Video: 5 easy ways to improve your landscape photos in Adobe Lightroom

 

 

Landscape photographer Thomas Heaton isn't a fan of change. For this reason, and a few others, Heaton hadn't updated Adobe Lightroom in a long time. He had a workflow that worked for him. However, Heaton finally updated Lightroom, and, as it turns out, he's happy he did because he has found some new tools to help his landscape photo editing. In his latest video, Heaton shares five easy Lightroom tips that have made the biggest difference in his workflow.

The first new feature Heaton enjoys in the latest version of Lightroom Classic is the "adaptive sky" preset. Now, if you're like me, you might not be a big fan of presets. Many of us want control over the look of our images. However, "adaptive sky" is a bit different. Rather than applying a look to your entire image, the subset of presets only applies to the sky. Adobe Lightroom uses its AI technology to automatically select and mask the sky, much like it does when you choose "select sky" in the masking tools. When you select an "adaptive sky" preset, Lightroom creates a mask, and you can see precisely which adjustments the preset made to the image and adjust them as you see fit.

Heaton's editing workflow also includes "intersect with mask," a relatively new feature that allows you to combine different masking tools to interesting effect. For example, you can select the sky and then intersect that sky mask with a linear gradient, which digitally replicates the effect of a graduated neutral density filter, except that it's even better because it won't affect any mountains or trees above the horizon.

Another change to Heaton's Lightroom workflow isn't Lightroom itself, but a plugin called DxO PureRAW 2. The plugin was released earlier this year, and we've gone hands-on with DxO PureRAW 2. It's a pre-processing plugin for your raw files that delivers incredible detail, lens corrections and noise reduction. Heaton heard about the plugin from fellow photographer Julien Baird, and PureRAW 2 has given Heaton's images a lot more detail before even doing any editing in Lightroom.

To see the rest of Heaton's easy Lightroom tips, watch the video above. To see more from Heaton, visit his YouTube channel, website and Instagram.

(Via Thomas Heaton)