Nature Photography How To

Experienced landscape and nature shooters understand that pleasing colors are a major component of all successful images, but what should you do with dull images that were captured under flat and boring light? Simple: Follow the instructions in this tutorial from the PHLOG Photography YouTube channel.

Instructor Christian Mohrle is a regular on these pages because Shutterbug readers appreciate his straightforward advice for boosting the impact of images captured in the great outdoors. This episode is devoted to a simple technique that anyone can employ to change the color palette in a way that's far more appealing than what appeared in your original shot.

Mohrle pulls up a nicely composed seaside photo and walks you through his step-by-step process for making a dynamic tonal shift. Feel free to follow along by downloading the sample Raw file with a link in the description beneath the video.

Mohrle begins with several global adjustments to the overall scene to create the best possible base image for the subsequent selective enhancements that make his image pop off the screen. His goal is enhanced vibrance and color—with a dreamy glow in the highlights.

The first simple step is changing the profile from Adobe Color to Adobe Landscape which immediately brightens the darkest portions in the frame and boosts overall saturation. Mohrle then adjusts the tones by gently dropping exposure and bringing down highlights. He also modifies the blacks, adjusts White Balance, and achieves a sharper look by increasing Texture and Clarity.

Now that the base image is far more appealing, it's time for a few local adjustments using masks. Mohrle targets the sky to add drama, the center of the image to accentuate detail, and the right side of the frame to introduce a simple glow. The steps are quite simple, and you can apply the same concept to other types of images that need more punch.

This is when Mohrle's color-palette shift comes into play and Mohrle demonstrates the straightforward steps. All that's left to complete the beautiful transformation is a bit of cautious sharpening and a final cleanup in Photoshop.

Once the video concludes take a look at the popular PHLOG Photography YouTube channel where there are many more Lightroom lessons for avid landscape shooters.

And on a related note, we also encourage you to watch our earlier tutorial with another post-processing specialist who demonstrates a quick Lightroom tip for using the Tone Curve tool to achieve perfect saturation in all of your outdoor photographs.