Easily Edit Complex Landscapes with ON1 Effects
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Join me as I walk through a quick and intuitive edit of a dramatic landscape from Machu Picchu using ON1 Effects. This scene has a lot going on — moody skies, layered mountains, and rich textures in the ancient stonework — but with ON1’s powerful masking and preset tools, we can bring out the best in every element without overcomplicating the process. I’ll show you how to enhance depth, add contrast selectively, and guide the viewer’s eye through the image with just a few smart adjustments.
In this video, you’ll see how easy it is to build a natural-looking edit step by step. I’ll start with a balanced base, then work through localized enhancements using the Effects stack and masking brushes. Whether you're new to ON1 or looking to refine your workflow, this session will give you a solid sense of how to approach complex compositions with confidence — and have fun doing it. Let’s dive in and breathe life into this stunning view of the Andes.
ON1 Effects and its 30+ filters make it easy to add style and create the mood you want for your images. The 10 learn-by-example tutorials show you how to get more pop with contrast, audition and blend LUTs, correct color casts, and more.
Adding Style With ON1 Effects will help you craft your signature style and tell your story.
Have you ever subtracted an object from a Lightroom mask, only to find a thin ridge left behind around the selection? Cleaning that up usually means reaching for the Brush tool and carefully painting along the edge.
Lightroom Classic’s new Feather and Edge controls give you a faster way to soften, expand, or contract many AI-generated masks. In this video, I’ll explain how the controls work, which masking tools support them, and where Edge is already saving me cleanup time.
What happens when Lightroom’s AI landscape masking doesn’t recognize the subject you want to edit? Sometimes, the missing selection is exactly what you need.
In this video, I combine Lightroom’s vegetation and mountain masks with inversion, subtraction, and a radial gradient to isolate the architecture at Machu Picchu. The result adds depth to the scene and guides attention without requiring painstaking brushwork.
A vignette can help guide the viewer toward your subject, but lowering exposure around the edges of a black and white photo can quickly bury important shadow detail.
In this quick tutorial, I’ll show you a more controlled approach using a radial gradient and the Whites or Highlights slider. You’ll still get that visual nudge toward the subject without making already-dark areas disappear.
What do you do when the weather is dull, the surf is uninteresting, and a dead battery takes away one of the tools you normally rely on?
You can spend the outing wishing conditions were different—or let those constraints narrow your choices and point you toward another photograph. In this video, I share how I adapted during a recent seascape outing and why limitations can sometimes give your photography clearer direction.
Lightroom may correctly find every person in a photograph and still make a mess when it tries to remove them. That’s what happened with this image from Machu Picchu—the AI rebuilt so much of the scene that walkways and structures no longer made sense.
The better approach was to keep the removals that worked, then break the difficult areas into smaller, more targeted pieces. The AI still does the heavy lifting, but you give it a more manageable problem to solve.
What if your mask selects the right subject, but you don’t want the adjustment applied evenly across all of it?
In this tutorial, I combine an AI mask with a gradient using Intersect mode in ON1 Photo RAW. The result keeps the adjustment confined to the mountains while letting its strength fade naturally across the scene.
The ON1 Masking Panel generates more questions than almost any other feature in Photo RAW. Here's the funny thing: most photographers don't actually need to use it.
Most edits are finished long before they're truly complete. In this video, I'll show you a simple masking technique I use to bring out important details in black and white photos—the final 5% that helps guide the viewer's eye and strengthen the image.
Harsh light doesn’t have to ruin a photo—it can shape it. In this quick edit, I show how a simple radial mask turns a Denver alley into a strong, guided composition.
When water isn't the subject, it may be competing for attention. Here's a simple masking technique that softens and darkens water so your real subject becomes the star of the photograph.
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.
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