Cut Glare With Dehaze In Lightroom

Lightroom
Written By Scott Davenport
Take Control Of Your Lightroom Catalog

Sometimes we choose not to use a polarizer in the field (or we forget to bring one!) and then our landscape photos have too much glare and shine in them. The Dehaze slider will help you out. Use the Dehaze slider with your masking tools and target the reduction in glare to just the elements that need them.

 In this photo, I purposely chose to keep the glare while I was capturing the image. Back in the studio, I realized I needed to tone it down some. Dehaze to the rescue! It’s very straightforward:

  1. Add a gradient mask (or another shape) and use a luminance range mask to target just the area that needs glare reduction. Hint, hint - it’s not the shadows!

  2. Increase the Dehaze slider to reduce the glare. Don’t over-compensate and keep your eye out for color casts. Too much Dehaze can add awkward colors.

  3. Visit the Texture and Clarity sliders, too. A boost to those often helps restore richness to areas that were dulled by glare.

Use a mask to target only the areas needing glare reduction.

Before the glare reduction

After the glare reduction

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Contact Scott to commission a print or license this image.

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Scott Davenport

Scott Davenport is a landscape photographer and photo educator and based in San Diego, California. He leads photo workshops, writes photo books, hosts podcasts, makes tutorial videos, and feels weird referring to himself in the 3rd person.

He also can't help getting his feet wet photographing at the beach.

https://scottdavenportphoto.com
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