Processing the landscape in Photoshop: techniques, tools, recommendations

Nothing beats the power of a stunning landscape that instantly brings you into the world of miracles, magic, danger, beauty ... The list is almost endless. Nature is fascinating. For many photographers, the imagination is often teeming with ideas when they see their magnificent creation. In order for the frame to become truly fabulous, you need to do landscape processing in Photoshop.

How much a person has decided to fill his imagination with true nature in photography is a matter of personal pleasure. This article presents several methods of landscape processing in Photoshop, some of which will help restore the natural scene to what it was. And there are tips that can further improve the photo and push images beyond reality.

Remove lens flare

Shooting directly in the sun is a difficult process, but it can often lead to excellent results. One of the main problems that you can face is glare from the sun. Sometimes they look advantageous on stage, and in other cases, the photographer would prefer to do without them. That is why, the photographer’s arsenal should always have a lens hood of the appropriate size in order to reduce the processing time of the landscape in Photoshop.

Paint colors

Almost every photographer loves to create additional colors in the sunset and sunrise. This technique is most effective when there is already color in the sky that can be improved.

Two things that can be created in almost every photo are to draw more than any color in the sky and water that is already there (for example, pink). And add orange to the sun.

Editing the landscape in Photoshop:

1. Create a new layer. To do this, you just need to go to the button to the left of the basket in the additional panel and click on it.
2. Choose a brush. For it, you need to change the opacity to 100%, hardness 0. This is necessary so that there is a smooth transition. After that, you need to create a medium-sized brush.
3. Click on foreground color. It is located at the bottom of the toolbar on the left. When you click on it, a dialog will appear. You need to hover over the sunset area, where there are gold or orange colors. At this point, the eyedropper tool will appear. After that, you need to left-click on the golden-orange color to select it as a foreground shade.
4. Paint through the sunset. Now you need to take a brush and draw colors, trying not to affect other areas. This is normal if the paint goes across the horizon to the image. But you must avoid noticeable transitions.
5. Change the blending mode to Overlay or Soft Light and adjust the opacity. For the sunset area, you can apply the first type of mode, which will create a stronger contrast effect. The second overlay will smooth the colors. The opacity should be adjusted so that you can see brighter colors coming from the sunset, but at the same time everything looked as natural as possible.
6. Now you need to do the same to enhance the emphasis (choosing a pink foreground color), this time painting around sunset, sky or water. It is already worth using the Soft Light Blend mode and an opacity of 30-25%.

Replacing the sky using a gradient mask

Regardless of whether the photographer wants to expand the dynamic range of the image light or replace the sky with a completely different one, the use of this tool will allow a very natural transition between the layers.

For example, you can mix two exposures. One for the sky and blown parts of the water (snow, earth and so on), and the other for the foreground stones or sand. This will create a balanced image with a greater range of light.

Create magic (Orton effect)

Almost every person saw landscapes that would look appropriate in the movie “Lord of the Rings”. Often this dreamy feeling is created using the Orton effect. The instructions below describe how to create this model in Photoshop CS6 yourself.

1. Duplication of the background layer. After that, you need to right-click on it and select Duplicate Layer.
2. Apply image. Now you need to go to Image> Apply Image. A dialog box will appear. It is worth making sure that the layer has been changed to the background. The channel should already be in RGB, and where Normal is written next to Blending, you need to change it to Screen and click "OK".
3. Duplicate the background copy layer. Now you need to blur this new image. To do this, go to Filter> Blur> Gaussian Blur. The radius that will be selected here depends on the size of the file the photographer is working with. For an image with a width of 5.184 pixels, the radius should be about 22.
4. Change blend mode. After selecting both duplicates, go to “Layers”> “Merge Layers” to collapse them into one. Now you need to select the blending mode on Multiply. This will create an Orton effect.
5. Reduce the opacity of this layer as you like.

Tip 1: you should try to be selective in how to process landscapes in Photoshop when the Orton effect is applied. It can soften important textures and small details that add to the image. In this case, you can mask its areas that do not need to be highlighted.

Tip 2: you need to control all the colors! After applying this effect, as a rule, you can find that the shades have become very saturated. And here it is necessary to understand whether they improve or degrade the image.

Detail enhancement

One of the great ways to give landscapes more effect is to improve all objects. Using local contrast changes in Photoshop CS6, you can draw beautiful textures and patterns that complement the rest of the scene.

If the photographer decides to improve the image details, it is recommended to do this selectively and carefully.

It is imperative to mask all the white edges that often appear during strong amplification of detail. This effect looks especially beautiful when the winter landscape has been processed in Photoshop. When each snowflake will show its texture.

Remove strong color casts

Paints are an integral part of photography. Sometimes the photographer misjudges the white balance or uses a filter that creates a strong tint over the scene. There are several techniques for processing the landscape in a photo in Photoshop to remove unnecessary accents. But such a method as setting the correct white balance is the most consistent.

Essentially, you need to show Photoshop where the white, 50% gray and black dots are. Then the program adjusts the remaining colors accordingly.

Change the balance of light

One of the most common ways to boost your mood and direct your viewer's eyes is through a vignette. One of the best tools for creating it is the Dark Color / Lighten Center filter from Nik Color Efex.

With it, you can not only create a seamless, darker border, but also shift the entire balance of light in the image to an area with greater brightness. Thanks to the filter, the central part is determined independently. That is, you can lighten this area by smoothly and naturally dimming the rest of the image:

1. First you need to find the Center for dimming / lightening immediately after dark contrasts.
2. The brightness of the middle does not change the juiciness of the actual center of the image if they do not match.
3. Border Luminosity determines the darkness around the focus. The effect is feathered, so the transition from light to dark is very smooth and natural.
4. The size of the center will affect how large it will be in the image. The larger it is, the smaller the vignette.
5. At the end, you must click on Place Center once. Then click where you want to focus the light.

Select individual colors.

There are several ways to improve the handling of the cityscape in Photoshop. First of all, during the conversion, you need to go to the HSL tab and the Hue section.

This allows you to change the colors in the photo. For example, you can shift the green to blue so that it looks emerald rather than yellow.

Or move the yellow slider to the left to make it more orange and separate from the rest of the photo.

Processing landscape in Photoshop from raw conversion

This is perhaps the most important tip. To improve the photo as well as possible, you need to take pictures in RAW format. The raw file contains thousands of tones compared to hundreds in JPEG format. So you just need to accept this as a rule of thumb - you need to shoot raw.

Another consequence is that you need to edit the landscape in Photoshop as much as possible in a raw converter. This allows you to save all thousands of tones for smooth transitions during conversion.