THE MISSION
Use Adjustment Layers and masks in Photoshop to selectively enhance your landscapes
Time needed 20 minutes
Skill level Beginner
Kit needed Photoshop CC
One of the main challenges with landscapes is in balancing out bright skies with any darker landscape areas, especially if the foreground is in deep evening shade.
Let’s be honest, many of us when editing a landscape like this where the contrast between land and sky is too great, might simply lift the Shadows and drop the Highlights. It’s a quick universal fix that may help to pull detail out of the lightest and darkest portions of the frame, but can also lead to an image looking overprocessed, or almost HDR-like. Sometimes it’s better to take a more targeted approach instead.
By making local adjustments that are tailored to different areas of the image, the results can look more natural and ultimately more successful. In this tutorial, we’ll look at how to make a series of powerful local edits using Adjustment Layers in Photoshop. We’ll isolate the sky (using the helpful new automatic sky selection tool) and make it bolder, then we’ll select the land and perform a series of edits to enhance the textures and boost the contrast.
This story is from the February 2021 edition of PhotoPlus : The Canon Magazine.
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This story is from the February 2021 edition of PhotoPlus : The Canon Magazine.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
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