Editing your landscape photos can be a tricky process, especially when you're just starting out. It's easy to get caught up in the desire to make every image look perfect, but this can lead to common mistakes that actually detract from the quality of your work.
Coming to you from Mark Denney, this insightful video highlights five major signs that you might be over-editing your landscape photos. The first sign Denney discusses is what he calls “shadowless” editing. It’s tempting to lift the shadows all the way to reveal every detail, but doing so flattens your image, stripping it of depth and dimension. If your histogram shows a significant gap on the left side, that’s a clear indicator you’ve removed too much shadow detail. Denney suggests that shadows should be present to some degree to maintain the three-dimensional feel of your photos. Instead of cranking up the shadows to +100, consider using Lightroom’s auto-adjust feature by holding the shift key and double-clicking the shadows slider for a more balanced approach.
Denney's second point touches on "bad balance," specifically the challenge of achieving the right white balance in your images. He explains that white balance isn’t about getting it technically correct, but about making sure the tones in your image reflect what you experienced when you took the photo. Denney demonstrates how to assess white balance by pushing the Vibrance and Saturation sliders to +100. If one set of tones—warm or cool—dominates, it’s a sign you need to adjust. He uses a color picker on a neutral area of the photo, like a white vehicle, to get closer to the real look and feel of the scene. This method ensures that your images don’t come across as too cool or too warm, which can distort the mood you’re trying to convey.
Denney also covers “halos,” which occur when you over-sharpen or overuse clarity and texture, creating unnatural glowing edges around objects like mountains. He demonstrates a quick fix in Photoshop using the Clone Stamp tool set to “Darker Color,” which effectively removes these halos without compromising the overall sharpness of the image. This technique is particularly useful when you want your images to retain their detail without looking overly processed. That's just the start, so check out the video above for the full rundown from Denney.
