Sometimes the light can be “as flat as a pancake” when shooting outdoors, and this common situation rarely bodes well for capturing impressive imagery. But if you do the best you can it’s possible to transform a boring photo into something more special during post processing as you’ll see in this video tutorial from the folks at That Photography Spot channel.

The topic at hand is a powerful image-editing technique known as Split Toning that works equally well in Photoshop and Lightroom. Our instructor Jess explains the basics like this: “Split Toning is an easy way to create a more eye-catching photograph by drawing attention to your subject while calming down the background and the environment elsewhere within the frame.”

Jess considers this technique “essential” for her environmental dog photography but the same approach works wonders for making all types of dull images more engaging—especially those captured under less-than-ideal light.

The seven-minute lesson begins in Lightroom as Jess demonstrates the simple steps required to get the job done and add this transformational technique to your everyday workflow. Then she illustrates how to achieve the same attention-grabbing results when working with Photoshop instead.

As you’ll see, there’s more than one way to accomplish this task, and the best approach to use often depends upon the characteristics of the specific image at hand. The editing sequence is also important for optimum results, and Jess explains why you should apply split toning before adding other adjustments and finishing touches to a photo.

Jess also recommends a bit of dodging and burning at the very end, before exporting your work. But she says that even if you skip this optional step “you’ll still be miles ahead of where you were at the start.”

There are many more post-processing techniques to learn on the popular That Photography Spot YouTube channel, so be sure to take a look.

And don’t miss the tutorial we featured recently with another image-editing expert who demonstrates how easy it is to unlock Photoshop’s “secret” Knock Out tool for faster more productive post processing.