Hi guys, and welcome to this new lesson. Many of you wrote me a message that they'd like to see a more varied catalog of landscape photos. So I decided to give you a new lesson about how to edit a wonderful photo of a waterfall, and how to manage all these colors of photos you shot in autumn. So it will be an awesome lesson, I show you step by step how I came from this role that came out of my camera to this final image. So we talked of course about how to manage colors, how to make pictures look natural, but also how to catch the eye of the viewer and to impress them with your photo. So it will be an very interesting lesson and let's start.

First of all, I can give you a little tip when you shoot landscape photos in autumn, for example, if you ever have the possibility to go to Germany and to visit the Black Forest, just go there you have a really nice photo spot there I can really recommend this bot to you. So when it comes to shooting awesome Photos of photos and awesome, I really can recommend you to use the polarizer polarizer filter. I think this is the most important filter in landscape photography combined with the ND filter. So the polarizer you cannot bring back this effect in post processing. So it's really important to do this right when you're shooting landscape photos. The polarizer helps you to get more natural color to really make all the colors pop as you see maybe here and to also make the water much more clearer to get it really transparent so that you can see the ground the least which are lying on the ground and in the water.

So it's really nice effect in autumn I can maybe show you another photo. Here I shot with a polarizer and an ND filter combined. So you can really make use of this these both filters and I promise you they will improve your image quality. So but now let's start with the editing of it. This photo. So I already imported our image to Lightroom as I showed you in the basics lesson.

So let's start with the editing maybe I show you the EXIF data that you can see how I shot this image. So it was shot at one five of a second aperture 6.3 with ISO 100 with my 24 to 70 millimeter size lens for at my Sony a seminar. So um, I really tried to make not a tool to long exposure because I try to keep the shape of the waterfall here. So that's another trick I can recommend you in in odd when it comes to shooting waterfall images. You know often it is gives a really cool effect if you're exposed for example like 30 seconds. This gives a really nice look.

It is very, very clear waterfall it's very kind of fuzzy look. But when you Try to achieve to keep the shape of the water for that you really can see how the water is falling to make it a bit more than Nemec the image, it's all you can also use a short exposure time to to achieve this. So it's really nice. As we've seen, here I am chose one five of a second to really not destroy the beautiful shape of this little waterfall here. So at first, obviously, our picture is a lot too dark. So we can easily fix this by just boosting the exposure a bit here, maybe something like this looks fine.

And for the white balance, I think it's a bit too yellowish for me. So I like I'd like the green to be a little bit more kind of bluish. So maybe it's dragging the pitch to the left here, maybe something like that. So we can also make the Water a bit more a bit more fresh a bit more natural by just changing our white balance here and making a bit more blue adding a bit more blue to the image. So I think contrast is fine. So we start with our usual workflow, we open up the shadows, but in this picture, we don't have to open up the shadows to plus 100.

Because that's obviously too much it destroys the contrast the dynamics of this image. Here, it's fine, maybe if we just go to something around 40 This looks kind of nice. So we write these dark parts in the image a bit, but not too much so that we really can can keep this depth in the photo. So for the highlights, maybe we also lower these highlights a bit but not that much because yeah, the highlights aren't blown out also we are not shooting right into the sun. In rent to the sun, always just keep showing highlights minus 100 or minus 80, for example, but here we don't have really complicated light. So we have a really balanced lead in this image.

So I think it's fine if we drag the highlights to minus 3435, for example, that's fine, something like that. Okay, now, of course, we set our white point by holding the old key and dragging it to the right. And till we see some parts of the image are burning out something like that. It's fine. So you see, the water is much more brighter now. It looks really, really cool.

I think. So the blacks, we can also set our black point, but not too much. And yeah, something like minus 20 looks really cool. Yeah. So um, you know often I told you to always do minus clarity. So we will also do mind sketch on this image.

But we didn't drag the highlights in minus 100 and the shadows to plus 100. So we don't have to do minus 20 of clarity here in this image. So it's fine if we just do a bit of minus clarity here to avoid an HDR look but not too much in this photo. So I think we are fine with minus seven minus or something like under minus 10. So this loop should look fine. By brands, yeah, we have to add a bit more color a bit more dynamics to the image.

So vibrant, it's always good to add a bit more color to create a bit more color here and saturation. Maybe we can boost this colors a bit. But you see if we do too much here, it also looks unnatural. So let's take it with plus five. I think this still looks natural. So in autumn photos, I follows your shot in autumn.

I think colors are the most important aspect of your photos, because these really are the main part of your photos and they should catch the few of the people who watch at your photos. So we should really take care of these colors here and make it really pop but also natural. We can do this by going to the HSL color section in Lightroom. And we'll make sure that we are here in all that all sliders are visible, and we can make our adjustments for the colors. So I think the lease it was really late in autumn third was at the end of October, or even in the beginning of November when I were at the Black Forest and shut this image though and the autumn was really late already. So the colors were a bit round already.

Not that bright, nice tones of red. So maybe we can fix this With the orange orange slider here in Lightroom, by dragging it to the left, let's see what it does. Okay, now you've seen it, it's really too much, obviously. So now this doesn't look natural anymore. But I think that goes to the right direction. So I want to make the leaves the leaves here on the rocks a bit more to the read to not, nature just make a bit more interesting and not so boring with these kind of boring brown tones.

So maybe let's drag it to something like minus 30. This looks really cool. So if we look at the before and after you see we did a basic retouching. And now we take care of the colors to make it a bit more natural. So as the next step I would also take a look if we can adjust the yellow tones because I think the green as I already tried to fix with the white balance and make it a bit more green a bit more to the blue tones. I think the green is still a bit too yellow is still a bit too yellowish.

So we can just drag the slider of the yellow tones a bit to the right here. And you see it changes the color of the green tones, they're looking much more saturated, much more natural, much more like in spring and I kind of like that look. So I drag this slider to plus eight looks fine I think here so also the green tones with the green slider we can also do the same go in the same direction. So we also adjust it to plus 10 something around that. Okay, so I kind of like that if the water is a kind of turkeys. So let's maybe drag the slider here a bit to the left.

So you see the water the color of the water is changing here but not too much. So it always you're always trying to keep things natural No, but maybe something around minus 10 looks fine here and it's 10. Okay, so I think it's kind of nice. So maybe let's add a next step we don't have to change the purple and magenta tones so it doesn't affect the image at all. You see we don't have any tones of magenta or purple and our image, but at next we can maybe adjust the saturation of the colors we corrected now. So maybe to boost the red tones a bit more.

And also the orange tones, though the colors of the leaves here. Maybe something like that. Something like plus 30 is fine, yellow or think is fine. Green we can also boost the colors of the green tones. Because I kind of like that look. Maybe plus 50 and also the tones of the Aqua of the kind of look here.

To the color of the water bit boosted a bit. Yeah, I think this looks kind of nice, really nice. So the last function legend which we can use for for improving the colors is the luminance function. So we can make some parts of the image brighter, some colors, or even darker I think the red tones should be more contrast so we can still drag them to the left to make them a bit darker to bring a bit more color in the image and the orange tones we can maybe bright a bit up something like that because they are really dark now. Okay, and the green tones is take a look what we like. I like it if the green turns a bit darker as well.

And then we drag it to minus 50 here. Yeah, so I kind of like that. Because I like the look of the green tones when it looks natural and of course saturated. So this looks fine. In this image, let's take a look if we do some Split Toning here by pressing and holding the Alt key, but I think it would, the Split Toning would destroy the whole, the whole color the whole thing we created in this image, and it would just destroy our message also on the image. So I think we are finished with the colors now.

But maybe let's make some local adjustments to complexify the light and to make it a bit more interesting. So I think at the day when I was at the Black Forest, it was not Sunny, so it was really gray. We have big clouds in the sky, so the light was really dark. So maybe we can make it a bit more interesting by faking or by Adding a bit a kind of sun to our forests here, and we can do this by using the Radial Filter here. So we drag a big Radial Filter here at the top and just drag it over the wooden bridge here and make it a bit brighter Of course, and we can drag it down to it until we hit the waterfall and make sure that tethers around 80 or even hundred that it looks natural that we don't recognize that we used an Radial Filter here.

Okay, this kind of looks nice. And we can maybe add a second one. Make it a bit on the left here and return it a bit too fake some kind of sun is shining into our image here. Make sure the feather again goes to round 100 Yeah, and maybe just this bit. And I've kind of like that, because it now looks much more friendly much more like a sunny day sunny autumn day. And yeah, it just captures more the view of the person who looks at your photo because the viewer will always look to the brightest part of your image first.

So maybe here at the background to the to the sky, or of course to the water which is of course also really bright. And which you want to achieve that the viewer can look around here from the top to the bottom. So I kind of like that look. Maybe we can also take our adjustment brush and brush in here on the rock bit of a brightness and a bit of brightness here at this rock also, kind of like that little waterfall here. Also though, let's make it much more brighter here also. So I kind of like that, maybe boost the exposure a bit more.

And this looks nice. Okay, really good. Maybe also the rock here can add a bit of sun to this rock a bit of complex defying the light here and maybe also this point, the bridge just to make it more complicated or alive and to add more dynamics to the photo. Okay, so let's see if we should crop the photo a bit. Maybe just a bit at the bottom, but I think the composition looks kind of nice. So we have a The falling water here at the lower third of our picture.

And we have this nice wooden bridge here at the top and I kind of like the composition here. So the cropping is fine. Maybe let's take a look if we can do is remove chromatic aberration is enabled, we should always enable this because it does a really nice job in Lightroom just always enable this sharpening. We can of course do some sharpening in Lightroom here so drag the sharpening to around 70. And now we hold the Alt key and drag our masking slider to the right until we see everything which is white. Now at the moment we'll get chopped.

So I want to make sure that only the edges get sharpened. Maybe we can go to run 75 Here. And this looks really nice. So we have not any noise at this picture because I shot this at ISO 100. But we can always enable noise color noise. Oh, that's the wrong slide the color noise reduction because this does a really good job in Lightroom and doesn't affect the sharpness of the photo at all.

So that's a cool trick to always just make sure that color noise reduction is around 50 because it every time reduce a bit of the color noise but it doesn't affect your sharpness. Maybe we can also add a little post crop vignette here at the picture. Just a bit set on midpoint. Let's see what this does. Okay to make it more to center and Heather Of course, to 100 ad it looks natural. Okay, so So I kind of like what we did so far.

Now we can read this rock here but within no adjustment brush and of course I'm the patch here at the bottom is really yeah, it's a bit disturbing. It's also not as interesting as the rest of the picture. So maybe let's take this gradient, the gradient here, and the gradient at the button to a photo and just back the exposure a bit. Okay, something like that. And now, Mitch, you also another trick when shooting waterfall images in autumn and you can always try to add a bit of an interesting party image a bit of a spot where you fewer can really look at so I am trying to find a yellow leaf in the Black Forest. I placed this leaf right here in the, in the front as a foreground element of my photo.

So I think we should also write it up here a bit. So we brush over a leaf, our yellow leaf, make it brighter make it yellow, no can stick I think it's a bit too oversaturated. And we can make it even a bit brighter. Something like that maybe with pine so that we have an interesting element in the foreground, which always creates more desktop photo. And yeah, maybe we can make the sun here at the top of it brighter, so the left radial bit brighter even. Okay.

And if we now take a look at our before and after. So we did our basic retouching. We We took care of the colors, and to keep it natural, but to also make them pop. And we added a fake sun. So we take the sun and making made it a bit brighter, we change the color of the water. We took care about our foreground to make it more interesting.

And we complexified of course, the light. Okay, so I think we're done in Lightroom. And now we'll move to Photoshop because I am showing you a little trick in Photoshop, how to add kind of cinematic look to your colors to make much you can really make use of when editing photos of autumn, so we can move to Photoshop by making a right click on our image, go to edit in and edit in Adobe Photoshop. So we click this and it takes some time so I'm making a short cut here. Okay, so we're now in Photoshop and I show you how to add a special kind of look to make it a bit more cinematic. And it's really cool effect.

We can add this by going to the Levels Adjustment by adding a Levels Adjustment Layer. And now we drag this little slider here from the blacks to 17 and the slider from the whites, two to three, eight. And here this little slider on the left to around 12th. Okay, and now we add a little brightness and contrast adjustment layer and increase the brightness to around 11 or 12 something, something like that. Okay. And if we now show you the before and after what this little effect does, so it makes the colors a bit more natural, not as saturated as we've set them in Lightroom But I think it's a kind of too much.

So we can change the opacity of our Levels adjustment. But maybe to run 75. And now we can show you the before and after, I think it looks more natural. More, it fits more to the look of image Norton. So I always recommend you to use this kind of look, if you think that your image is too contrasty too saturated, or if you just want to make it a bit more natural to create a bit more than the, the mood of an image in autumn. I really like this kind of effect.

And that's it. I think that the editing of this photo now is always you have to sharpen the image with the high pass filter, as I already showed you. And you can export it, of course with Photoshop them and then we're done with this editing of the autumn photo. So I hope you like this lesson. By the way I am always happy to answer your questions. If something is not clear if something is too fast explained from me, if you don't understand something, just always feel free to write me a message to open a new thread in the q&a section in Udemy.

I'm always happy to help you. And I'm, yeah, I also like to see my students. You're trying to understand the steps I do and also asking why I do some things. So if you just something is not clear, always feel free to ask me. And by the way, I'm also happy to see your results to see you images to see your edits you've done with Lightroom also your own images or even the images I gave to you also the raw files. So I will add this raw file of this image, of course to the file and Udemy so that you can download it.

Just make sure you download the actual the newest version. That you have this raw file and just show me your edits, show me the pictures you've edited or even your own pictures you photographed and you edited with Lightroom. And I always happy to give you some feedback on them even and to receive some feedback of you. So guys, I wish you much success in editing with Lightroom and we see each other in the next lesson.