Let's talk about editing landscape photos, because truly editing can make your photos more interesting
to look at or better.
So what do I typically do with landscape photos?
I start with the fixes I crop.
I rotate so that the composition looks just right.
I straighten out those horizons.
I fix the white balance if it was off.
Although most cameras nowadays the auto white balance is amazing.
I fix exposure so that it's not too bright, too dark.
Oftentimes I will lift.
I will brighten up the shadows of the photo so that I can see more details.
And here's an example of a somewhat natural edit that I did of the Big Sur coastline.
I made those colors a little bit more vibrant.
The exposure was generally spot on, but I added a little bit more contrast to make it more dynamic.
I perhaps did a tiny bit of cropping in there as well, but generally I like to keep my landscape photos
somewhat natural, somewhat realistic, and not completely abstract.
Here.
We have one location.
We saw this earlier.
This is Lake Tahoe.
And you can see how different editing can change a photo.
And these photos were also shot at different times of day so that the lighting and things are going
to change when you're shooting at different times, the clouds in the sky, all of that's going to change.
But you can see some photographers chose to edit it with super high contrast so that the landscape is
silhouetted versus being able to see the trees, the boats and the water shooting at a long exposure
so that that water is smooth and glassy versus a not long exposure.
So you can see the detail of the waves.
Now, that's not necessarily editing, but I just want to bring that up to show you how these photos
are shot differently.
And then mostly with the colors generally, I think it's good to just enhance the colors that are already
in your photo and your frame, not try to make a cool blue sky look warm and sunset.
But there's times where you might want to add a little bit of magenta or yellow or orange or green,
make those trees pop a little bit more and more of a forest green than a teal green.
Those are things you can do while editing.
Here we have the fire falls in Yosemite and you can see very similar photos.
But based off of the settings or just simply editing, the colors are different.
The contrast is different on the photo and the right.
You can see more detail in the cliffs, in the rocks, the textures compared to the one on the left
where the rocks fall all follow a little bit into the shadows.
It's a little bit darker.
You don't see those textures.
Look at the sky.
See how that sky is a completely different color.
Was that editing?
Was that what it looked like?
I only the photographer knows for sure, but I can tell you that the one on the right seems like they
added a little bit more magenta to and red and orange to that photo to make the fire falls pop.
And I think it also made the sky a little bit more purple as well.
Whereas on the left it's a little bit more of a teal sky with that yellowish fireballs light.
Not so much the orange.
Here.
The photographer chose to edit in black and white, and it's a lovely decision.
I think editing your photos in black and white can be one of the best moves, especially if the sky
and the colors aren't as interesting.
Now here's a photo that I decided to edit in black and white, and there's a few things I like about
that one.
I just like seeing the textures of the cliffs and the water, and that is brought out by getting rid
of the color.
I like the shadows and the contrast because this was shot during the middle of the day and just that
lighting wasn't that interesting.
And making it black and white, I thought was interesting.
And the last thing I like about this photo, because it's compositionally it's just not that interesting
of a location, but story wise, for myself, I like it because you can see at the bottom a mom and
her daughter sitting there on these rocks.
They had climbed around the face of this rocks over here from from the left side.
And we couldn't see them.
So we didn't know where they were.
And we're like, I hope that family is okay.
And when we climbed up the cliffs ourself, we saw them sitting on the other side, just enjoying the
view.
And so I thought having them here in this photo was somewhat interesting.
After I do my basic fixes, the ways that I make my landscape photos better include using my favorite
tools like vibrance and saturation, to make our colors pop clarity and texture to make those textures
more texture free dehaze which will bring back some information and detail, especially in the sky which
you will often have if you're shooting on a day where it's a little bit cloudy and or muddy dodging
and burning.
What I mean by that is you are literally making certain aspects of your photo brighter or darker using
brushes, radial filters, adjustment filters.
We'll go into this in Lightroom in just a second to show you some examples.
Doing selective sky edits because sometimes your sky is just don't look that great.
And so changing the color, the vibrance of the sky, the texture just of the sky itself can be very
good.
And then specific color adjustments to bring out certain greens in the landscape or reds and oranges
in the sky.
In the right.
You can see the before and after of this big surf photo of Bixby Bridge.
Here's the before.
Here's the actor.
So you can see a lot going on.
I started with a decent composition, decent exposure, but editing, I was able to bring out a lot
of the color and the sky, the the stars, the landscape as well.
And so we're going to go into the editing room and I'm going to show you how I edit a couple of photos.
Now, the point of this is not to teach you how to use Lightroom to edit landscape photos.
I actually have a full class on that if you're interested.
I just want to show you the specific techniques that I'm using so that hopefully whatever editing app
you're using, you can follow along and do similar edits to your own photos.