Image Editing for Landscape Photography

First you can see the result here or in my flickr…..

If you don’t like or don’t wish to know how to edit my bad original photo become like this photo you can skip read this review and close the window. In this review, I will describe the step how to make “normal” original landscape photography become more than normal landscape photography. What you need to edit the image is “program”, in this case I use Adobe Photoshop – you still can use other image processing program although the result maybe a little bit different. Below I will describe it step by step so you can understand how to do it.

1. First you need to open the file, you can see the original picture (I think it’s underexposure), and then level the original photo – see below.

2. You need to set the level parameters, see below – in this case I set input level = 0 – 1.25 -150. You can see the result is over exposure and very bad compare to original photo, but we are not stop here….

3. From the photo above you can see that lower part of this image become better but the upper part has overexposure problem, so you need to add gradient masking – as you can see below.

4. The next step similar with step 1-3, now you need to level and masking for the upper part, because the upper part still same with the original photo. In my example I set the input level: 10-0.3-230, remember that you need to reverse the gradient masking direction – see below.

5. Now the photo is looked better but the color still need some improvement, so I change the color balance for lower part. Because I only need to modify color in lower part then I need gradient masking again, see below. You can modify the number in the dialog box, until you like the color.

6. I think the sky and the city color not integrate very well so I change color balance again – but now not only for below or upper part – so I don’t need any masking.

7. Save the file and close – upload it to flickr later…..

My quote “The man behind the camera is important – but it’s not enough – the man behind the computer also important”. Sharing the knowledge is better than you keep it for yourself – you can share this technique to your friend or maybe you can create better technique than this simple technique – at least I am happy sharing it to you. Finally hope you enjoy read this technique, comments and suggestions are welcome.

Update: (1st November 2008) I already made pdf about this technique, you can download here for free….

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Tags: camera, canon, DSLR, elephant mountain, image editing, landscape, Photography, Photoshop, skyscraper, taipei 101, taipei101, Taiwan, technique

• May 30, 2008
• Photography, Photoshop
• 23 comments