Experienced landscape and nature shooters understand that pleasing colors are a major component of all successful images, but what should you do with dull images that were captured under flat and boring light? Simple: Follow the instructions in this tutorial from the PHLOG Photography YouTube channel.

Instructor Christian Mohrle is a regular on these pages because Shutterbug readers appreciate his straightforward advice for boosting the impact of images captured in the great outdoors. This episode is devoted to a simple technique that anyone can employ to change the color palette in a way that’s far more appealing than what appeared in your original shot.

Mohrle pulls up a nicely composed seaside photo and walks you through his step-by-step process for making a dynamic tonal shift. Feel free to follow along by downloading the sample Raw file with a link in the description beneath the video.

Mohrle begins with several global adjustments to the overall scene to create the best possible base image for the subsequent selective enhancements that make his image pop off the screen. His goal is enhanced vibrance and color—with a dreamy glow in the highlights.

The first simple step is changing the profile from Adobe Color to Adobe Landscape which immediately brightens the darkest portions in the frame and boosts overall saturation. Mohrle then adjusts the tones by gently dropping exposure and bringing down highlights. He also modifies the blacks, adjusts White Balance, and achieves a sharper look by increasing Texture and Clarity.

Now that the base image is far more appealing, it’s time for a few local adjustments using masks. Mohrle targets the sky to add drama, the center of the image to accentuate detail, and the right side of the frame to introduce a simple glow. The steps are quite simple, and you can apply the same concept to other types of images that need more punch.

This is when Mohrle’s color-palette shift comes into play and Mohrle demonstrates the straightforward steps. All that’s left to complete the beautiful transformation is a bit of cautious sharpening and a final cleanup in Photoshop.

Once the video concludes take a look at the popular PHLOG Photography YouTube channel where there are many more Lightroom lessons for avid landscape shooters.

And on a related note, we also encourage you to watch our earlier tutorial with another post-processing specialist who demonstrates a quick Lightroom tip for using the Tone Curve tool to achieve perfect saturation in all of your outdoor photographs.

If you haven’t experienced the amazing power of Photoshop’s Smart Objects tool you’ve come to the right place, because this eye-opening tutorial from the PHLEARN YouTube channel covers all the basics for getting started now.

Here’s how instructor Aaron Nace kicks off today’s 10-minute beginners guide: “This tutorial will guide you through using Smart Objects to modify layers without sacrificing image quality or losing the flexibility to revert your edits.” He also demonstrates how easy it is to employ Smart Objects for  precise compositing.

Nace is a world-renowned photographer and post-processing expert whose easy-to-follow lessons are designed to “unleash your inner artist” as he guides you on an inspiring journey through his decades of shooting and editing experience. Once you learn when and how to employ Smart Objects, and it doesn’t take much practice, your Photoshop workflow will improve by leaps and bounds.

A Smart Object allows you easily accomplish several important tasks, like resizing an image as many times as you want with no loss in quality. Not only that, but you can also change the content of a Smart Object at any time and update it in a composite.

Nace adds that Smart Objects are also “fantastic for mockups and other graphics any time you have to work with an original asset and make changes that can be updated automatically.” The goal of today’s task is to create a composite by adding a framed photo to the wall of second shot.

You can experiment with this interesting technique yourself as the tutorial unfolds by downloading the demonstration image with a link in the description beneath the video. The first step is using Photoshop’s Move tool to drag one image to the other, and Nace provides keyboard shortcuts to speed up this task and the others that follow.

Nace proves the power of this very effective method by first attempting to make the switch without a Smart Object. As you’ll see, the results aren’t pretty. But watch what happens when you take the approach that he recommends. Then head over to his popular PHLEARN YouTube channel where you’ll find many more very useful Photoshop tips and techniques.

And don’t miss a tutorial we featured with another image-editing expert who demonstrates how to eliminate ugly dark artifacts in photographs when your polarizing lens filter takes things too far.