Enhance Nature & Wildlife Photos: Background Blur in Seconds (VIDEO)

Cluttered backgrounds are often unavoidable when shooting in the field, and this distraction will easily deemphasize a key subject in wildlife shots, nature photos, or even landscape images with an element that deserves to really stand out. Today’s tutorial featuring German expert Christian Mohrle demonstrates how to save the day with the thoughtful use of Lightroom’s easy-to-apply Lens Blur tool.

Mohrle is a highly acclaimed landscape photographer and post-processing expert whose Instructional YouTube channel boasts 100K subscribers and 900 how-to videos. This 14-minute primer will enable you to guide a viewer’s eye by creating a soft background that’s guaranteed to make your subject pop off the screen.

Be sure to take advantage of a link beneath the video and download Mohrle’s demonstration Raw file so you can follow along as the straightforward steps are explained. Mohrle is a strong proponent of applying enhancements in a specific order, and this means getting some basic tasks out of the way “before moving on to the                                                                                             “

The image at hand was captured with a high ISO, so the preliminary adjustments begins with the Denoise tool inside Lightroom’s Details panel, followed by a few tweaks with the Remove tool to further clean up the shot.

Mohrle now turns his attention to the Lens Blur tool and demonstrates how to set up an appropriate focus range for the specific image at hand. He then demonstrates how easy it is to reduce most of the chaos that lurks behind his majestic bird. It’s important to remember that the Lens Blur tool isn’t perfect, but there are simple ways to make any necessary refinements.

Other initial enhancements include changing the profile to Adobe Landscape, increasing contrast, exposure, color temperature, and vibrance. He also plays around with tint and removes an annoying color cast for a more realistic look.

Now it’s time for the magic to begin by using masks to selectively enhance different areas within the frame, and Mohrle demonstrates how this is done. The transformative lesson concludes with a bit of final color grading and very careful sharpening. Take a quick glance at Mohrle’s before/after images and you’ll be impressed.

We also recommend watching an earlier tutorial we featured with another insightful instructor who demonstrates why Raw shooters should change one image-killing Jpeg setting if they want to create photographs with maximum impact and image quality.