How to Make a Landscape Photo Look Professional

Recently, I visited the stunning Argentinian Patagonia. I want to share some simple photo editing techniques that photographers of every skill level can appreciate.

The photo used in this tutorial was taken in Argentina near the small mountain village of El Chalten. The mountain you see is Monte Fitz Roy and is considered by many to be the most beautiful mountain in the world. On the other side of this mountain is the Patagonian ice field, the second largest continental ice field in the world, which lies on the border of Argentina and Chile. This photo was taken without a tripod on an autumn morning (in April) with the Nikon D800 and Nikon 14-24mm lens. I'll be editing it in Luminar 4.

I’ll start by working in the Essentials tab. 

I’ll begin with changing the exposure settings. The shadows and highlights are the most important. You want to have plenty of shadow details in the darker parts and highlight details in the brighter parts. Changing these settings is not the same as changing the overall exposure. Changing the exposure will affect the shadows, midtones, and highlights together.

For this image, I’ll make these adjustments:

• Decrease the highlights by 100
• Increase the shadows by 42

I’ll leave the contrast as is and return to this menu later. It’s better to adjust the contrast as one of the last steps, because the other changes I’m going to make will also affect it.

Now, moving to AI Enhance. This menu includes the Accent AI and AI Sky Enhancer tools. Accent AI is a feature I don’t use with my workflow, because I make all the individual adjustments myself. It’s still a great feature, however, if you want to get results quickly. I do use AI Sky Enhancer, which recognizes the sky and makes it look better by making it darker and adding more contrast. In this image, I’ll set AI Sky Enhancer to 100. The blues are now oversaturated, but I will decrease the saturation later.

The next step will be adjusting the colors in the color menu. I’ll go to the Advanced menu, which replaces the old HSL menu. Here, we can change the tone, saturation, and brightness of each color. My goal is to increase the saturation and brightness of the warmer colors to enhance the fall foliage. Make sure to darken and decrease the saturation of the blues to give more separation to the bright mountain and make the blue tones look more natural.

Red

• Hue: 0
• Saturation: +61
• Luminance: +63

Orange

• Hue: -9
• Saturation: +31
• Luminance: +46

Yellow

• Hue: -40
• Saturation: +8
• Luminance: +30

Green

• Hue: 0
• Saturation: 0
• Luminance: +79

Aqua

• Hue: 0
• Saturation: -40
• Luminance: +66

Blue

• Hue: 0
• Saturation: -26
• Luminance: -33

Now, getting to the Details Enhancer. With the Details Enhancer, we can adjust the sharpness of the image by sharpening the details at different levels. You can choose if sharpening will affect small, medium, or large details. I prefer to adjust the small details, because it makes the image look sharper without changing the overall contrast. The key to success is to make small adjustments. The best way to judge this tool is to zoom in 100% or more. For this image, I’ll increase the small details by 17.

Now, I’m going to make adjustments in the Creative tab. I’ll begin with Mystical, increasing the amount to 30 and leaving the shadows at 0. This will make the image look dreamy by increasing the contrast and adding a soft look. It will also increase the saturation, but I’m already planning to adjust that in one of the last steps.

• Set the Mystical amount to 30.

Now, I’ll continue in the Professional tab with the Adjustable gradient. You can put a gradient filter at the top and/or bottom. I’ll put one at the top to decrease the saturation of the blues and make the sky even darker.

• Do this by going to “set orientation.”
• Move the gradient to the top.
• Now, make the gradient smaller, so the middle is around the top of the mountain.
• Finally, decrease the highlights by 22 and the vibrance by 44.

Next are the dodge and burn tools. The default size for dodge/lighten is 100. I recommend changing the diameter to get the most precise results. In this photo, I used different sizes on the river with a 50% strength. By making the river brighter, you’ll get more separation from the surrounding forest, so the river will work better as a leading line. I also applied some dodging to the rocks in the foreground. I only chose to make the already bright parts brighter to increase the existing contrast.

Now, I’ll go to the split toning menu, which allows you to set a certain tone for the highlights and shadows. When the image already has warm tones or allows for warm tones — such as this image does — I’ll further enhance the warmth. It’s important to stay within a certain color range compared to the original image, however. For example, in this image, making the highlights purple or magenta would not look nice. Instead, I can go for anything reddish or yellowish. The easiest way to pick the best tone is to increase the saturation by a lot — say, to 80 — in order to see if you like the color. After you’re happy with your selection, slide the saturation back to a normal amount — something like 31.

For the shadows, I always go for bluish tones. I use the same technique, increasing the saturation by a lot and decreasing it afterwards. I went for 13 in this image.

Now that I’m finished with all the adjustments, I’ll go back to step four to fine-tune the color saturation. Adjustments:

• Orange: 24
• Blue: -42

Now, I’m satisfied with all the adjustments, so I’ll export the image as a JPEG with the sRGB color profile.

In these 10 easy steps we've achieved great results, so let's take another look at the Before and After.

Be sure to give it a try on one of your images!