Haze your backdrop

Learn how to use Camera Raw’s Dehaze tool to add mist effects to your backgrounds

- James Paterson

If you have an image that looks hazy – either through atmospheric haze in summer or shrouded in mist in winter – the Dehaze command does a great job of cutting through the mist, crisping up distant details and boosting hazy scenes. It’s easy to use: simply open your image in either Camera Raw or Lightroom and experiment with the slider. More interestingly, the slider goes in both directions so not only can we use it to cut through haze, but we can also add the impression of mist to our photos.

One of the challenges with landscape photography is in reducing busy scenes into simple, strong compositions. Fog, mist or low-lying cloud can help in this regard as it fades out the background details so the foreground elements stand out. Of course, it’s best to capture haze at the time of shooting. But if conditions aren’t right, we can use negative Dehaze to give a subtle impression of mist afterwards. With the AI masking tools in Camera Raw, it’s a simple task. Here, the forest scene initially looks too busy and cluttered but by hazing the background, we can come up with a much stronger image.

How to use Positive Dehaze