Unfortunately the weather and time of day have a lot to do with how your outdoor photos are going to come out. Landscapes are something I find incredibly challenging, just because of the lack of control you have over all these elements. When you go on a trip, on vacation, or wherever you are at the moment, you pretty much are at the mercy of nature. There are certain educated guesses you can make by planning what time of day you might shoot according to the direction of the sun, and it’s height in the sky, but when the clouds or fog start to roll in it’s an entirely different story. Here is a Photoshop video tutorial by our good buddy Bob that shows how you can repair these types of hazy images in post processing. Using lab color mode, and later switching back to rgb, you can maintain control of adding too much extra artifacting. Here we learn how to use the curves on the lightness channel, as well as on a, and b by moving the little points around. I have to be honest, this stuff was greek to me until I watched the video. It ended up being a very simple and to the point technique which I find myself using more and more in my daily workflow. The beauty of Photoshop as I always say, is that there are so many roads to the same outcome, so sit back and enjoy this one. I’m sure you’re going to find it very useful to remove haze, increase saturation and mid to low level contast. The results might actually impress you; a lot. They did for me, on an image that I just processed of Flamenco beach.
