Add life to your dull landscape photos

This tutorial is not to replace great photography, but to instead help those of you, like me, who are hobbyists and don't have the expensive equipment to get the photos we want to get. You will need at least Adobe Photoshop CS2. This tutorial is based on a landscape photo, but you can, with little imagination, apply it to any type of photograph. We will start with this base photo, a dull and plain shot of a river shore and some trees.

First step is to crop. We want a little more impact and currently this photo has some extra elements and dead space that we can easily get rid of. This allows the viewer to concentrate more closely to the interesting pieces of the composition.

Next step is most important when dealing with RAW formats, or if the photo was slightly out of focus. That's right, sharpening. I like to use a simple technique using a high pass filter. I do have other, more complicated and more accurate methods, but that is another tutorial altogether. First step is to duplicate the original layer. Then go to "filter > other > high pass". You may need to use a different setting than I did, depending on the photograph, but try to match the detail to the screen shot.

Next, set the high pass layer to overlay like in the screen shot. You should notice the image get much sharper and likely too sharp. You may want to adjust the layers opacity.

Here is a screen shot of my progress so far.

Next we will create a new adjustment layer, to do this click the highlighted button in the screen shot.

Select "Curves", when the dialogue comes up adjust it similar to what is shown in the screen shot. I do this to add impact through contrast, shadows and highlights.

Now, once finished add another new adjustment layer like before only this time select "Hue/Saturation". The attempt here is to bring out the colors, now depending on the photograph, this can change dramatically, or even be skipped if there was no trouble with the colors to begin with. You can see what I chose to do in the screen shot.

We have one more adjustment layer to add, this time select "Levels". The idea here is to again create a bigger impact by creating a little more contrast in tones. You may want to very your adjustments once again depending on the photograph you have selected, but you can see what I did by looking at the screen shot.

In your layer pallete, select the original layer again. Next step is to create the illusion of depth of field. Click the button highlighted in the screen shot to enter quick mask mode, it is located on the tools palette.

Next select the gradient tool in the tools pallet, be sure to select a fill-to-transparent gradient from the gradient dialogue as shown in the screen shot.

Next, use the gradient to fill the viewable atmosphere and any objects not part of the photos interest points. The basic concept is to have the gradient match up with elements that are furthest away and fade away as elements get closer. Same would go for element closest, fading to the subject. Take a look at the screen shot to see how I chose to do it for this photo. When satisfied, click the Edit in Standard Mode button, located just left of the Quick Mask Mode button. A selection will now replace the mask. Now go to "Select > Inverse". Then go to "Filter > Blur > Lens Blur" and match the settings in the screen shot.

And we are done! Here is the finished product:

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