4 Photoshop Elements tricks to make an average landscape stunning

Want to add impact to your otherwise average landscape image? Thanks to a few simple Photoshop Elements tricks you don’t have to keep wasting photos. In this Photoshop Elements tutorial we explain 4 ways you can use Curves and the Gradient tool to make your landscapes stand out.

Your digital camera can produce landscape shots with wonderful colours and contrast. But even if you get all your camera settings spot-on, you’ll sometimes find that images lack punch, especially if the contrast is strong and the camera overexposes shadows or underexposes highlights as a result.
Take our landscape image for example: it looks flat and dull, and certainly doesn’t do the dramatic subject justice.
Fortunately, there are lots of ways in which you can boost colour and contrast in Elements. One of the most effective tools for doing this is Adjust Colour Curves, which enables you to improve contrast by lightening or darkening particular parts of the tonal range.
You can, for example, lighten just the highlights in a shot that contains lots of dark tones, or darken only the shadows in an image that’s predominantly bright.

Photoshop Elements Tricks for Landscapes: 01 Adjust Color Curves


Open the start image in Elements, and go to Enhance > Adjust Colour > Adjust Colour Curves.
Start by selecting Increase Midtones from the Style Options.
For more precise adjustments you can use the Highlights, Midtone Brightness, Contrast and Shadows sliders: in this case, drag all the sliders a little way to the right to boost the colours and contrast.

Photoshop Elements Tricks for Landscapes: 02 Make the blue bluer


Next we’ll add a gradient to boost the colour of the sky.
Take the Eyedropper tool, and click in the blue sky to make that colour the foreground colour in the Tools panel.
Click the foreground colour swatch to open the Colour picker, and click a little to the right of the circle in the colour field to select a deeper shade of blue.
Create a new layer, and select the Gradient tool.

Photoshop Elements Tricks for Landscapes: 03 Draw a gradient


Click the Edit button by the Gradient swatch, and select the Foreground to Transparent preset.
Check the Linear gradient button, set Opacity to 45% and enable the Transparency option.
Draw a gradient from the top of the image to the bottom, then draw a second gradient from the top to about half-way down, to intensify the colour in the upper part of the sky.

Photoshop Elements Tricks for Landscapes: 04 Boost contrast


Change the blending mode of the gradient layer to Multiply: this multiplies the colour values of the gradient by the values of the underlying layer, boosting the sky colour a bit more.
Add a mask to the gradient layer, and paint over the clouds and the top of the castle with a black brush to remove the blue.
Finally, add a Brightness/Contrast adjustment layer, and set Brightness to 9 and Contrast to 8.

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