Juicy landscapes in Camera Raw

Before and after. Watch the video to see how to do this in 3 minutes or less.

One of the most powerful things about shooting raw photographs is that you can juice up your landscapes really quickly. This video shows you how I went from the original photo on the left to the juicy landscape on the right using Adobe Camera Raw.

How to juice up this landscape photo in Camera Raw:

• The original photo was severely underexposed so I extended my histogram by moving the Exposure slider to the right.
• I corrected the White Balance using a pre-set to make it more neutral, but you can do custom white balance too.
• I increased the Blacks in the photo
• I added Contrast using the Tone Curve
• I added 75 points of Vibrance – This made the most impact on the juiciness of the photo.
• I used the graduated filter to darken the top half of the photo which made the clouds stand out better against the blue sky

This technique can be used exactly the same way in Adobe Lightroom. If you have Photoshop Elements you can do most of it except the tone curve and the graduated filter. Apple’s Aperture has similar controls for tweaking raw files.

Works best with:

In my experience, this technique works best with photos that have been taken on a sunny day. If there are clouds in the sky it also helps to make your landscape photos less boring.

What do you do to enhance your landscape photos? Let me know in the comments.