Software How To

Landscape photography is full of challenges, one of the biggest being arriving at a proper exposure. That’s because many scenes have a wide range of tones, with a density range that’s beyond the capability of your camera.

Most photographers love printing their best work, especially this time of year when a beautiful framed photo makes a great holiday gift for family and friends. It’s also a great idea to decorate your home or office with images you love.

Photoshop’s brush tools are often overlooked, and that’s too bad because the process of using them can simplify the editing process and deliver better results. In the beginners tutorial below you’ll learn the necessary basics for getting started today.

In basic terms, Luminosity masks are selections based upon the brightness (or darkness) of various portions of a scene. As you’ll see in the quick tutorial below, they enable you to discretely select the bright, dark, or midtone pixels in an image and then make whatever adjustments you desire.

As the great Ansel Adams once said, “Dodging and burning are steps to take care of mistakes God made in establishing tonal relationship.” And that holds true whether you’re working with film in the darkroom or editing digital images on the computer.

A couple weeks ago we featured an editing tutorial, explaining an easy way to create five unique effects using the Curves tool in Photoshop and Lightroom. Today instructor Scott Davenport is back with a bonus two-minute tip, demonstrating how easy it is to fix blown-out highlights using Curves.

Experienced landscape photographers prefer shooting at two primes times of day, early morning or late afternoon. That’s because Blue Hour, just before sunset, is a great opportunity to make images with calm, blue tones. Golden Hour, at the end of the day, enables you imbue scenes with striking warm colors as the sun is about to set.