We featured a tutorial not long ago explaining how to make the sharpest photos possible in the camera when shooting nature and landscape subjects. Today’s tutorial from Camera Focus—a new YouTube channel based in France—takes things further with a method that relies upon both shooting and editing tricks to get the job done with perfection.

The unnamed instructor is a landscape pro who says, “My mission is to help you capture the world with passion and creativity.” He does this by regularly posting very helpful shooting and editing lessons designed for photographers of all skill levels.

Today’s episode explains how to unlock the power of “focus stacking” (also known as focus bracketing). It’s a particularly helpful technique for landscape photographers who consistently struggle to get everything they want sharp when shooting photos with important subjects throughout an image.

The idea is to capture multiple photos of the same scene—three shots is usually sufficient—each with a different point of focus. Once you’ve done that it’s a relatively simple matter to merge the images in Photoshop. The result is a single shot with a sharp background, foreground, and everything in between.

As you’ll see, this technique is not only for landscapes, but works great with macro and other close-up work when depth of field is at a premium. In these situations, “You can use focusing stacking to get everything super sharp.”

The video begins with a very simple approach to shooting the preliminary images—each focused on a different portion of the frame—concentrating on key areas in which precise focus will make or break the shot. Here, thoughtful composition can greatly simplify post-processing.

Now it’s time to merging the images, and the basic technique you’ll learn is designed for both simplicity and effectiveness. One you get the hang of it you can move on to a more involved approach. But even this easy method will give your images sharpness from here to there.

The instructor starts with the images in Lightroom, highlights all three, and selects “Open as Layers in Photoshop” from the dropdown menu on the left. With Photoshop now open you’ll notice the images in the panel on the right. Next, you’ll want to choose the “Auto Align Layers” option, just in case any of the photos shifted slightly as you modified the focus point.

Now that you have everything set up properly it’s time to blend the layers, and you’ll be surprised at how fast an easy this is to do by following the technique explained. The final step is to sit back and marvel at your result, and what you learned how to do in just five minutes!

You can find more great advice on the Capture Focus instructional YouTube channel. And don’t forget to check out the tutorial mentioned above, explaining several in-camera techniques for the sharpest possible nature photos.

We often discuss the challenge of shooting and editing landscapes scenes with a wide range wide range of tones from bright highlights to deep shadows. But there’s another problem you may encounter, and that’s what you’ll learn how to handle in today’s tutorial below from the popular PHLOG Photography YouTube channel.

Instructor Christian Mohrle is a German landscape specialist and a favorite among Shutterbug readers who appreciate his straightforward lessons. The topic of today’s episode is editing landscape scenes with flat dull light and transforming them into something special with a few effects in Lightroom.

Mohrle begins with a seaside shot that has a lot of potential, despite the gray, uninspiring light. His goal for this transformation is to add drama, impact, and a compelling moody look. You can download the Raw file in the description beneath the video and follow along as he describes the process.

The edit begins with a few basic adjustments to create a sold base image for the important steps that follow. He first crops the shot to with skewed lines in mind, and then turns to several simple global enhancements. These include carefully bumping up highlights with a close eye on the histogram to avoid overexposing the photo.

Mohrle also drops shadows quite a bit, increases blacks, brings up whites, and pumps up contrast to give the photo more “punch.” Lastly, he adds texture for more sharpness in smaller details—while dropping Clarity and Dehaze. At this point, the image is looking good.

It’s now time for several selective adjustments to various portions of the scene, which in when the magic occurs. This means masking is next on the list, beginning with a Linear Gradient that Mohrle uses to darken the top right corner of the sky. He also employs a Radial Gradient over the mountain in the middle of the frame—this time to introduce added detail by adding Texture.

The transformation continues with a bit more masking, including an unusual thin-and-wide Radial Gradient on the left side of the horizon to create an interesting “light beam” effect. Importantly, he carefully rotates the mask to match the direction of the light.

Mohrle turns to color grading enhancements once the masking is complete. As you’ll see, the adjustments he makes are really simple, but the result is significant. All that’s left to finish the job is a bit of sharpening and a quick trip to Photoshop to fix the distortion mentioned above.

After watching the video pay a visit to Mohrle’s YouTube channel where you’ll find much more of interest—especially if landscape photography is your thing. On a related note, don’t miss the earlier tutorial we posted explaining why you should use “local adjustments” for the best edits possible.

Among the most popular scenes for landscape photographers this time of year are hillsides of fields painted with colorful wildflowers. The tutorial below from an accomplished pro explains his favorite techniques for getting the job done.

Michael Shainblum is a photographer and videographer based in San Francisco who regularly posts tutorials on various types of outdoor photography. In today’s behind-the-scenes episode you’ll watch him capture an epic California “superbloom” while he shares valuable tips and tricks that you can accomplish with just about any gear you own. You can find a list of the equipment Shainblum prefers in the description beneath the video.

Shainblum’s adventure begins at the base of a hillside festooned with vivid yellow, orange, purple and yellow flowers. Most photographers would pull out a wide-angle lens for an expansive vista like this. Instead, Shainblum grabs a telephoto zoom that enables him to compress the distant hillside, create three unique images, and accentuate the flowers.

A telephoto zoom like Shainblum’s versatile 100-400mm provides a number of compositional opportunities. Shooting at 100mm enables you to capture interesting shapes of the rolling hills in the background. His recommendation for this approach is to frame the shot in so a variety of colors are included in the frame.

Shainblum tends to favor more abstract images, which is why he zooms in a bit tighter. By doing this he creates a photo of the same scene with a totally different look. As he says, “losing the context of the sky makes the image a little more abstract.”

As you may have guessed, Shainblum then zooms in even further to pick out details he finds interesting. Here he creates a compelling photo with shadows and dappled light adding to the impact of the shot.

The three shots Shainblum captured at different focal lengths are really nice, but he wasn’t quite satisfied for reasons he explains. He therefore decided to take all three images together and display them as a triptych, rather than as individual photos.

As he Shainblum says, “Sometimes the story you want to build through your photography isn’t meant to be shared through a singular image. That’s why we put together projects and collections.” In other words, maybe a series involves different subjects at a place, a different context to the scene, or a variety of interesting patterns and colors.

Shainblum recommends that you look through your photos and try to find a few that work in tandem, and we wholeheartedly agree. Then head over to his instructional YouTube channel for more great advice.

We also recommend watching a related tutorial we posted recently from another pro, explaining how to shoot epic landscape photos in bright summer light.

If you’re sort of new to Photoshop we have a welcome treat for you today: Another installment of the popular “Photoshop for Beginners” series from the PiXimperfect YouTube channel.

Each lesson in the series is devoted to one important tool or technique, and the topic of today’s episode is Photoshop’s powerful new Remove tool. In less than 20 minutes you’ll learn how to set up the tool, why it’s so helpful, and the best way to use it for perfect results.

Unmesh Dinda is an internationally popular image-editing instructor who teaches workshops across the globe and has almost five million subscribers to his channel. He says that if he had created this basic series before Adobe’s latest update, the Remove tool wouldn’t have been part of the mix. But now it’s easy enough for anyone to master with great success.

Dinda illustrates the versatility of this much-improved tool by comparing it to Photoshop’s Clone Stamp and Spot-Healing Bush tools to accomplish a simple task. As you’ll see, both alternate methods are cumbersome and often deliver sloppy results that require extra time to refine.

The new Remove tool, by comparison, “changes everything” and works like a charm. It’s important to update to the latest version of Photoshop before you watch Dinda explain how the tool works. Once you’re good to go it’s a simple matter to configure the tool to your liking, and Dinda walks you through the easy step-by-step process.

As he explains, this is an “actual Photoshop tool” that involves input from you, and not a new form of AI magic like Generative Fill. Dinda’s characterization is as concise as it gets: “It’s used to remove stuff. That’s it.” In other words, the Remove tool won’t fill an area with something else, as does Generative Fill, but it’s extremely effective when employed for its intended purpose.

Dinda’s guide is straightforward but complete, and includes helpful keyboard shortcuts for streamlining the process, He provides examples of images for which this method is most productive, and walks you through the various options the tool provides.  Then you’ll see how the tool works to easily eliminate unwanted objects from all sorts of images.

We encourage you to visit Dinda’s instructional YouTube channel where you’ll find more tips and tricks, as well as earlier episodes in the popular series.

And don’t miss the guide we posted from another image-editing expert, explaining how to use Photoshop’s new Gradient tool with real-time visual feedback and more.