Nature Photography How To

Are you looking for a simple and effective Lightroom technique that will dramatically enhance images as quickly as possible so you can get back out in the field doing what you love most? If so, we've got you covered with today's game-changing tutorial from post-processing impresario Julienne Kost.

Dynamic Range is one of the most important photography concepts to understand, both with regard to a camera's capabilities and how you edit your work. Some shooters don't know exactly what the term means, but just about everyone knows they want more.

Shutterbug readers are always enthusiastic about Julieanne Kost's post-processing tutorials because of her vast knowledge of all things Adobe and her uncommon knack for simplifying seemingly complicated concepts and tasks. In the next four minutes she demonstrates a foolproof method for enhancing images with Lightroom's Presence Sliders.

We've had discussions in the past about how a heavy-handed approach to post processing can be worse than no editing at all and can really mess up an otherwise nice shot. There are also times that problems occur because of a failure to understand how common tools work, and this often results in easy-to-correct mistakes

Outdoor photographs often need local adjustments to balance a bright sky against a dark background, or when one side of an image is brighter than the other. The trick is using Lightroom's Linear Gradient tool to create soft transitions in a fading pattern to make the necessary enhancements.

This interesting post-processing tutorial demonstrates how to use Photoshop's Radial Blur filter with the option of Zoom to accentuate motion in a way that conveys a dynamic impression of speed. As instructor Pablo Garcia says, "this is a great choice for giving our photos a sense of movement towards the inside of the image."