Four Basic steps to Make Landscape Shots Stick out Using Photoshop Elements published by: jparker

When photographing landscapes, the outcome can often be quite underwhelming. An excellent scene or view looks wonderful directly, but unless developed properly, look flat and uninspiring within a photo. Even if you make use of a top quality DSLR such as a Canon EOS 5D with its Canon BP-511A battery, sometimes you will need a little assist to boost that scene making it take off. This is why Photoshop Elements is needed. The lesser and cheaper brother of this marketplace standard Photoshop is a fantastic post processing tool, and provides a multitude of ways of assisting you to maximum benefit out of your scenic shots. Even some shots you could possibly otherwise discard, can always be salvageable into something. This article will have a look at four great ways you are able to enhance your landscapes.

1. Adjust Color Curves

This is a powerful tool that is utilized to improve certain elements inside your photo. To get to the Color Curves window, visit Enhance --> Adjust Color --> Adjust Color Curves. In the decrease window, select midtones. Then adjust the curvature unless you get the desired output. The midtones are what are the name suggests, all the details which falls in the middle of the product range. Additionally, there are options to put shadows (to improve or darken the eye shadows), and highlights (which allow you to adjust the lighter aspects of your image).

2. Make Blue Bluer

An execllent trick that may be used alongside, or independently of the Color Curves is always to improve the blueness of the sky. A great method to help make your landscape pop. To achieve this, select your eyedropper tool and click anywhere about the blue sky of one's photo. This will make the foreground color that very same blue. Double select that icon and after that drag on the left for any brighter blue. Next, you have to develop a new layer and include a gradient.

3. Draw a Gradient

Near the Gradient swatch, click on the edit button and Transparent Preset and choose for Foreground to Transparent. Click on the Linear Gradient button, and with opacity set to around 45% (you are able to alter this to get the desired effect on your image), combine the top of your image right down to the underside. Perform the same again, however this time, only drag in the element of the image made up of the night sky. This will improve the sky with the deeper blue you selected in step 2.

4. Boost Contrast

The final step is always to simply boost contrast, that will enhance the lights from your darks. To achieve this, select Multiply about the blending mode on the gradient layer. This serves to multiply nowhere with that layer to accentuate more. The final step is always to include a mask and paint over any clouds or things that cover nowhere sky so that the blue gradient layer only covers the night sky. You may also alter brightness controls to suit your needs too.

Following these steps should bring an effect where your flat landscape photo should now look more pronounced and spectacular. It will likely be necessary to do steps such as these on any camera, much like the EOS 5D with its Canon BP-511A battery, or a simple point and shoot. Post processing can be as vital as taking the picture itself.