Landscape boosts
James Paterson shows how to get to grips with targeted Curves edits in Photoshop for an array of landscape-boosting tricks
Tease out extra colours in your photos
At first glance a freshly photographed landscape may appear more muted than you expected, but there’s often a whole heap of colour information in there, just waiting to be teased out. In this project we’ll look at how to make your landscape colours sing. But rather than simply applying a uniform saturation boost to the scene, we’ll instead make a series of targeted edits that are tailored to specific areas. We can make use of Photoshop’s array of intelligent selection tools, not least of which is the Select Sky command that isolates the sky for us.
Once done, we’ll use the Curves command to boost tones and colours. Not only can we use Curves to add punch, we can also target the red, green or blue channels and use them to subtly shift the colours in the scene.
This is where adjustment layers come in. When we add an adjustment layer the active selection (marching ants) is converted to a layer mask, which lets us make a local adjustment. It’s this mixture of adjustment layers and masks that makes editing in Photoshop such a joy, as we have complete control over the changes we make. At any time we can change the area that’s affected by altering the layer mask, or change the strength of the tonal change by tweaking the adjustment layer settings. Get to grips with this and you’ll be able to make precise colour enhancements to your landscapes, whatever the scene.
Target the sky
Go Select>sky to isolate the sky. Go to the Layers panel, click the Create Adjustment Layer icon and choose Curves. Pull the curve up or down to change brightness or colour. The Red channel controls the red/cyan shift, Green shifts green/magenta, Blue shifts blue/yellow.
Add a Curves layer
Drag the bottom-left point on the curve in, as shown, to darken the sky. Go to the RGB channel dropdown. Select Red, then drag down on the red line to add cyan to the sky. Next, target the Blue channel. Drag the bottom left point up to intensify the blues in the sky.
Enhance the tree line
Highlight the bottom layer and go to Select>color Range. Use the Eyedropper to sample the yellow in the trees and adjust fuzziness until you have a precise selection of trees. Add another Curves layer. Plot an S-shaped curve to boost contrast and saturation in the trees.
Boost the water
Highlight the bottom layer, then get the Object Selection tool. Drag a box over the water to select it. Add a Curves layer then plot a bottomheavy S-shaped curve to up contrast and deepen shadows. Target the Red channel and drag the top right point down a bit to add cyan.
Reduce the haze
Get the Quick Selection tool and paint over the mountains to select them. Use the Select and Mask command to improve the selection edge, if needed, then add a Curves layer. Make another S-curve, as shown, then go to the Blue channel and drag the bottom left point in to reduce blue in the shadows.
Punchy rocks
Select the rocks in the foreground with the Object Selection tool, then add a Curves layer and plot an S-curve. Next, add a Hue/ Saturation adjustment layer. Hold Alt and drag the mask from the Curves layer below onto the new layer to copy it over. Increase Saturation to boost the rocks.