Before • After • Original RAW (Nikon .NEF) • Vimeo / MP4 • Original © Ryan McKay (son-of-fire) (Nikon .NEF)Original © Ryan McKay (son-of-fire)

The nice thing about doing post on landscapes is that you have a much wider margin of tolerance than you do with portraits. With people, it’s easy to tell if the color temperature is off, or if you cranked the clarity a little too high in post. But with landscapes, the sky is the limit (har har); you want blurry purple mountains over super-contrasty blue grass below a foreboding red sky? Knock yourself out.

It gets tricky when you have a shot that combines the two; you need to make sure that going hog-wild with one doesn’t hurt the other (this is where adjustment brushes come in handy). Watch the video (my shortest yet!) below to see more:

If you would like to submit your own image to O.P.P. you can do so here.