How to Add Mood to Your Landscape Photos

Photography is both about what you show in your photos and what you hide. Too much detail can overwhelm the viewer. You can choose what to include in an image as you shoot. There are also several techniques that will help you simplify a photo in post-processing. One way to do this is to introduce a darker mood and shroud less important areas in darkness.

The photo editing techniques I show below work best for images taken on cloudy and rainy days. The soft light you get then forms the basis for applying dark processing to your images. Even photos taken on brighter days can benefit from these techniques to some degree. But I would refrain from giving each image a dark look and try to show different atmospheres in your photos.

Now let’s look at the before and after comparison for a photo I took at 25 Fontes in Madeira. The source footage has already been edited in Lightroom to ensure an even distribution of detail and light. Focus stacking and exposure blending were also applied. While the photo captures some of the atmosphere of the day, it still looks pretty flat. This often happens on cloudy days when you don’t have a directional light to work with.

Various techniques can be used to add dimension and depth to a photo while hiding some of the less important details.

Dark Mood

Watch the feature video as I apply dark processing to the 25 Fontes photo. My favorite tool for this is the Camera Raw Filter. It allows me to tweak many different settings in one step instead of having to rely on multiple adjustment layers in Photoshop:

1. Create a smart object from your current edit. Select all layers in your layer stack, right click on one of them and press Convert to Smart Object.
2. With the smart object active, go to Filters – Camera Raw Filters… or press Ctrl/Command + Shift + A. The Camera Raw window opens.
3. Here you can work with as many Camera Raw adjustments as you need to create a more atmospheric version of the photo. I usually lower the exposure and lower the haze removal. These two sliders together already make the picture much more atmospheric. You can use the Shadows and Black sliders to prevent your dark areas from being clipped. As the photo softens overall, there’s some room to add texture, contrast, and a touch of clarity. Be creative. If the image becomes too saturated, reduce the vibrancy.
4. These settings will be applied to the entire image after you click OK. Since you created a Smart Object, you already have a mask associated with the filter. Reverse it by clicking and pressing on it Ctrl/Command + I. Then reveal the effect in the areas you want to mute by painting the mask with a soft, white brush.

In the sample photo, I used this technique primarily on the exterior areas to draw the viewer to the water flow in the foreground and then the waterfall in the background.

the atmosphere

Besides darkening a photo, you can also add atmosphere. Adding more depth can help, especially with waterfall photos. Typically, there is already spray near a waterfall. If that’s the case, you can improve it using the techniques I show in the video below. If there is no spray to work with, you can make up for it entirely. Just don’t overdo it with the editing. Try to keep it realistic.

My favorite way of creating an atmosphere is using the cloud filter. At the beginning some preparations are necessary:

1. In Photoshop, create a new, empty layer.

2. Use the rectangular selection tool and make a small selection in the middle of the layer.

3. Apply the cloud filter below Filter – Render to select.

4. Press Ctrl/Command + T to activate the free transform tool and extend the selection across the entire frame. You can enlarge the rectangle beyond the image area if necessary. Stop as soon as you feel the structures start to look like spray.

5. Go to Image – Adjustments – Levels… or press Ctrl/Command + L and bring up the blacks in the levels slider. It reduces the contrast in the cloud pattern.

6. Apply a slight Gaussian blur to the clouds to reduce detail.

7. In the Channels panel. Ctrl/Cmd + left mouse click on the RGB channel. It loads the cloud pattern as a selection.

8. Delete the current cloud layer and create a new, empty layer.

9. With the selection active, apply a mask to this new layer.

You can add atmosphere by drawing the layer in different shades of gray with a soft brush. Use a low opacity between 10 and 20% and gradually build up the effect. The cloud mask will immediately apply texture to it and make it look more realistic.

Soft easy bleeding

After darkening the image and adding atmosphere, it helps to bring in some light. You can achieve this by using the light bleed technique that I show in the video below.

Here it is important to exercise restraint and not add too much glow. Ask yourself: if this light was there in reality, would it have cast harsh shadows? If the answer is yes, lower the opacity of the effect. The goal is to create a soft light source.

Again, work with a Smart Object and use the Camera Raw filter. Increases in temperature and vibration along with a decrease in haze removal is usually sufficient. As with the dark mood, apply the effect selectively to the areas where you want the light to penetrate the frame. In my 25 Fontes photo you can see how I applied it to the top of the frame. The viewer’s gaze is allowed to roam through the photo, starting in the darker areas below, then following the creek to the waterfall and light in the background.

Conclusion

There are many adjustments you can use to give your photos a dark look. And as usual with Photoshop, there are different ways to get to the end result. But the underlying principles are the same: darkening less important areas of the photo while not cropping the black, adding atmosphere to create depth, and applying a soft glow to engage the viewer and add dimension. The extent to which you engage in such processing depends solely on your preferences.

Finally, I would like to note that for dark photo editing, you should work on a calibrated monitor. Photographers who aim for a very dark look in their images usually work in a relatively dark room, and the darker the room, the darker the photos will be. For good results, it helps to create a selection of images for reference. As you work on a new photo, periodically review those photos to calibrate your eyes and get a good feel for where you’re going.