5 EDITING HACKS that’ll Transform ANY Landscape PHOTO!!

So I'm not 100% certain as to what actually constitutes a hack per se, but I do believe that the editing techniques mentioned in this video generally fall in line with the new general definition of the term hack. So I had posted a photo to both Instagram and here on YouTube a couple of weeks ago and received incredible feedback on this image. And I want to share with you today the actual raw file of this photograph, as I think you'll be pretty surprised to see exactly where this image originally started from. Along with some of the editing techniques or hacks, if you will, that I used to create certain effects for this photograph in hopes that you can improve some of your outdoor landscape images by utilizing some of these very same techniques. Now, how many times have you been to an incredible location and you find a composition that's both pleasing and complements the scene very well, all the ingredients to an amazing image are starting to slowly fall into place, but towards the end of your shoot, the lighting conditions or the weather conditions never quite materializes as you had originally hoped for. And you're left with an image that just lacks that kind of eye-catching quality to it. And unfortunately, that exact scenario is far too often the norm when it comes to landscape photography. And quite honestly, happens to me at least 50% of the time. But all is not lost. And in this video, I do want to share with you some of the editing techniques or editing hacks that I use most often to recreate the lighting or the weather conditions that I was originally hoping for, but I never actually received when I was on location. So to jump right into it, this is the actual image right here. This is the raw file of this photograph. It's straight out of camera. And here is the final version. So once again, here is the raw image and here is the final edited version right here. So as you can tell, it's a pretty big transformation that this entire photograph went through. And this actual image right here is one of the few images that I actually use all five of these editing hacks for. Sometimes I might only use one or two of them, but this one I actually use all five of these techniques on. So here is the actual, the raw file. I did put a real quick edit on here, just in the basic panel, just so you can see exactly what I did here, just to respect everybody's time. I didn't want to have to go through all of those individual sliders one at a time for you, but you can actually see what I did right here. So the very first editing technique is something that I call light source. And this happens a lot of times where you're on location and you can see exactly where the light source is coming from, but maybe when you actually captured your final image or the version of the scene that you like best, maybe it didn't have the best lighting, or maybe the lighting never materialized, or maybe it was just kind of hit and miss and the light source was kind of in and out. Whatever the case may be, there's a really, really cool and quick and simple way that you can kind of recreate this light source effect. And what I like to do is I'll come up here to the radial filter. I'm going to switch this to exposure. And this area right through here is where the actual light source was. This is where the sun was actually coming through right here. And what I'm going to do is I'm just going to draw a huge radial right here. I'm going to select invert right there. I'm just going to drag this to maybe right around there, pull it down a little bit. I want it to be pretty large for this particular image. And what I want to do is I'm going to kind of soften this area a little bit. So I'm going to reduce the clarity a touch. I'm also going to introduce a little bit of negative dehaze. And what that's doing is kind of creating a hazy atmosphere through there. And I'm not going to get too carried away with that, but maybe somewhere right around there, just to kind of give the illusion that sunlight is actually coming through here and just kind of softening this area up a little bit. And maybe I'll even increase the temperature here, or I should say warm the temperature up just a touch, just to create that kind of illusion or that effect that it actually is sunlight coming through here. And just kind of drop this area down just a touch. And let's toggle this effect on and off. So this is before and after. Before and after. And you can see exactly what that did in a relatively short amount of time. It doesn't take a whole lot of time to create that effect, but that's just a really simple way to kind of create that light source or just add that light source into your actual image. And these five techniques kind of go in a certain order, as at least in this particular image, they do. So the next technique or next hack, if you will, is something that I call the luminance glow. And this is probably by far the easiest hack of the bunch. So I'm going to come up here. I'm going to close this down now that we have our light source coming right through here. And I'm going to come over here to the HSL color section, and I'm going to come right down here to luminance. And if you're not 100% confident or familiar with what luminance actually is, but it gives you the ability to increase the brightness level of particular colors or decrease the brightness level of a particular color. So when I look at this photograph right here, of course, green is the color that jumps out to me the most. And if I come over here to the green color channel under luminance, watch what happens when I pull this all the way up to 100. See what that does to there? It just adds that kind of glowing effect only to the areas of green. So I'm going to bring this up quite a bit, and I'm going to do the same thing with the yellows here. I'm just going to rock this back and forth just to see exactly what areas are being impacted by this color. And maybe do the same thing with orange. See if I like anything with that. I don't think I'm going to do anything with orange because it's really just impacting mostly the leaves and I don't want to really change the luminance values there. So I think I'm just going to stick with yellow and green for this one. And let's just toggle this effect on and off. So this is before and after. Maybe we'll bring up the green just a little bit more. Same thing with the yellow as well. This is before and after, before and after. So you can really see what that's doing to all of these areas right through here. So that's a really, really simple way to just kind of recreate the lighting effect that we were hoping for, or at least I was hoping for in this particular location, but never actually materialized like I was anticipating it was going to happen. So the luminance glow is a great way to kind of add that back in. So we've already created our light source. We already added a little bit of glow to some of the greens and the yellows in this particular image. The very next thing I want to do is create something that's called, or at least I call it the dappled dodge. And it's a play on dodging and burning, but we're not going to be doing any kind of burning. We're just going to be creating just kind of dappled pockets of light or little puddles of light just to kind of recreate the illusion that light is hitting certain areas. And the areas that were impacted by the luminance glow, those are going to be the areas that we're also going to add this kind of dappled dodge effect to. And this is real simple to do as well. I'm going to close this down right here. I'm going to come back up to this area where the radial filter is. And let's just start right here. I'm just going to draw this, hit invert. I'm going to drag this right over here, something about like that. And I'm going to increase the feather quite a bit on this, maybe a little bit larger. And I don't think I want to make it that bright, so I'm going to bring the exposure down just a touch to about right there. Maybe we'll warm it up a little bit too, just to kind of continue on the play of sunlight just to kind of warm up that area. And then we're going to right click. We're going to hit duplicate. I'm going to drag another one over to this area right here. I'm going to straighten it out some, maybe something about right there. We'll do the same thing again. Right click, duplicate. And this is just a real quick way to kind of go through this. And I think that's a little bit too bright for that area right there. So kind of bring that down some, increase the size a little bit there. And then we'll right click again, duplicate. Maybe we'll come over here and add one there. This area needs a much smaller one. And you're going to want to have to make all of these, you know, kind of custom fit each individual area, but you kind of get the general idea. And when I toggle this on and off, this is before and after, before and after. And you can see it's also turning on the light source adjustment that we made up here. But in the essence of time, I would normally go through and I would add this little puddles of light, little pockets of light all through here, all along here, just to really accentuate all these particular areas where the light would be hitting these areas that the light was coming through there. And it just kind of creates that, I guess you could call it complexifies the light a little bit, just to make it more interesting. And it kind of gives it that eye-catching quality that it was originally missing. Now the fourth editing hack is one that I call the seasonal shift. And this is one that I have a lot of fun playing with. Let me go over here and hit close. And I'm going to come down to the calibration section here. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to start with the green channel because the majority of the colors in this image are green. And I'm going to come over here to the hue. And I'm just going to start to shift this over. And you can see exactly what it's doing. So if I go all the way over here, it almost looks more like a spring image. But if I come all the way over to the left, now it's starting to look a little bit more like a fall image. That's why I call this kind of the seasonal shift. And then I'm going to do the same thing with the blue primary. And kind of rock it back and forth just to see exactly what it's doing. Definitely don't want to go that way. And I'm just going to kind of pull this to the right more, or I'm sorry, to the left. Because I want to make this image look a little bit more like a fall image and not so much like a spring image. I'm going to reduce the saturation, even though this was in the fall. But I just want to kind of create that more of a fall effect. Let's see what the red primary is doing. Nah, eh, it's doing a little bit. But I think that looks good. Maybe we'll even add a little bit of magenta into the shadows right through there. But when I toggle this effect on and off, this is where we started right here. And this is where we're at right now. So that was a big shift right there. And once I do this in the calibration section, then I like to kind of fine tune it a little bit in the HSL section as well. So I'm going to come up here to HSL. I'm going to come up to hue. I'm going to kind of bring down the green channel a little bit to the left. Just shift those greens more over to yellow. Maybe do the same with the actual yellow channel. Shift the yellows more towards orange a little bit. You can just kind of toggle this on and off. So that's before and after. And you can spend a ton of time just playing back and forth with this, but that's a really cool way to maybe take a spring image and make it look a little bit more fall, or maybe take a fall image, make it look a little bit more like a spring or a summer image. But you can do a lot with the greens and the oranges and the reds and yellows in a particular image. So it's a lot of fun just to kind of shift the overall look of a particular season in an actual photograph. Now the final editing technique is something that I call foggy haze. And this is one that I don't use too terribly often, but it's great for woodland images just to kind of soften the scene up a little bit. And here's a great way to do it. So for this particular image, we could come up here to the gradient filter and just draw a gradient right across this area. Maybe like that looks good. And then I'm going to double click exposure because I don't want to add any exposure, but I want to add a little bit of negative dehaze. And if I turn this down to negative 100, you can see what that's doing. It's adding almost like a dreamy, foggy, hazy look to it. And of course we would never want to add negative 100 to it, but maybe something about like that. Now it's not looking good up here because we already added negative dehaze to this region when we were using our light source, but I'm going to come up here to brush, erase, and just kind of erase this area up through here some just to kind of take away some of that haze. And I think that looks pretty good. Let's just toggle this on and off. So that's before and after, before and after. And that's just a real quick example of using that kind of foggy haze, but you can use that in many different areas. If there's certain areas that are being hit with a lot of light, you can add maybe a radial filter and add a little bit of that negative dehaze or using a gradient filter just to kind of soften up the background to create maybe that illusion that it is a little bit of a foggy area or hazy morning or evening, whatever the case may be, just to add a little bit more atmosphere to the overall photograph. So those are just five real quick editing hacks that I use a lot to kind of recreate some of the lighting or weather conditions that just didn't happen or didn't come to fruition when I happened to be on location, but there's a lot of different creative ways that you can play with your image to try and recreate what you had anticipated in your mind. And just to show you what the raw image looked like to begin with, once again, here is the raw file right here, and here is the final edited version. Here's the raw image, and here's the final edited version. So a total transformation. I really liked the way that this image came out. You know, honestly, I had this image sitting on my hard drive for, this was from Oregon from last fall. So what is that, seven or eight months now? And I never really paid a lot of attention to it, but then I started to play around with it and edit it. And I really started to like the composition more. And once I was able to recreate some of the lighting that I was hoping for, it really came out well in the overall edit, at least in my opinion it did. So I hope you were able to pick up some techniques that you could apply to some of your landscape images moving forward to kind of, like I said, recreate some of the lighting, I should say lighting qualities that you, or that we all generally like to have on our images. But a lot of times it just doesn't come to fruition. So hopefully you can apply some of these techniques to your photographs moving forward as well. And then if you have any questions, please leave those in the comment section below, and I guarantee I will get back in touch with you. And as always, I really do appreciate you watching this week's video. And if you did enjoy it, if you could give it that thumbs up and subscribe to the channel, if you're not subscribed already, and I will see you all next Wednesday. Bye.