Let’s assume you captured a difficult-to-edit landscape photo with super bright highlights in the sky and very deep shadows in the foreground, and you simply can’t balance these divergent tones with one shot in the camera.

In other words, an image like the example in today’s tutorial from the PHLOG Photography YouTube channel that you can download with a link in the description beneath today’s how-to video. The remedy is easier than you might assume and it involves taking advantage of Lightroom’s oft-ignored Adobe Neutral profile.

Christian Mohrle is a superb German landscape photographer and post processing instructor, and he begins by showing you how to find this overlooked profile and then making several basic global adjustments to prepare his image for the masking magic, color grading, and sharpening enhancements that follow.

As you’ll see, the Neutral profile creates a flatter image with less contrast that provides more control over all your modifications. The next step is recovering more details in the shadows and Mohrle’s preliminary enhancements include raising exposure, dropping highlights, and adjusting the shadows and blacks with simple sliders.

Now all the image-killing clipping is gone and there is far more detail in every area within the frame. On the downside, however, the aforementioned process takes an obvious toll on contrast, but Mohrle quickly remedies this problem in Lightroom’s Presence tab by using sliders to increase texture, clarity and dehaze.

He also significantly bumps up saturation and vibrance, modifies color balance for a cooler look to accentuate the waterfalls on the far right of the scene. With his base image looking as good as possible, Mohrle turns to simple masks that selectively enhance various portions of the scene in different ways. All that’s left to conclude the impressive transformation is a bit of thoughtful color grading, judicious sharpening, and a simple cleanup in Photoshop. A quick glance at the before/after examples will convince you that this approach really works.

There’s much more to learn on the PHLOG Photography YouTube channel about shooting in the field and editing your images for maximum impact .

We also suggest watching an earlier tutorial we featured with another post-processing expert who reveals a tiny easy-to-miss Lightroom icon that can be a huge timesaver when editing multiple photographs and keeping them organized so they’re easy to find.

We’ve all had the misfortune of nailing composition only to get a photo that’s too bright or way to dark. Despite what you may have been told, it’s not necessary to rotate your camera’s mode dial to M in order to avoid these exposure problems.

In the next six minutes you’ll learn how to use in-camera Exposure (EV) Compensation—a technique that one of our favorite instructors insists is the easiest way to take control of highlights and shadows in any scene.

Instructor Anthony Crothers is a British pro who regularly shares his shooting secrets, camera- settings advice, and artistic vision for creative imagery. He kicks off today’s episode like this: “Whether you shoot in Aperture Priority, Shutter Priority, or even Auto, EV Compensation lets you adjust exposure with precision without guessing or digging into complex settings.”

Crothers provides a quick overview of the concept, explains when you should use it, and demonstrates the simple steps required. He also reveals a quick-and-easy EV Compensation test that you can use before capturing a shot.  

Here’s the root of the problem and the first thing Crothers wants you to understand: A camera’s meter is calibrated to deliver photos with an average value of 18% gray—whether you’re shooting a snow-covered landscape or a portrait of your black dog. But many scenes are far from “average.”

So here’s the deal: EV Compensation is the solution for capturing images with white whites, black blacks, and everything in between. This simple setting is useful for nailing exposure in trickly conditions, like snow, sunsets, backlit portraits, and with subjects that are predominately bright or unusually dark.

The technique can be used with mirrorless cameras, DSLRs, and even compact camera when shooting in Program mode. Once you understand the real reason your camera is getting things wrong, the fix is almost instantaneous.

There’s much more to learn on Crothers’ informative YouTube channel, so take a close look when you have time to explore.

And don’t miss the tutorial we featured earlier with an accomplished German pro who demonstrates how to master manual focus and capture sharp, professional-looking photographs—even in tricky lighting conditions.