Photoshop How To

Whether you edit photos in Photoshop, Lightroom, or another image-editing program, it’s almost impossible to avoid making mistakes on occasion, and this holds true for both amateurs and pros. Robust editing software can be quite complicated, and no one is perfect. Right?

Let’s face it: We all aspire to “shoot like a pro,” regardless of how we make a living. And whether or not that’s a realistic goal, it doesn’t hurt to expand one’s skills as much as possible for the best possible photos.

There are a number of reasons that landscape and other outdoor photos may be underexposed. Perhaps you neglected to add the necessary EV compensation, or an overly bright sky biased the exposure.

If you’re looking for a simple editing tool that will give your images exactly the look you envision, the tutorial below is for you. In less than five minutes you’ll learn how to use Lightroom’s Tone Curve to brighten or darken the tones of an images and create a variety of moods.

It’s not often we post a four-minute Photoshop tutorial with the power to prevent all kinds of frustration, but that’s what you’ll learn in the video below. In fact one highly respected pro insists “this tip saved my sanity,” and it could do the same for you.

Sometimes we edit outdoor photos to make them more closely resemble what we saw through the viewfinder. Other times, especially when shooting on drab days, the goal is to add some punch so the images look as they would under better conditions.