Let’s say you’re out in the field with the right gear and good weather, and you come upon a great landscape scene that can’t be ignored. So you pop off a few shots, and you’re eager to review the results on your computer.

So far, so good, until you take a close look, and sadly the images look flat and uninspiring. At this point you have three choices: You can return another day to try again if you live nearby, trash the photos and chalk it up to human error, or pull up Lightroom and transform your boring images into something special.  

As you may expect, today’s tutorial from the PHLOG PHOTOGRAPHY YouTube channel is all about the latter, with several great tips for rehabilitating flat photos by “shaping the light.” In barely 11 minutes you’ll learn a straightforward technique for adding drama and dimension to images that don’t quite make the grade.

Instructor Christian Mohrle is a notable German landscape photographer, and as always, you can download his demonstration image with the link beneath the video, so you can make the changes yourself as they’re explained.

The exposure of this nice mountain photo isn’t too bad, with plenty of details throughout the frame. Yet Mohrle’s experience tells him the image could be much better, partly because the shadows are too bright and some of the highlights are blown out.

The edit begins with a few basic global adjustments to prepare the photo for selective enhancements that follow. Changing the profile from Adobe Color to Adobe Landscape immediately increases base saturation. He then drops exposure to bring out more detail in the highlights and darken the shadows.

Additional adjustments boost contrast, vibrance, and texture. Now the image  looks much better and it’s time for some simple masking to shape the light by selectively targeting highlights and shadows. Mohrle employs a Color Range Mask to improve tones in the sky. He uses another mask to accentuate highlights in the green tones of the foreground.

Mohrle further improves the foreground by modifying the tint for a Golden Hour effect. He then adds another Color Range Mask to enhance the small stream running up the middle of the frame. He completes the masking with a Linear Gradient over the mountains in the distance.

All that’s left to finish up the job is some additional color grading and a bit of sharpening. Compare his before/after images and we think you’ll be impressed. You can find more helpful lessons like this by visiting Mohrle’s popular YouTube channel.

And don’t miss the tutorial we posted earlier, with a simple and effective way to use Lightroom’s HSL sliders for better nature photos, portraits, and more.

Landscape photographers think a lot about the color palette when editing their work. But thoughtfully optimizing color in the camera is equally important and will save you plenty of time behind the computer.

Today’s quick tutorial discusses the task of shooting in the field with intention, so the tones in your images are as natural or pumped up as you wish. The lesson begins with an overview of color theory, followed by practical examples that put your new-found knowledge to work. Smith also provides several Lightroom tips near the end of the video that will enable you to refine your results.

Instructor Mike Smith is a professional landscape photographer who regularly posts behind-the-scenes lessons sharing the secrets to his success. You’ll have to cut him some slack for spelling the word “color” incorrectly throughout the nine-minute video, but that’s what happens when you’re based in the UK.

The proper use color is more complicated than some people realize. As Smith notes early on, “Colors can make things stand out in your photographs, but they can also hide things away.” He further explains that colors can complement and harmonize with one another or cause visual conflict.

Smith begins the theory portion of the lesson by introducing the RBY (Red Blue, Yellow) color wheel developed by Isaac Newton. He then explains why the more recent RGB (Red, Green, Blue) color wheel is more appropriate for digital photographers who want to understand how color impacts their imagery.

Color can be broken down into its constituent parts, namely saturation, value, and hue. Smith explains that saturation describes the intensity of colors, while the value (or luminosity) of a color basically describes how bright or dark it is. He also has a clear explanation for hue, and demonstrates how Photoshop’s Color Picker illustrates all this when you drag the slider up or down—with numerical values for the hue on the right. You’ll also learn how color temperature factors into the equation.

Smith move on to a discussion of how all this theory works in practice—both in the field and when sitting behind a computer. As he says, “I tend to use color in my landscape photography to represent a feeling I want to create for the viewer when they look at my photographs.”

For example, pushing White Balance toward the blues will evoke a moody, colder feel, while enhancing the yellows does the opposite. In either case it’s important to be careful about how much you add or take away. The video includes much more about using color while shooting or editing, so be sure to watch until the end.

After you’re done head over to Smith’s instructional YouTube channel for more tips and tricks.

And be sure to check out an earlier tutorial we posted from another expert, with five in-camera do’s and don’ts for capturing more compelling outdoor photographs.

One of the most daunting challenges faced by landscape shooters is optimizing sharpness in scenes with important objects in the foreground, midrange, and background of the frame. That’s because even if you stop your lens all the way down to f/22 there’s insufficient depth of field to maintain sharpness from here to there.

In these situations the solution is achieved during the editing process, and instructor Mark Dumbleton says, “In this video I’m going to show you how to create perfect focus-stacked landscape photographs in Photoshop.” This technique isn’t necessary for most landscape photos, and only comes into play when there’s a very close foreground that demands attention as does everything behind.

As you’ll see, there are some quirks to Photoshop’s focus-stacking algorithm, and Dumbleton explains an easy way to overcome these as he demonstrates his straightforward focus-stacking method. You also learn to avoid the minimum aperture on a lens, because diffraction at this setting can degrade image quality.

Dumbleton’s demonstration image is an intriguing scene of sand dunes running most of the way through the frame, with mountains in the background that he wants to keep sharp. His technique involves shooting three images with the same settings and vantage point. The only difference is that he focused on a different area for each shot.

In this case Dumbleton only required a trio of images—one focused on the foreground, another on the mid-range, and the third on the background. He notes that more than three shots may be required for extremely complicated scenes.

Dumbleton begins in Lightroom where he makes minor enhancements to the images before merging them in Photoshop. He applies the tweaks to his first image and copies them over to the others to they all look the same.  Now it’s time to move over to Photoshop.

After selecting all three image, Dumbleton clicks on the Photo tab atop the screen and selects Edit In from the dropdown menu. Then he chooses the Open as Layer option from a second dropdown that appears. Now the three images are opened as a stack. This process takes a few moments before you’re ready to go.

Dumbleton then walks you through the step-by-step process for arriving at a final image with sharpness all the way from foreground to background. He notes why he prefers placing the close-focus shot at the bottom of the stack, the mid-range image in the middle, and the third photo on the top. Now the merging process proceeds smoothly.

You can find more helpful landscape lessons on Dumbleton’s YouTube channel. We also recommend watching the related tutorial we posted recently, explaining how to create eye-catching landscape photos with more depth and dimension by adjusting color and contrast in Lightroom.