Overview
If you are a landscape photographer using Adobe Lightroom then you are certainly aware that it is an incredibly powerful tool. However, it can also be a bit overwhelming, especially if you’re a beginner just starting to explore its capabilities. I want to explore some Lightroom editing tips and go in-depth on their creative power. These will include:
- Creative cropping
- Using Masks to aide compositions
- Using the dehaze tool for spot healing
- Streamlining your workflow
- Creating presets
- Be creative
Let’s dive in!
Lightroom Editing Tips
Creative Cropping
You’re most likely aware of how to crop an image using the “rule of thirds”. This is a great way to crop almost any image, but it can sometimes narrow your creativity down to just one rule.
Lightroom has a solution for this. When you click the crop tool you will see an overlay that has a grid with nine boxes. If you tap ‘O’ you will see this overlay switch. Now you can see a number of different ways you can adjust your image to make it more visually appealing. You can also hold down ‘shift’ and tap ‘O’ for the overlay to change its orientation.
My favorite of these is the golden ratio crop tool. Using this overlay, you can put your main focus where the swirl is tightest. Then you can line up whatever intriguing foreground can lead the viewer’s eye to that focus. You will find that if your composition was put together well that this golden ratio is already present in your photo!
In this example, you can see how the golden ratio tool ties together the entire composition. It’s easy to decide what to crop out of your image by drawing a line that leads from the foreground, through the mid-ground, and to the brightest part of the background.
Using Masks To Aide Compositions
Masks are a great way to shape your landscape photos in a way that guides the viewer’s eye in an easy to understand way. There are a few different ways that I use masks to shape a photo: Dodging and burning, vignetting and flaring, and clarity adjustments.
Dodging and Burning
Dodging and burning is pretty straightforward. Simply put, this is just the process of making the light a little bit lighter (dodging) and the shadows a little bit darker (burning). This will add more contrast to your image in a very natural way without needing to increase contrast in unwanted areas (such as a very blue sky).
I do this by using the brush tool and setting the exposure value to -0.25 for burning and 0.25 for dodging. Then I adjust the feather and flow of the brush so that it isn’t a harsh mask that appears obvious. Then I simply apply this mask wherever I see fit.
You can also do a luminance range mask and just select your shadow or highlight rand and do an overall adjustment. Then you can take the eraser tool and get rid of any places you don’t want to apply the effect.
Before
After
The difference using this Lightroom editing trick is pretty minimal, but finding the ways to make the most amount of impact with the lease amount of actual adjustments is part of creating stunning images!
Vignetting and Flaring
Vignetting and flaring is one of the quickest ways to make your landscape photos jump off the page. It is so simple yet so powerful. I do this in some way or another in almost all my photos.
To create a powerful vignette first put a radial filter that is directly over the main subject of your image. Next, invert the mask so that any adjustments are applied to everything outside of the radius. You might also want to adjust the feather so it isn’t so abrupt. Then lower the exposure just a touch and watch your subject become beautifully framed.
Flaring is a way to instantly direct the eye. We automatically look at the brightest part of the image which is why having the sunset be the focus of your photo always looks so pleasing. But, sometimes the light source is somewhere off to the side of your composition. In these instances, using a radial filter to create a flare is a great tool.
To do this all you need to do is create a radial filter, adjust the feathering, and then increase the exposure. Sometimes adjusting the dehaze slider can add a softening effect that give the photo a more ethereal feel.
Before
After
Clarity and Texture
I absolutely love shaping the focus in an image by getting creative with the clarity. The same way that the eye is drawn towards the brightest part of your photo, the same is true of clarity. Often times I will reduce the overall clarity or texture of the entire photo and then use a brush mask to draw focus to parts of the scene I want to highlight.
You want make sure you don’t over do it by taking too much detail out of your photo.
Using the dehaze tool for spot healing
This is a very simple trick that helps quickly clean up any spot healing that you need to do. Crank your dehaze slider all the way up and you will be able to notice any spots that might have been on your sensor or lens more easily. This saves me a lot of time because I don’t have to squint at my screen to make sure my photo is spotless.
Streamline Your Workflow
Lightroom was designed intelligently in order to create a certain flow to editing.The sidebar is in a specific order for a reason. For example, your tone adjustments are before the color adjustments section. This is for a reason, if you adjusted the luminance of your colors before, say, adjusting your highlights, then you’re going to create a very unnatural look. Or if you add a layer mask to do darken a specific spot in your photo, then you’re going to have to readjust after you adjust your shadows and blacks. For this reason, I always follow this same order when editing:
- Tone adjustments
- White balance
- Color adjustments
- Color grading
- Presence adjustments (clarity, texture, dehaze)
- Masking
By following this order of operations you create an efficient workflow and then can go back and fine tune as needed.
Use Presets
I think it’s important to play around with how you like to edit before you start creating presets. If you don’t spend enough time starting an image from scratch and making each adjustment manually, then you might start to limit your creativity.
If you are at the point where you feel you’ve developed your personal style and you feel that you’ve gotten some consistency among groups of photos, then it would be beneficial to start using presets! To do this you go to the “Develop” tab on the top menu and go to “New Preset”. From there you can give it a name and decide what edits you want to be a part of that preset. The most beneficial settings to include are HSL Color and Color Grading as those can be hard to match manually across photos.
These two photos used the same preset and then I made specific adjustments after I applied them. When these photos sit side by side I feel that it represents my creative style as a whole.
I think it’s important to note that presets are just a starting point for an image. You should still go through and fine tune settings so they are perfect for that specific image.
Be Creative!
Remember that editing photos is not just a technical process, it is a digital art form. There are no rules here so I encourage you to take risks in order to find a style that expresses your creativity in a way that is uniquely you. Enjoy the process!
In Summary
Lightroom has so much to offer a landscape photographer. These tools allow for us to be able to take something we captured and represent it in a way that only we could imagine. I hope that these Lightroom editing tips help you express your creativity even further!
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