14 photo editing tips and tricks every landscape photographer must know

Essential photo editing tricks for landscapes: 07 Use Lightroom's Adjustment Brush

Essential photo editing tricks for landscapes: 07 Use Lightroom's Adjustment Brush

Digital Camera World Technique Editor Chris Rutter says

I cut my photographic teeth in the traditional black and white darkroom, so dodging and burning have always been part of my image processing.

But these adjustments are just as useful on colour landscape images as black and white, which is why I find the Adjustment Brush in Lightroom 4 invaluable.

Even though I try to get as much detail as possible by using ND grads when I shoot, I find shooting at sunrise and sunset means that there will be large areas of the foreground that are in shadow.

Essential photo editing tricks for landscapes: 07 Use Lightroom's Adjustment Brush

Using the Adjustment Brush I will lighten these shadow areas, and also add a little warmth to them, which is impossible to do at the capture stage.

The Adjustment Brush is also perfect for lightening mountains and trees, which are above the horizon, so have been darkened by the ND grad filter.

In this type of image I will also use the Adjustment Brush to fine-tune detail and colour in the sky.

See more of Chris's work