Do you struggle with post-processing your landscapes? Would you like to watch a Photoshop tutorial to help you guide your way to amazing results? Then these editing videos are for you!

Photoshop Tutorial - Having Vision

In these Photoshop video tutorials, you watch me edit my landscapes with that dark, dramatic mood you like. There is a cinematic quality to my still images and that is no coincidence. You see, I grew up with wanting to draw scenes from movies by hand. Not much later, I discovered how to paint in Photoshop. But it wasn’t until much later that I actually used these techniques in conjunction with photography. In my case, Photoshop came first and photography second.

In every Photoshop tutorial I offer, vision is key. Without vision, or the sense of direction through which you take your photos, the results will almost certainly disappoint. My vision is fueled by films such as The Lord of the Rings trilogy and Prometheus, but also by atmospheric music, paintings and collectible card games. They all help to make me feel a certain way when I process. Since I rarely post-process without music, I wanted to leave that opportunity in my processing videos for you too. That’s why all of my Photoshop tutorials feature English subtitles. That way, you can put on some tunes that help you get in the mood!

What to Expect from a Landscape Processing Video

Drafting a Photoshop tutorial is never easy. That’s why I don’t have many processing videos on offer. Here’s an outline of what you will learn in each video.

A certain subject

Each video focuses on a particular subject within landscape photography. And since I have a couple galleries on my website, I started out with the idea of offering a Photoshop tutorial for each of those galleries. As of this writing, most of my galleries now have a processing video associated with them. Forest photography and Monumental Trees are different in two ways. While “The Dark Forest” shows you how I would approach a forest scene with a telephoto lens in which the subjects are multiple trees, “Monumental Trees” takes the wide-angle lens and pits you underneath an ancient, lone sentinel of the forest.

Monumental Trees: a single majestic tree photographed with a wide-angle lens.

The Dark Forest: multiple trees with a telephoto lens.

Something novel

It’s pointless to offer the same landscape editing tips continuously. That’s why it is important to teach you new tricks in every video. Take “Twilight Seascapes” for instance. This is currently the only video in which I approach landscape photography processing as if they were black and white photos. The idea behind splitting color and light/dark (luminosity), is that you can focus your attention on one of those at a time. This will probably make you images look more dramatic. Black and white images often feature more contrast. That’s because you can push contrast without the whole image also looking overly saturated.

Moody morning at Reynisdrangar in Iceland. Overcast conditions during twilight are perfect for seascapes.

I’ve also never seen anyone process the Northern Lights in quite the same way as I do. That’s why a Photoshop tutorial featuring the aurora from me is a unique look into how you can process night photography yourself. Sometimes a video is so outdated that I pull them off my website or update them. I have a big idea for Milky Way photography and since my workflow there has completely changed, a new nightscape tutorial is in the making. But to be honest, I want to show you the Milky Way from a perfectly dark spot. For the moment, traveling to such locations is impossible. Trust me, it’s coming as soon as travel restrictions are lifted.

Nothern Lights over one of the most famous beaches in the Lofoten: Uttakleiv.

Something challenging

There is a reason that you are struggling with processing landscapes. And the goal in every processing video is that you learn to overcome your struggles. That’s why “Mountain Landscapes” was updated recently with two more start-to-finish images. In one photo taken at Old Man of Storr on the Isle of Skye, I shot against the sun. This situation calls for exposure blending. That’s where you take a darker image for the brightest parts of the scene to prevent them from blowing out or turning white. I don’t often use that technique, simply because most scenes do not justify using it. Especially with modern cameras that feature a huge dynamic range, I often advise to underexpose in order to retain detail in a bright sky.

Old Man of Storr, like a “Solemn Fortress” in the powerful glow of sunrise. This is the latest addition to the mountain landscapes processing video.

But also something familiar

You’re reading this probably because you may like the aesthetic of my photos. That look is achieved by a couple of post-processing tricks that I learned and developed for more than a decade. Most of my Photoshop tutorials show things like:

Focus Stacking
Orton Effect
Light Bleed
Dodging and Burning
Handling of Curves
Sharpening for the Web

Regardless of subject, these tricks are pervasive throughout my portfolio. That’s because they contribute to that moody atmosphere you’ve might have come to expect from my work. If you like to learn about that particular moody light, I highly recommend getting “Light FX”. This Photoshop tutorial is different than the others in the sense that it shows all the ways you can enhance any image by adding light.

Light FX teaches you a host of different lighting techniques.

Mountain Photography Photoshop Tutorial

If I had to pick which subjects most fascinate me, I’d say those are mountains. There’s just something about the way they connect the landscape and the sky above it. The interaction between clouds, light and sharp peaks is what drew me into fantasy and later into landscape photography. Maybe because I’m Dutch and we don’t have mountains in the Netherlands. Heck, I get excited by dunes and hills with 5 meters of elevation.

What better way to convey that passion for moody mountains in an editing tutorial? “Ghostly Mountains” is not only the longest processing video I ever recorded, it’s also one I like to watch myself. I can lose myself in the tiniest details and really shape how light affects both sky and landscape. This videos is not long because of that attention to detail. Most of that tedious work is sped up in each tutorial on this website. There’s plenty of time to learn the trick and the tools to use it with, but sometimes it’s also a matter of grit. And spending an hour dodging ridges on a mountain isn’t always interesting to watch!

Ghostly Mountains: where mountains, light clouds shape an ethereal atmosphere.

“Ghostly Mountains” is very different from “Mountain Landscapes”. Again, the focal length used in either processing video varies. In “Mountain Landscapes”, we use the wide-angle lens to take it all in and use the lens’ natural distortion to our advantage. In “Ghostly Mountains”, we switch to using telephoto lenses. Zooming way in on those distant craggy peaks, where clouds swirling among them create interesting shapes.

Special Interest: Glowing Mushrooms

Then there’s one more video that is in a league of its own. “Glowing Mushrooms” is a very peculiar macro Photoshop tutorial. While at heart I’m a landscape photographer, I also love mushrooms. Whether it’s Alice in Wonderland or The Lord of the Rings, mushrooms are often featured in fantasy literature and films. So they’ve influenced me from a young age. I also believe fungi hold a couple of keys for sustainable living, but that’s a subject for a later date. This tutorial video show exactly how I illuminate them in the field and use those photos to create a fantasy world of my own. You’ll learn to combine focus stacks and cherry pick the best ones to make it appear as though the mushrooms emanate their own light! Doing this well takes a lot of time, but the actual trick is easy to learn. This video also features multiple images. “Glowing Mushrooms” are always easier to isolate first before moving on to entire groups of mushrooms. Focus stacks with multiple mushrooms can exceed a hundred images, while a single mushroom can appear to glow by itself with just two images. And it’s all in this mushroom processing video!

Glowing Mushroom at twilight - in fact the best time of day to lightpaint your mushrooms!

Landscape Photography Photoshop Tutorial