Get designer looks at a fraction of the price

It’s not always possible to be out in the field when Golden Hour paints the landscape and our subjects with soft, glowing light. This video below the popular PHLOG Photography YouTube channel demonstrates how easy it is to mimic the beautiful effect with a straightforward c

Instructor Christian Mohrle is a highly acclaimed German photographer who’s popular among Shutterbug readers who appreciate his no-nonsense post-processing tutorials. He’s previously shared methods for embellishing landscape photos with Golden Hour tones, but today he turns his attention to pets and wildlife subjects captured in dull, boring light.

The technique you’ll learn in the next 12 minute will also work wonders when shooting environmental people portraits throughout the  day. We suggest downloading his demonstration Raw file with a link beneath the video so you can follow along and make the changes yourself as they’re explained.

Mohrle begins by improving his composition with a tighter crop that removes large chunks from the bottom and left side of the frame. Next comes several global adjustments to create the best possible base image for the color grading and masking magic that follows. He starts by changing the profile from Adobe Color to Adobe Standard which lessens contrast and provides more control during the masking process.

Mohrle also boosts exposure, drops highlights to avoid clipping, increases whites and blacks, and modifies shadows. Other preliminary modifications include increasing texture, reducing clarity and dehaze, and bumping up saturation. He also raises color temperature and corrects a slight bluish cast on the dog’s fur.

Now the real fun begins as Mohrle employs a few masks to selectively enhance different portions of the portrait with specific adjustments only where they’re needed. He walks you through the step-by-step process that you can emulate with the file you downloaded earlier.

All that remains to complete the eye-catching transformation is a bit of final color grading and very careful sharpening. A quick comparison of the before/after examples will convince you to add this technique to your Lightroom bag of tricks.

On a related note, be sure to watch the earlier tutorial we featured with another post-processing expert who demonstrates three easy Lightroom hacks for creating outdoor photographs with perfectly balanced colors in any light.

If you’re struggling with flat colors in landscape, travel, and street photography the culprit is likely an incorrect White Balance setting that don’t match the task at hand. Today’s quick tutorial from Nifty Photographers demonstrates how to configure your camera properly and employ custom White Balance to capture vibrant images in various conditions.

Instructor Richard Gill is a British pro and the brains behind this popular YouTube channel that’s devoted to the fundamentals of photography as well as more advanced topics for shooters interested in expanding their skills. In editing to reviewing the aforementioned topic, he also covers the color management process he recommends.

Gill’s point is that outdoor scenes are full of mood color, and emotion, but your camera is often working against you as it tries to “correct” what makes those moments so special. His promise for this episode is to “share a three-step process to regain control and use color with purpose and intention so that your images don’t just show a place, they make people feel something.”

By getting the White Balance setting off Auto and following Gill’s trio of tips, you’ll become a better visual storyteller with compelling images full of “emotional depth.” The first step before taking a shot is determining the specific feeling you’re after when shooting in the field or walking the streets.

As he suggests, this could be the warmth of a café window, the chill of twilight, or a moody atmospheric condition that can be accentuated by modifying the color of light. Another key consideration is that many scenes are illuminated by more than one light source, like nighttime street scene that include vivid neon signs, warm streetlamps, cool white car lights, and glowing windows that combine to complicate the task of achieving a pleasing balance of tones.

Auto White Balance picks one color temperature for the entire scene, and this may result in a loss of color contrast between warm and cool areas with within the frame. Setting White Balance manually enables you manage these confounding problems and more. Gill walks you through the straightforward process and reveals the third White Balance hack on his list. Pay a visit to his instructional YouTube channel for more helpful shooting and editing techniques for photographers of all skill levels.

And be sure to watch the enlightening demonstration we shared earlier from another accomplished landscape photographer who explains why your camera’s Auto ISO mode offers far more power and versatility than you think.

It isn’t always easy to come up with a topic for the opening paragraph of this weekly news. Most of the time, though, I find that life itself provides the inspiration I need. Like right now, for example, as I sit under our garden pergola writing these words and witnessing a little scene unfolding before my eyes: Perched on a low branch of a nearby pine tree are two fledgling Common Redstarts. They’ve already mastered flying, and hanging around the nest is no longer their idea of fun. Still, they eagerly demand parental attention in the form of tasty insect deliveries. Freedom and independence are great, but a full belly always wins. It looks like this brood will have a happy ending.