Nature Photography How To

Today we're bringing you another powerful tutorial from the popular PHLOG Photography YouTube channel, designed to help you create epic landscape photos that really stand out from the crowd. This one reveals six creative special effects that are easy to accomplish in Lightroom.

Instructor Christian Mohrle is an acclaimed German landscape photographer, and the tricks he demonstrates below will work wonders for just about any images you shoot outdoors. As always, he provides a link beneath the video for downloading the demonstrations images so you can make the adjustments yourself as they’re explained.

He begins with a timely method for adding an autumn look to uninspiring photos with spring colors. All you have to do is make use of Lightroom's HSL tools and Calibration adjustments. Mohrle explains that the most important setting you want to change is found under the Hue tab. He demonstrates how to manipulate green, yellow and orange hues to get the job done.

Mohrle's second tip will enable you to easily give photos a polarization effect by darkening blue areas of the sky and boosting contrast throughout the frame. These tricks occur in Lightroom's masking panel—beginning with a Color Range mask and employing the eyedropper tool to target the sky. As you'll see, the Refine tool helps perfect the mask.

Next on the list is a simple method for adding a popular "Orton Glow" to boost the impact of an image. This one is super simple, requiring the use of just two sliders. Simply head into Lightroom's Basic tab and scroll down to the Present settings. Mohrle demonstrates how easy it is to create the effect by modifying Clarity and Dehaze.

One of our favorite tips in this episode explains how to create artificial "bokeh balls" to add interest to the background of a shot. One again you'll head into to Lightroom's Masking panel—this time using a Radial Gradient to create the enchanting effect. Mohrle notes that bokeh balls are typically brighter than surrounding areas and he demonstrates how to accomplish this for a realistic look.

You'll learn two more interesting effects by watching until the end, and they're just as impressive and straightforward to accomplish. One enables you to add dramatic fog to a photo, and the other is what Mohrle says is "my favorite effect."

By employing the simple tips in this eye-opening lesson you'll never be accused of making outdoor images with a "same-old-same-old" appearance. Once you're done watching pay a visit to Mohrle's instructional YouTube channel where there's much more to learn about editing landscape photos for maximum impact.

We also encourage you to watch a tutorial we posted recently from another image-editing expert, demonstrating the best way to improve outdoor photographs by adding more texture and contrast.