Photoshop How To

What if we told you there's a "secret" Photoshop feature that will take your landscape edits to the next level, and that it delivers epic results for beginners and experienced users alike? This is exactly what you'll learn in the five-minute tutorial below from photographer Steve Arnold.

Arnold is an experienced landscape shooter and post-processing expert who's always looking for unique ways to streamline his Photoshop workflow without sacrificing image quality. He kicks off this episode with an intriguing promise: "Today I'm going to show you how this secret Photoshop feature unlocks an incredible editing technique that will make any photo POP in three easy steps."

As interesting as that sounds, there's even more as Arnold insists that this method is so powerful that it almost makes images appear three-dimensional. Arnold explains why this trick boosts the "wow factor" of a photo in a way that's contrary this popular misconception: "Many photographers think that for an image to stand out it has to be full of bright highly-saturated colors, contrast and detail."

But there's a problem with this common approach: When everything in a photo tries to grab your attention, nothing within the frame will really stand out. In other words, images can lack depth and appear flat even if they're full of color.

So what's the trick to this simple hack? It enables you differentiate between the foreground and background of a scene, so that viewers feel they can actually "step into the image." The technique is so quick and easy to accomplish that we'll let Arnold demonstrate how it works, rather than summarizing it here.

Suffice to say that this effective method enables you to modify color and contrast for an attention-grabbing effect. But here's a clue: "Until now, nothing has given us the ability to automatically affect an images based upon distance."

So pull up a chair, click the "play" button, and prepare to be amazed as Arnold walks you through a trio of straightforward steps. Then head over to his instructional YouTube channel where you'll find many more tips and techniques for processing the images you capture in the great outdoors.

And be sure not to miss an essential tutorial we posted recently with a comprehensive beginners guide to editing photographs with Adobe Camera Raw in Photoshop.