Enhancing an Urban Landscape Photo with Lightroom and Photoshop

Learn how to make cityscapes look their best with this collection of Lightroom and Photoshop enhancement techniques.

Cities make great photographic subjects—but they also have photographic challenges. Buildings can appear distorted because of lens distortion and optical phenomena such as converging parallels that make them appear to lean. And the shadows cast by buildings present exposure challenges—it's easy for details to become lost in shadows.

In this course, Jan Kabili details a collection of straightforward techniques for making urban landscapes look their best. Jan begins in Lightroom: optimizing exposure, fixing distortion problems, and making selective tonality adjustments. She also reduces noise, sharpens the photo, and shares her favorite techniques for painting with light. The course concludes with a dip into Photoshop, where Jan makes some final refinements before returning to Lightroom for output.

Introduction

• Welcome
• Using the exercise files

1. Optimizing Tone and Color

• Choosing a camera profile
• Creating a virtual copy
• Setting white balance
• Optimizing the tonal range
• Adding drama
• Simplifying the tone curve
• Controlling the color environment
• Pinpointing local color

2. Sharpening and Reducing Noise

• Reducing digital noise
• Capture sharpening a high-frequency scene

3. Fixing Perspective

• Relying on lens profiles to fix distortion
• Correcting keystoning with Upright
• Fixing distortions manually
• Cropping the composition

4. Enhancing with Light

• Dodging and burning
• Painting with light

5. Photo Finishing

• Moving from Lightroom to Photoshop for retouching
• Vignetting as a focal tool
• Next steps