes you’ll learn three ways to use this easy-to-master feature to enhance outdoor imagery, and they all work exactly the same whether you use Lightroom Desktop or Lightroom Classic to edit your images.

Matiash begins with this: “Lightroom’s more familiar Adaptive masking analyzes photos and makes selections tailored to the image at hand.” For example, the Adaptive Sky mask uses AI to identify the sky and create an appropriate selection that’s typically quite precise. But here’s the deal, the Intersect tool lets you to make Adaptive masks significantly more powerful.

In basic terms, Intersect Masking enables you to make a selection within a selection. By doing so  you’ll be able to refine selections with even greater detail and precision. Matiash uses a trio of interesting photographs to illustrate three different ways to harness the power of Lightroom’s Intersect tools. The specific approach you’ll take depends upon the attributes of the photo you’re working on.

The first example is an image of a colorful hot air balloon against a featureless pale blue sky. For this particular shot Matiash demonstrates how to use a Linear Gradient to enhance that portion of the photo. He first applies a conventional Adaptive mask, and that does an OK job, but there are a few noticeable problems due to the fact that the sky is darkened evenly, and that’s rarely a realistic effect.

Matiash says this is where Intersect masking, with its ability to make selections within selections, really shines. By employing a Linear Gradient the sky appears far more natural, with darker tones at the top of the sky that gradually become lighter toward the horizon.

There are a couple more Intersect methods that are more effective for the other two sample images—one using a Color Range mask and the other employing Luminance Range. In all three instances the images are quickly and significantly enhanced.

There’s much more to learn on the Brian Matiash YouTube channel, so be sure to pay a visit when you have time to explore.

And don’t miss the tutorial we posted recently from another image-editing expert who explains a straightforward Lightroom technique for giving sensuous portrait photos stunning and realistic tones.

We are thrilled to announce GuruShots’ newest creative contest: the “Artful Still Life” photo challenge. This endeavor is a tribute to the enduring beauty of still life photography. Photographers are encouraged to delve into the tranquil allure and story-telling possibilities of still life compositions in this venture. Light and shadow will work together to tell mesmerizing stories visually, and you are about to enter a world where everything has meaning.

Each of the winning submissions exemplifies the spirit of “Artful Still Life” by its stunning composition, expert lighting, and overall excellence. Their extraordinary skill in capturing the spirit of still life through their lenses is further demonstrated by the tremendous amount of talent and inventiveness displayed in this challenge. 

We are pleased to present the Top Photographer, Top Photo, and Guru’s Top Pick, along with seven outstanding runners-up. Be sure to check out the gallery that showcases the other contestants in the ‘Artful Still Life’ challenge. Also, if you want to see what’s new in artistic creativity, download GuruShots’ latest software, AI Art Master.

Winning Images

 

 

Runners Up

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gallery

In 2016, Nikon first introduced SnapBridge, an app designed to create a “seamless connection between a camera and a smart device.” I first used this app a year later on a trip to Australia, where I intended to use it primarily as a remote shutter release for my Nikon D500. In that respect, the app didn’t work very well for me at the time, so I quickly returned to the old-fashioned hardware solution.