Photoshop How To

Everyone seems to have a preferred method of editing their images, and that’s to be expected because there’s no one “right way” to get the job done. However, as you’ll see in this tutorial, some editing techniques are just plain wrong.

Danish pro Mads Peter Iversen is an accomplished nature photographer, and in the video below he explains what he says are “Seven common landscape editing mistakes that you definitely want to avoid.” The tips Iversen provides are important for virtually all types of outdoor photography.

You’ll be glad to know that Iversen doesn’t just introduce glaring image-editing errors, but he also explains how to fix them and do things right.

In this episode Iversen uses Photoshop and Camera Raw to demonstrate his tips, but you can use Lightroom or just about any other image-editing software to follow along. As you’ll see, Iversen’s goal is to help you achieve natural-looking results, rather than over-processed images that result from a heavy-handed approach.

While watching the 20-minute video, we urge you to avoid dismissing Iversen’s advice with the thought that, “This is my art and I want to edit photos the way I please.” As an artist himself Iversen respects the concept of personal style, but as he points out, there’s a big difference between giving images a unique look and making them look terrible with sloppy editing.

Using photographs submitted by members of his Facebook group, Iversen begins with the most basic image-editing errors. These include things like crooked horizons, and the failure to remove dust spots.

After dealing with the small stuff, Iversen moves on to a discussion of heavy-handed vignetting, problematic halos, overly dark skies, a failure to get tones right, and dealing with distracting elements. He finishes up the tutorial with a few remarks about over-processing in general.

You can find more helpful tips on Iversen’s YouTube channel and in a tutorial we posted yesterday, explaining what another pro says is the “worst thing landscape photographers can do.”