Software How To

We recently featured a tutorial demonstrating how to create jaw-dropping landscape photos with Lightroom’s oft-ignored Calibration tool. That lesson got a lot of attention, and we have an equally great one for you below.

Sometimes the photos we capture don’t appear as vibrant as they did through the viewfinder. That could be because of flat light, incorrect exposure settings, or a passing cloud blocking the sun.

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.

Sunrises and sunsets are among the most popular scenes for avid landscape photographers. Early morning images usually have ephemeral soft blue tones, while sunsets typically display striking yellows, oranges and reds.

Photographers use their images in a variety of ways. Sometimes the goal is a huge print to display on a wall, while other times you want post photos on social media platforms—some of which have unique sizing requirements.