4 Steps of landscape Photography Editing

Well, everyone have their own processing methods when it comes to landscape photography. I follow this 4 step process, more like check points of my editing process. Even though I have mentioned it as landscape photography, I use it for other genre as well. Lets just get into it.

Step 1: Composition:

This is the step one, making sure the composition is right and the horizons are straight. You don't want to edit the whole image and realize the composition is wrong and give up on it. Use crop tool and straightening tool to make sure the composition is right. Check this post for some composition rules.

Tools to correct the composition:
1.1 Crop
Cropping should not be just about resize the image but to tell a story. Based on on how you are cropping and what percentage of the subject fills the frame, the attention of the audience changes. So crop right and keep the resolution ratio of the platform you are processing for.

1.2 Straighten
This is a significant tool, especially in landscape photography. You really dont want the horizons to be slanted or the lines to be not straight in your images.

The original Image

Image cropped to using rule of thirds

Step 2: Color
This is the second part once you have the image compositionally right. In this step based on the image and story, you need to decide on weather to keep it in color or black and white. If you decide to keep the colors, then deciding how strong the colors you want the colors to be and what mood you want to showcase on that image.

2.1 Vibrance & Saturation: Vibrance & saturation adds or remove colors to the image based on what mood you want to add to the image.

2.2 White balance: White balance helps you to add cool or warm tone to the image or correct the color tint of the light.

Color corrected image after (left) and before (right)

Step 3: Contrast
In this step, the contrast in the image is brought out by directly adjusting the contrast option or using curves & levels to bring the highlights out and bring down the shadows. This brings the contrast of light in the image is brought out at this stage.

3.1 Contrast/Curves/Levels : All these tools execute the same. You can adjust highlights, shadows and mid-tones to bring up or down the details.

3.2 Split toning: You can use this tool to add color contrast. By adding contrasting colors to highlights and shadows, you bring the contrast colors to the image. For example orange & teal color combination is commonly used split toning color combination used in portraits and landscape images.

Original Image & After adding contrast to the image

Step 4: Depth
When you have the composition, colors and contrast the way you want it, this step is to add the last step. In landscape photography, this is one ignored step and something that adds beauty to an already beautiful image.

After Adding sharpness & increasing the intensity of highlights and shadows (Added orange+Green split tone)

4.1 Sharpness/HighPass/Frequency Separation: All these tools focuses on adding sharpness to the image. Again, the idea should not be to add sharpness to the whole image but making sure that the subject in the frame is sharp.

4.2 Burning and Dodging: This is another tool to bring specific attention to the highlights and shadows. And this is going to be one of the step that needs more attention at the same time, can consume a lot of time. But more the attention you give at this step the finer the details will be.

Comment, If I missed anything! Share your processes as well.