Add depth and dimension to your landscape photos with proper adjustments of colors. Cool colors retreat from a viewer’s eye. Warm colors move toward the human eye. Brighter subjects catch attention and darker areas do not. Color range masks let you quickly target colors in your photos and adjust them to amplify depth in your landscape images.

In this photo of a tree stump at the edge of a forest, I want the tree to jump forward and grab my viewer’s eye. I also want the greens to retreat and not compete for attention with the tree stump. Color range masks made isolating and treating the different tonal ranges very easy.

Color range mask using the chalky gray of the tree.

First, I used a color range mask sampling the chalky gray of the tree. That selection allowed targeted clarity and contrast to amplify the details in the tree stump, without affecting the surrounding greenery.

Color range mask to select the greens of the forest.

Next, a second color range masks sampled the greens of the background. I lowered the highlights and reduced clarity, to darken and soften the Some additional hand-painting to refine the mask was needed. The stump had a few patches of moss that I didn’t want darkened.

A third mask targeting the greens in the foreground. A classic gradient mask is intersected with a color range mask to isolate the greens in the foreground.

I finished up the edit with a light vignette.

The end result is the tree stump is more prominent in the frame, the first fades into the background, and the overall photo has richer depth. Try out these types of color adjustments in your images for richer, visually compelling landscape images.

More Tutorials In My Lightroom Learning Center