Ron Leach

One of the common pitfalls with travel photography is returning home, reviewing images on the computer, and discovering they don’t look as great as they did through the viewfinder. The same thing is true when shooting landscapes, even close to home, because it’s impossible to return and find exactly the same light.

There are many reasons you may want to cut out the background of a photo and create a composite image. Sometimes the goal is to replace a boring sky with something more compelling. Other times you may just want to place a portrait photo on a more interesting background.

It’s amazing how a basic tweak in Photoshop or Lightroom can make a huge difference in an image. Sometime all that’s required is a boost in saturation, while other times a bit more sharpness or contrast is what takes.

Photoshop’s Selection tools offer a variety of ways to improve an image. They enable you to lighten or darken one portion of a scene without affecting the rest of the image, selectively adjust colors, remove distracting elements, or cut out an object from one photo and place it on another.