The most common goal when editing our landscape photos is to imbue images with vibrant colors and accurate exposures that enhance all the details of a scene. But what do you do when photos you capture look more like a snapshots—either because the light isn’t interesting or there’s nothing particularly captivating about the scene?

One simple technique for transforming “meh” into “wow” is adding some dramatic atmosphere that really grabs attention. In this tutorial you’ll learn how create natural-looking mist by using Masks and Curves while desaturating colors in Lightroom. The moody, misty effect demonstrated in this video is super easy to achieve, and drama is the name of the game.

Instructor Mark McGee is an accomplished portrait photographer who occasionally shoots landscapes when an opportunity arises, and “snapshots” are never his goal. He’s working on a color image in this lesson, but much of what you’ll learn can also make a big difference when editing b&w photographs that are lacking in impact.

The image at hand is dominated by the complimentary colors of red and green. McGee takes advantage of this by desaturating these tones individually, rather than by applying the adjustment to the entire image at once. He explains why this approach provides far more control to achieve look he’s after.

With color stripped out of the image the vivid red phone booth becomes far less prominent, and contrast is reduced. This enables McGee to accentuate other areas within the frame before reintroducing muted colors to the shot. The next step is combining Contrast with color separation.

McGee significantly pumps up the blacks while bringing down shadows, before restoring details in the bright sky. Then he adds a Graduated filter to darken the foreground. Along the way he explains the specific settings that are required.

The monochrome image has a lot more going for it that the original color shot lacked, and now it’s time to bring back specific colors and focus to his main subject. McGee cuts yellow tones and Luminance to prepare the image for his misty atmospheric effect that comes later.

McGee uses the Objects option to create a mask for the red phone booth in the front left portion of the shot. Then he bumps up Clarity on that focal point of the scene. The last step before adding atmosphere to the image is a final bit of straightforward color grading.

The “fun part” of the edit now begins; namely adding realistic-looking mist. McGee walks you through the step-by-step process for completing the dramatic transformation.

We encourage you to watch a related tutorial we posted earlier from another adept photographer who explains when and how to use Contrast, Clarity, and Texture tools to improve landscape photographs.

Wouldn’t it be great if there were an easier way to auto-select, manage, and identify Layers in Photoshop so that users of all skill levels could take advantage of this powerful post-processing technique? Well, there is, and the new tool is referred to as “Layer Hover Bounds.”

This game changing capability is included in the brand new update to Photoshop Beta, and you’ll learn exactly how it works in this eye-opening tutorial from the PiXimperfect YouTube channel. You’ll see how to get this new feature now so you can begin using it today and be totally up to speed when it’s officially released.

Instructor Unmesh Dinda is a globally popular educator, workshop instructor, and our go-to source for explaining how to harness the power of new Photoshop and Lightroom image-editing tools. In this episode it takes him barely seven minutes to demonstrate how Layer Hover Bounds simplifies the task of using Layers to deliver superior results.

Dinda begins by explaining why the current approach to Layers often lets him down in ways you have may noticed yourself. That’s why he says, “I’ve never recommended and never liked, using the existing Auto Select feature with Lightroom’s Move tool. As he notes, this common approach seems very convenient, but in real-world applications “it doesn’t work that great” and he explains why.

On the contrary, there’s much to love about the new Layer Hiver Bounds feature. You’ll learn how hovering over the canvas highlights all the different Layers. Likewise, hovering over the Layers panel highlights the corresponding Layer on the canvas to save time and get the job done with maximum precision.

Dinda also provides a clear explanation of how all this works so you’ll understand what’s happening under the hood, including how to enable and disable the feature when it doesn’t suit your needs for the task at hand.

Other key points include the manner in which this new capability works with Layer Masks. You’ll also learn how to expand Layer groups, and tricks for highlighting these groups. Dinda also explains an easy way to customize Layer Bounds for your specific workflow.

Of course it’s rare that any editing tool is absolutely perfect, and such is the case when taking the Layer Hover Bounds approach. Dinda concludes the lesson by describing a problem he’s noticed. It’s definitely not a dealbreaker and he encourages you to provide feedback to Adobe so that this concern will be resolved before the new capability is officially released.

There’s much more to learn about elevating your editing skills on Dinda’s YouTube channel, as his five million subscribers are aware, so be sure to pay a visit and explore what’s available. We also recommend watching the tutorial we posted from another Photoshop expert, with a basic guide to harnessing the power of Content Aware tools.

Have you ever captured what would be a great photograph, were it not for an abundance of image-killing noise? If so, the following video from the Birdman Photography YouTube channel will help fix the problem thanks to a new Denoise tool in Lightroom.

Instructor Sean Leahy is an accomplished pro based in North Carolina who posts weekly tutorials dedicated to shooting techniques, gear, and straightforward post-processing methods. In today’s episode he demonstrates how to use Lightroom’s new tool and achieve clean images every time.

Leahy illustrates the process with a noisy image of a bird, but the technique is just as powerful for other types of photos you shoot in the field. He begins in Lightroom’s Develop module under Details. He zooms in on his shot and distracting artifacts are readily available in the sky, background and foreground, and to a lesser degree in his subject.

There are a couple of preliminary steps that Leahy recommends before you initiate the noise reduction technique, the first of which is to carefully examine the image and determine exactly where noise needs to be removed. Then it’s time to create a Mask and get to work on the specific area(s) that need repair while leaving clean portions of the image untouched.

The trick is not to soften the entire image, and in this case Leahy wants to retain sharpness in the bird, which is why he’s very cautious when moving the appropriate slider. Once the parameters of the Mask are set, the next step is clicking on Lightroom’s Denoise icon, at which point you’ll see a progress bar that proceeds based upon the speed of your computer. Lightroom will also open a wizard to help you refine the results.

When working on a wildlife shot make sure to target the eyes of your subject as well as the larger areas that need to be fixed. Once the image is denoised Leahy walks you through several important ways to enhance the image even further—using familiar Lightroom tools you’ve likely employed before.

The final step is careful sharpening of the bird itself. That’s because, even though the eye is sharp, the subject’s feathers lost a bit of detail during the noise removal process. One you’re done watching head over to Leahy’s instructional YouTube channel for more tips on shooting and editing wildlife photos.

We also recommend watching the tutorial we posted from another accomplished pro who explains how to give outdoor photographs maximum dynamic range by using a one-minute Lightroom trick.

During my one month as an intern at the Crocodile Research Coalition in Belize, I did not take one photo of a crocodile. My group spent most of our nights conducting surveys, searching for the two species of crocodiles present in the Placencia Lagoon to research their populations. We would take a small boat out into the lagoon and use flashlights to spot eyeshine – a bright spot of reddish light bouncing back from the eyes of crocodiles.