Photo How To

Today's post-processing lesson reveals a versatile and very effective tutorial for editing just about any photos you capture outdoors, from landscape shots, wildlife images, and a variety of other nature scenes. What you'll learn will help selectively boost detail in a realistic manner.

Photograoher Brian Matiash is one of our favorite instructors whose popular YouTube channel has this inviting goal: "Provide weekly tutorials for editing photos on any device, capture better images with any camera, and streamline your gear."

This episode involves the pro-level use of three powerful Lightroom tools—Clarity, Texture, and Dehaze—to add significant natural-looking impact to every image you shoot. While this trio of tools accomplish similar tasks, they do so differently and it's important to understand why. In fact, there are times when it makes sense to use all three during the same edit.

Matiash begins with an overview of how the Contrast, Texture, and Dehaze sliders contribute to creating images with better contrast and color in the details of a photo. But here's the catch: "The key is knowing how they differ and where it makes the most sense to apply them within an image." He provides some great examples that make all this very easy to comprehend.

The first step for those who are unfamiliar with these "essential" tools is navigating to Lightroom's Effects panel where the three sliders reside. If you're using Lightroom Classic the sliders are found by expanding the Basic panel and scrolling down to the Presence section. Matiash notes that in either case the siders work the same, as they also do in the Lightroom Mobile app.

Before diving into the use of these three tools Matiash says it's important to understand the concepts of Contrast and Frequency because he uses these terms repeatedly throughout the video. As he explains, "Contrast determines the range between the darkest and brightest parts of a photo, while Frequency determines the level of detail in various areas within the frame, from low, mid, to high."

With these technicalities out of the way Matiash devotes the remainder of the episode to demonstrating the best methods for using the Clarity, Dehaze and Texture sliders to create maximum impact in your photographs. The process is very easy to achieve, and once you get you got it forever more.

Be sure to head over to Brian's instructional YouTube channel where you'll find a selection of valuable shooting and editing tips.

We also suggest watching a tutorial we posted recently from another processing expert who demonstrates a unique and extremely effective Lightroom technique for removing ugly dust spots and other image-killing artifacts from your photographs.