- [Instructor] In this
tutorial we're going to edit a couple of landscape photos. You can see both of them
on the right-hand side in the browser. So first we'll tackle this one and then move on to this one. So let's go back to the first
and I'll hide my browser so we have a bit more space. Okay, first of all I
can see that the horizon is not quite straight, so I'll grab the Straighten cursor tool and draw along what I imagine
to be roughly the horizon, which is around here, and straighten like so. Next I just want to
modify the crop a little so I choose the Crop cursor tool and just change the crop like so. For editing I can see it's a
little bit on the dark side so I'll increase the
exposure just to change the overall brightness. And white balance wise, I'm gonna prefer to warm it
up a small amount like so. Now contrast wise, I can see it's looking a little bit flat, so in the Levels tool I just
hit the Auto Adjustment button and that's gonna set my black
and white points accordingly. So now the midtones are looking, perhaps a little bit too bright overall, so I'll use the Brightness slider and that's just gonna darken
down my midtones somewhat. And I'll improve the contrast once again and just bump up the Contrast slider, there we go. Now there's a few brighter
areas of the photo that I'd like to just darken slightly, so I'll reduce the Highlights slider and that will just give
me a bit more detail back in the sky. It's only subtle, but if
I preview it I can just long press on highlight
and I can see I've just got that little bit more
detail back in the clouds. Now also, just make the
image a bit punchier, I want to darken the very darkest tones, so I use the Black slider
to darken those down a little bit. Now finally in the Exposure tool tab I'll move down to Clarity
and increase the value just to get a bit more midtone contrast. Now I think the only
color edit I'm going to do is gonna be on the blue sky, so let's move to the Color tool tab here, and I'll use the Direct Color editor, so that's this cursor tool down here. So if I want to darken
the blue sky a little bit all I need to do is
click on an area of blue, hold my Alt key down, and drag downwards and that's gonna reduce the
likeness on those color tones. Now to finish my edit I can just see one small distraction on the road, so I can get rid of
that with a heal layer. So over in the Layers tool, I'll click and hold on the plus button, and choose New Heal Layer. Let's give that a name
and just call that Road. I choose my Brush cursor tool here and I need to pick a
source point to copy from. So if I hold my Alt or Option key down and click once, I right-click to make
my brush a bit smaller, and just mask here on the area that I want to get rid of. So if I hide the mask by pressing M, then you can see it's fixed
that area quite nicely. So that completes that first edit. This is how it looked when
it came out of camera, and now how it looks
with a few simple edits that we did. Okay, let's have a look at
the second landscape photo. So first of all this
looks pretty straight, so we don't have to straighten as before. But I'll hit C on my
keyboard to get the Crop tool and I'm just gonna change
the crop slightly like so. Now this photo is a little challenging as it has quite a wide dynamic range, so there's some very deep
shadow areas in the front and some brightness towards
the back of the photo, so let's see how we can deal with that. First of all, again, I
feel the white balance could do with warming up a little, so I just increase my Kelvin slider, not by much, just to around there. Once again I choose Auto
Adjust on the levels and that's gonna set our
shadow and highlight points. Overall the exposure looks pretty good, but it good do with a bit more contrast, so let's increase that. And also the midtones, let's drop those down slightly as well. Also to improve the midtone contrast, I'll move down to Clarity and
increase the Clarity slider. Okay that's looking much better, but we have this very
sort-of dark area of trees at the front of the photo. Now if I use the Shadow
slider to brighten those, it does so, but it also
affects the rest of the photo, which I don't want. So let's reset that, and
in this case I'll create a luminosity mask that
just masks the very darkest parts of the photo. So to begin in the Layers tools I'm gonna create a new New Filled Layer. So this will mask the whole photo. So if I press M on my keyboard, we can see the mask that has been created. So now we're gonna use the Luma Range tool to restrict that mask to the shadow areas. Now when you're creating
the Luma Range mask it can be easier to visualize
if you select Grayscale Mask, which you can do so by clicking here. So right now everything looks white because the whole photo is masked. Now as I said before, I want to restrict that just to the very shadow areas, so I click on Luma Range like so. So the shadow areas are at
the end of the histogram, so I'm gonna change the
range down to zero here and then slowly decrease
the range until I reveal with just the shadow areas. So those are the areas that
are gonna be masked white, so it just needs to be
that treeline at the front, which is probably somewhere
around there, like so. Now I want to refine
that mask a little bit, so I can do so with the Radius
and Sensitivity sliders. So right now radius is at zero, so the Sensitivity slider
isn't gonna have any effect. So I'll increase my radius
to just over halfway, and I'll increase the
sensitivity so that it refines the masks and wraps around
the fine edge of the trees a little better. So let's try that first of all, I can always go and refine
it again if I need to. So I'll say Apply, press M on my keyboard, just to get rid of the mask. And now I can use my Shadow slider to increase the density
in the front a little. So that looks perfect, and it hasn't affected
the rest of the photo. Let's also remember to rename this layer in case I want to go back to it again, I'll call it Tree Line. Now I've just noticed on this
layer that it's affecting an area that I don't want it to affect, just over here on the right-hand side. So that's real easy to correct, I just grab my Erase cursor tool, move over to this area and just erase this section of the mask, like so. There we go, I think I'm pretty satisfied with that edit. So as a reminder, here's
how to photo looked when it came out of camera, and after our few simple,
but very powerful edits.
