What if we told you there’s a common post-processing mistake that one pro call “massive” that may be spoiling your photos? You may not realize that this error is responsible for unrealistic photos, even though it’s super easy to fix.

Instructor Steve Arnold is a professional Australian outdoor photographer with a popular YouTube channel devoted to helping landscape shooters of all skill levels imbue their images with the WOW factor. He describes today’s Photoshop lesson like this: “I’ll show you how to avoid a massive editing trap that makes your photos look amateurish and overcooked.”

Arnold explains that the negative effect of this mistake is a weird one because it’s often hiding in plain sight. But trust us, once you see it in the examples he provides it’s impossible to ignore and you’ll want re-edit many of your old photos.

Earlier in his photographic journey Arnold got carried away in an effort to enhance contrast and saturation with a heavy-handed misguided attempt to embellish his images. “I made every color as rich and deeply saturated as possible to set skies on fire—thinking that all a photo needed to do be amazing was to over-stimulate our eyeballs.”  

As you’ll see, the problem goes beyond gaudy, unrealistic colors because there’s an oft-ignored destructive side-effect when taking your enhancements too far. This boils down to the way in which light values and tones affect the manner in which we perceive depth throughout the frame—often making elements appear closer together than they really are.

Arnold employs both simple graphics and original images to illustrate several potential pitfalls, some of which are sure to strike a personal chord. Then he walks you through a step-by-step process for achieving beautiful natural-looking results. Best yest, he does all this barely four minutes.

Pay a visit to Arnold’s popular YouTube channel once you’re done watching where you’ll find many more how-to videos like this one.

We also recommend checking out our earlier post in which another image-editing editing expert demonstrates how to create mind-blowing photographs by unlocking the magic of Photoshop’s game-changing Channel Mixer tools.

I never would’ve thought that something like a decisive moment could exist in a discipline as peaceful as photographing land tortoises. Capturing a Galápagos giant tortoise crushing a mandarin it found under the glow of the setting sun turned out to be quite a challenge. I wish you plenty of decisive moments in the coming week – and, like the tortoise in the photo, don’t forget to keep up with your daily dose of vitamins. Now, let’s take a look at this week’s roundup of photography news.