This tutorial is to help you learn how to adjust landscape photos
to bring out the detail of the background and horizon. Much of
the time a digital camera will bring out the colors more in the
foreground, but with this tutorial you can learn how to emphasize
the whole scene. Ok, once you have your picture open in photoshop:
1. First of all, create a New
Brightness/Contrast Adjustment Layer (Layer>New Adjustment
Layer>Brightness/Contrast). Adjust the Brightness and
Contrast until the Background looks good, don't worry about the
Foreground. For this photo I set the Brightness to 19
and the Contrast to 14.
2. Then Select the
Gradient Tool (G) and choose the kind called the Reflected Gradient.
Then with the Adjustment Layer mask selected, drag the gradient tool
from the top of the photo to a little past halfway in the photo.
3. Then for this photo, I repeated steps one and
two but used the Gradient to only include the clouds and sky to
bring out more detail in the sky. 4.
Then Create a New Layer (Layer>New>Layer) and when the New Layer
Dialog box comes up Choose Overlay from the Mode drop
menu, and Then check the box that says, "Fill with Overlay-neutral
color (50% gray)"
5. Then Choose
and big soft paintbrush and To Brighten Areas: with the
color white carefully stroke your
paintbrush on the Overlay layer that you created. And To Darken
Areas: with the color black carefully stroke your paintbrush on the Overlay
layer that you created. For more Instruction on Steps 4 and
5 please refer to our tutorial on
Professional
Brightening Techniques.
With this technique you can make any regular landscape photo look very
professional. And each step is completely customizable to work
with different photos. For different photos, the process and
amount of adjustment won't be exactly the same. |
