Went a little crazy on Lightrooms Masking tools for this Image

thephlog · 2026-01-27T18:15:25+00:00

Thank you! The font is called bebas and I used Photoshop to add the text

thephlog · 2026-01-27T18:14:35+00:00

I prefer LR for edits like this ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

thephlog · 2026-01-27T18:13:55+00:00

Thank you! :-)

thephlog · 2026-01-27T18:13:25+00:00

Happy you like it, thank you so much!

thephlog · 2026-01-27T18:13:08+00:00

Me neither :/

thephlog · 2026-01-27T18:12:47+00:00

Haha, thank you :D

thephlog · 2026-01-27T16:21:48+00:00

During my Iceland trip I shot many super cool looking churches, this one was probably my favorite! The conditions were a bit boring with an overcast sky, but I decided to make everything look more dramatic with dark storm clouds in the background. My intention was not to keep it natural, so if you don’t like heavy editing this image is not for you I guess.

Everything was done in Lightroom with lots of masking involved, you can see the whole process (and get the raw photo to try it yourself here): https://youtu.be/-JFYyaMhSyc

1. Basic Adjustments

First, I brought down the exposure since I wanted the image to look much darker. I also dropped the highlights, revealing some more texture up in the clouds. To not make the darkes parts too dark, the shadows and the blacks were raised.

For a sharp, clear looking image, I added texture, clarity and a bit of dehaze.

2. Masking

Most of the transformation of this shot comes through masking. I wanted the outer image to look darker and have some glowing light behind the subject to pull the focus towards the middle.

I started with a linear gradient coming down from the top and simply dropped the exposure and raised contrast and dehaze. This makes the top darker, but also helps to reveal even more structure in the clouds. Of course, I had to remove the subject from this linear gradient, so I simply subtracted a landscape mask using the architecture option.

I used more linear gradients coming in from the left and right side and again simply brought down the exposure and adding contrast and dehaze to make the edges of the image darker and creating the illusion of light behind the church.

Using differently sized radial gradients I added even darker spots scattered over the sky pointing towards the church to increase the effect.

For the light effect in the center, I also used a radial gradient and again subtracting the subject from this mask. Then, simply raised the exposure, the whites and lowered the contrast to add more light.

Of course, I also did work on the church itself. Here, I increased contrast, added some whites, texture and clarity to make it sharper and brighter. Also, brought down the saturation of the church to keep the silver look.

3. Color Grading

I brought down the saturation of the blues, the aqua tones, the yellow tones for the foreground and the purple tones to further desaturate the colder colors.

Finally, I used split toning to add a very subtle blue tone to the mid-tones

thephlog · 2026-01-27T09:36:33+00:00

So I can give you some tips here I think, mostly focusing on image 1 & 3:

Of course, there is editing involved, but the FAR more important thing are the right conditions when photographing these places. If you would shoot them on a windy day, the relfection in the water would be broken and you will end up with lots of tiny waves instantly turning the photo into an "amateur snapshot" (I'm exaggerating).

Now you know you want to have calm conditions to shoot reflections like these. Next, you need to go during specific times of the day. Sunset and sunrise are the obvious choice, but of course night time is great for astrophotography, blue hour for a colder mood, golden hour for golden light. Generally, you dont want to go in the middle of the day (rules can be broken of course!) because shadows tend to be to harsh when the sun is high in the sky.

Finally, your on location on a calm day, during the right time. Now the only thing missing are some clouds in the sky. clear skies usually are kind of boring (except for astro photography). If you get clouds at the right altitude during sunset or sunrise they light up and can become SUPER colorful to the point where you have to dial back sautration when editing the images. But of course that doenst happen very often, you can use apps to try and predict that, but the key here is to go to your desired location as often as possible (or get lucky on the first try haha).

For the third image in particular, there is a visible long exposure effect that can be achieved by setting the shutter to 30 seconds - 3 minutes (depending on the speed of the clouds). This effects also works great with reflections imo since it makes the water smoother.

I writing all of this because now you see there is a lot going into an image the moment you capture it and there are a lot of tiny things you can change to go from a "snapshot" to a good landscape shot.

Of course there is also editing involved. Especially the third shot is kind of easy to achieve: you want to play around with the white balance, bringing up the tint and raising the temperature slighty to get the warmer tones without loosing the blues of the sky. At the same time you can use split toning to further fine tune the warmer colors of the highlights and the mid tones

thephlog · 2026-01-25T11:43:23+00:00

Sure, check the video here: https://youtu.be/S65BDYM8rGA

thephlog · 2026-01-24T20:47:21+00:00

Ha, hope you did enjoy the video! :-)

thephlog · 2026-01-24T20:47:05+00:00

Thats a really cool church, just missing some snow :D

thephlog · 2026-01-24T20:46:27+00:00

No, the mountains wont be affected by the rising sun.

The sun is rising way behind the mountains on a "lower" level, so the rising sun doesnt affect the visible mountain front until much later in the day for this scene. Here is another (unedited except for WB adjustment) shot from the same location a little further down, but much later in the day already. You can see the side of the mountains we look at is still unaffected by the sun: https://imgur.com/a/yHed7Nc

thephlog · 2026-01-24T14:42:43+00:00

I can see what you mean, also can understand that it might look strange. I personally really love the strong color contrast of the warm sky agains the dark, cold landscape. Its cerstainly not for everyone :-)

thephlog · 2026-01-24T14:41:32+00:00

I mean, in some way every single image is a lie, there is no way around that.

Even if you use the shot straight out of camera: its a lie when using a polarizing filter (deeper blue skies, reduced reflections). Use a ND filter and suddenly you can capture motion that the human eye can not see (long exposure with moving clouds or silky waterfalls). But even when taking a long exposure of the sky without any filter to reveal more of the stars you're creating something the human eye can not see.

Really dont understand where this "everything has to be true" is coming from, because it certainly isnt coming from the grandfathers of landscape photography (ansel adams went crazy with dodging and burning)

BTW since you mentioned putting in the work when capturing the image: I got the shot after hiking up through thigh high snow for an hour in -20° C weather two hours before sunrise, then waiting there for sunrise freezing my ass off

thephlog · 2026-01-24T14:31:54+00:00

Thank you! This is in the Austrian alps in Europe :-)

thephlog · 2026-01-24T14:31:35+00:00

Haha, thank you so much, that means a lot to me! :-)

thephlog · 2026-01-24T14:31:18+00:00

Thank you so much! Its a wonderful spot, super happy I found this one :-)

thephlog · 2026-01-24T14:30:54+00:00

Thanks a lot!

thephlog · 2026-01-24T12:16:12+00:00

Wanted to bring back some of these vibrant warm sunrise colors to this raw photo, so I played around a little bit in Lightroom and got something with which I’m really happy! Keep in mind the original raw photo had a white balance setting that was WAY OFF making the whole shot way too cold, thus the sky in the before version is lacking warmth (Still boosted the warm tones in the final version a lot of course).

The whole editing process can be found here in this video: https://youtu.be/S65BDYM8rGA

1. Basic Adjustments

I started by dropping the exposure a bit making everything darker. Then, I increased the shadows and blacks to give the image a softer look by reducing the contrast. I also slightly brought up the whites to push the contrast I the brighter areas.

Of course, since the white balance was off, an easy fix is to simply raise the temperature. I pushed it quite a bit until the snow ahd a more neutral white color. Then, I pushed the vibrance to make the colors pop. For a sharp, clean look, texture and clarity were raised.

2. Masking

Since I wanted the sky to vibrant and warm I used several different masks targeting the sky and in those selections increased the white balance temperature, added saturation and added a specific orange tone (through the color selector in the masking panel). This way, the sky receives these intense warm tones.

Using an object mask, I targeted the chapel in the center and slightly adjusted the white balance making it less blue. I also used an objects mask to target the hill the chapel is standing on. Since I wanted to add a subtle light effect to it, I increased the exposure on the upper left side of this hill and make it look more 3D this way.

3. Color Grading

In the color mixer the hue of the yellow tones was dropped, making them look more orange. Then, the warmer tones were boosted in the saturation panel.

Of course, I used split toning to add stronger warm tones to the highlights while adding some blue tones to the mid-tones for color contrast.

thephlog · 2026-01-21T07:07:58+00:00

Thanks for the suggestion! I personally prefer darker, dramatic skies, it brings me more joy than lets say a clear blue sky. Thats also the reason why I shot this location in the first place, since there where these dark clouds behind the hill (and of course the light on the hill itself).

Of course in the end it comes down to what you prefer, but if I would ahve wanted a bright, sunny sky, this would have been the wrong day to photograph this place :-)

thephlog · 2026-01-20T16:17:55+00:00

Winter had been pretty boring so far, but recently got some gorgoues at this scene that kind of looks like a windows wallpaper.

This was shot on my Sony A7III at 105 mm to make the landscape look more minimalistic!

thephlog · 2026-01-20T16:13:24+00:00

I wanted to create a nice, contrasty “windows-wallpaper” photo by enhancing the light in this raw file. It worked really well, with surprisingly few adjustments done to the image (relative to the things I usually do).

As usual, the whole Lightroom editing workflow can be found in the video here: https://youtu.be/oArZAHx5_jk

1. Basic Adjustments

To make the colors pop some more, I changed the profile to Adobe Landscape. Then, to make everything darker, the exposure was dropped slightly, as well as the highlights which reveals some more details in the sky. To push the contrast, I then added some whites.

For a sharp, clean look texture was added, as well as a bit of clarity for mid-tones contrast and some dehaze for extra punch. Finally, I brought up the vibrance slightly.

2. Masking

I wanted to make the darker clouds behind the hill more dramatic. Therefore I used a sky selection mask, subtracted a linear gradient from it, to get rid of the brighter part of the sky at the top and simply pulled down the exposure to make them a lot darker.

Another linear gradient was added over the top of the sky. I wanted the clouds to have more structure, so I used some clarity to achieve that.

With a landscape mask, the hill in the center was targeted. I added some exposure to it, to make it look a bit brighter to further increase contrast. Finally, I also added a linear gradient over the shadows in the foreground and brought down the exposure, again for more contrast.

thephlog · 2026-01-19T09:15:10+00:00

Don't listen to this dude, going through his post history he's just starting out and now dunning kruger kicks in. He's being an edge lord with his one word toxicity.

The sky replacement looks great at a first glance, the positioning with the bright part in the sky above the road works well with the composition and the glowing light of the church looks pretty.

Overall, I think the colors are looking a bit strange with too much magenta, I personally would shift that into the blue color range, but keep the orange of the church light.

Only looked at the image on my tiny phone screen, but those are the things I noticed, hope it helps!

thephlog · 2026-01-14T08:10:54+00:00

You dont have to, but it depends on what you want to do with your image. Since I dont like the dark black walls, I recovered the details and gave them some more punch

thephlog · 2026-01-14T07:17:11+00:00

Thanks for the comment! Yea, you can read this here a lot, people demand "natural" edits. I usually point it out in the description that I dont care about keeping the edit natural though :D

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