Warrior 1

Sean McCormack

This is a scene I really love. It’s almost like a flag created from the landscape itself. The scene speaks to grandeur and majesty. The original file is full of light, colour and detail, and I feel that the best way to work on this file is to enhance those aspects of it.

The most immediate issue is the contrast. While nothing is lost to clipping, it’s not as vibrant or punchy as it could be. Each section in the photo needs work to bring out the best. The trees need detail enhancement, the sky needs better colour, and the mountains need to be a little warmer to counterbalance the cooler tones in the photo. A vignette should also tie the elements together, stopping your eye from jumping around the scene.

1 Basic adjustments

By default Lightroom (as well as Camera Raw) sets the default profile to Adobe Color. I think it can be better. I could change it to either Adobe Landscape or a camera-matching landscape profile using the Profile Browser. This matters because these dramatically change the contrast and saturation of a photo. Choose wisely! I’ve gone for Adobe Landscape because Camera Landscape creates a weird shade of blue in the sky.

For most landscape images, I set the Highlights and Shadows next. These create a tone-mapped effect set to -100 and 100 respectively. If the image becomes too light, I reduce the Shadows, or decrease the Blacks. Sometimes I do a combination of both. Here, though, I feel they look fine.

2 Contrast and Saturation

A lot of people don’t know that Contrast and Saturation are linked; they’re aware that something is happening, but just not that they’re directly linked. Increasing Contrast will increase Saturation; decreasing Contrast also decreases Saturation. For this reason, I generally set Contrast first: 30 looks good. Pushing Saturation overcooks the look, but Vibrance set to 20 brings out the richness in the sky.

3 Enhance the scene

I feel the sky needs to be a little darker. I could use a Graduated Filter, but because it’s a uniform colour, I’ll use HSL instead. With HSL open, I click Luminance. I select the Targeted Adjustment Tool in the top left, then drag within the sky area to taste. This sets Blue to -25 and Aqua to -3. It affects the shadow areas in the mountain too, but I like this.

To get just the mountains, I set the Zoom level in the Navigator to 1:16 and drag out a long Radial Filter. This will make almost parallel lines on the top and bottom so I can select just the mountains. I’ve warmed them to Temperature +7; for detail, I’ve set Clarity to 25, Dehaze to 18 and Sharpness to 11. To have these setting work on the centre, Invert is on. Feather is set to 50, the default.

4 Add a vignette

I think the trees need to be lighter, so I drag out a Graduated Filter to the top of the tree line and increase Exposure to 0.23. To keep the setting limited to just the trees, I choose Color from the Range Mask menu and Shift-click around the trees.

My final step on this raw shot is to create a Radial Filter around the centre of the image. I set Invert off, so I can darken outside the filter.

I set Exposure to -0.5. This really helps focus the viewer’s attention on the beautiful detail in the mountains.