Enhancing A Landscape In Post-Production

Sometimes composition is not easy. You may not be able to take a photograph of your subject during perfect lighting conditions. Such is the case during a family trip to the mountains of Virginia. I was only in the mountains for a brief period of time on a overcast and rainy day. The light reflected from the gray clouds made everything look dull. Nevertheless, I saw an interesting looking house that had potential, but there was no good angle to photograph it. There was a road with signs on the left and a house on the right that took away from the rustic look and feel.

STEP 1: Post-Production In Lightroom
I played around a bit with the photograph in Adobe Lightroom and was able to add more warm colors to the original image, as it was a RAW file. I even added some fake clouds in the sky. I liked what I saw, it was a big difference from where I had started. The colors now popped but I was still not satisfied.

STEP 2: Finding And Adding Elements To The Photograph
I found an image of two trees online that more or less resembled the trees during fall that I saw during the trip to the mountains. I extracted the trees from their background using Adobe Elements, but this could easily be done in other image editing software like Adobe Photoshop or if you prefer in GIMP which is free. I then  added the trees to the photograph to hide the white house in the background a little and the other one as a bush to hide the concrete foundation on the side. While I added only two tree to the final image, I did practice adding other kinds of trees.



STEP 3: Final Tweaks
Just small touch ups here and there to clean the picture. Removing the cables from the top of the house and the fence post from the side using the healing tool in Adobe Elements were a must. As well as getting the added trees adjusted in the right light.