Dull, lifeless photos are the bane of landscape photographers, and flat light is often the culprit. Sometimes our camera settings deserve some blame too, but in either case there’s a simple Lightroom “relighting” trick that will come to the rescue.

The topic under discussion is Dodging and Burning, a powerful remedy that often gets a bad rap because of a misconception that it’s difficult to accomplish with precision. Today’s instructor Simone Staffoli demystifies the process in barely 10 minutes so you can begin bringing your photos to life today.

The idea is to forget about all the complicated methods you’ve read about in the past, and it’s is easy to do this by following the “best practices” that Staffoli reveals. In simple terms, Dodging and Burning involves brightening or darkening certain areas within a photo. You’ll see how doing this balances the tones throughout the frame to create an image with far more interest and impact.

Achieving realistic results requires paying attention to two key considerations, one of which is the direction of prevailing ambient illumination. Or as Staffoli puts it, “you have to respect the light in your scene.” In other words, don’t Dodge elements that are in the shade, making them as bright or brighter than areas that are bathed by direct light.

It’s also important, before getting started, to determine the specific elements within a photo that you want to accentuate by adding light in a way that gives them more relevance. With that understood Staffoli brings up a landscape photo that he previously adjusted for color and basic enhancements to prepare it for the Dodging and Burning tricks that come next.

His goal is to emphasize a person walking through the landscape and make the small path more visible at first glance. The first step is darkening the uninteresting foreground to direct a viewer’s eye higher in the scene. He then quickly refines the selection to further de-emphasize this zone of the image.

One trick to retaining a natural look is to use the far edge of a large boulder to define the upper boundary of the mask. With the foreground now looking good, Staffoli proceeds with Dodging and Burning other areas of the photo to get the light just right—walking you through every step of the straightforward process.

Once again, while creating a couple Radial Gradients on the right and left sides of the frame, Staffoli is careful to follow edges of natural elements. Doing this makes it much easier to correctly adjust whites and blacks for perfect contrast as Staffoli carefully moves throughout the image.

Once you’re done watching head over to Staffoli’s popular YouTube channel where there’s much more to learn.

And on a related note, don’t miss the tutorial we posted with another landscape pro who explains when and how it’s important to expose for the highlights when shooting in the field.

According to British Landscape photographer Nigel Danson, “Masks are the most important part of Lightroom” and he uses them on every image he edits. In fact, Danson refers to Masks as “my secret weapon,” and in this tutorial he explains his favorite ways to use them to their full potential.

Danson says “Ansel Adams would have loved Lightroom,” with Masks being one of the reasons, and he pays homage to the master by revealing the five types of Masks he simply can’t live without. This detailed lesson kicks off with how to use Lightroom’s powerful Luminance Masks to turn a good photo into a great one.

As he explains, this type of Mask enables you to selectively adjust the Luminance of a specific portion of an image. He provides the simple example of a landscape scene in which his goal is to warm up bright areas within the frame without affecting the rest of the shot. You’ll see how Danson employs certain sliders and methods, while avoiding others, to quickly get the job done.

Enhancing images with Radial Masks is another very effective technique. Danson turns to this tool to adjust the sun in a sky. As he says, “I find this technique really useful for softening the sun.” Not only does Danson rely upon this type of gradient to adjust exposure up or down, but he often uses the Dehaze tool within the selection to enhance the effect. This approach often reduces Saturation, so he typically goes back in and bumps it up.

Next on Danson’s list of masking “essentials” is the easy-to-use Linear Gradient. This one is particularly useful for adjusting color and exposure in the sky, as well as opening up dark foregrounds and other underexposed areas within the frame. He demonstrates how to darken a bright sky without biasing objects on the horizon like mountains looming over the landscape.

Lightroom’s Color Range Masks also offer a lot of versatility for perfecting an image. You’ll learn how to enhance, or even change, the color of specific objects in a photo that you want to accentuate to draw a viewer into the scene.

Danson concludes the video by explaining the importance of Lightroom’s Brush tools for masking, and he includes a “bonus tip” and the end for making adjustments as effective as possible. After watching the video head over to Danson’s instructional YouTube channel for more great tips and tricks when editing landscape images.

And be sure not to miss the tutorial we posted recently from another accomplished pro, explaining how he uses Lightroom to rehabilitate underexposed photographs.

Many photographers edit their images using the latest and greatest processing tools that tend to grab all the headlines, which is why you may be unfamiliar with Photoshop’s Threshold feature that’s been around forever. Today you’ll learn how to create photos with a unique look with this powerful and oft-ignored technique.

This eye-opening episode come to us from a photo artist named Stephen who specializes in processing tutorials for photographers who want to boost their creativity by “thinking outside the box.” In barely minute minutes he demonstrates the power of Photoshop’s Threshold feature for creative enhancements to just about any photos you shoot.

In fact, while Stephen uses a fashion portrait to demonstrate how this works, he says he’s employed the method to stylize wildlife photos, landscapes, and boudoir imagery. The fun part of this approach is that the adjustments are subjective, thereby enabling you to unleash your creative vision in a variety of ways.

Another benefit is that Stephen’s approach is non-destructive so you can always go back for a do-over if need be. He begins by creating a duplicate layer of the portrait and changing it to a Smart Object Layer. This important step is the key to proceeding in non-destructive way.  

Now it’s time to find Photoshop’s Threshold tool by clicking on the Image tab atop the screen, selecting Adjustments, and then choosing the Threshold option from a dropdown menu that appears. Once you do this everything is converted to b&w pixels with no shades of gray. You’ll then see how to use a slider to modify Threshold levels to begin the interesting method that follows.

Stephen chooses a setting of 177 for the “Rembrandt effect” he wants to create, with just the right balance of whites and blacks. He then applies a Soft Light Blend mode. You’ll notice some jagged edges until Stephen adds a Gaussian Blur filter with a setting of 30 to eliminate the unwanted artifacts. Like previous adjustments, this step is non-destructive so it’s easy to move back and modify the Radius of this effect.

At this point the transformation is quite impressive, as you’ll see by viewing the before/after images. Stephen then demonstrates a few simple tricks for refining and modifying the look, based upon your chosen image, until you’re totally pleased with the results.

One of the many available options is to employ Photoshop’s Color Balance tool to change the tonal range of an image. For this particular shot he adds a bit of cyan and blue. This provides a somewhat cooler appearance and you can modify Vibrance and Saturation to accentuate the enhancement.

Stephen’s instructional YouTube channel contains other straightforward lessons that will jumpstart your creativity, so be sure to take a look. And don’t miss the tutorial we posted recently from another image-editing expert who explains a quick and easy technique for removing unwanted objects in Photoshop.