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How To Create Stunning Travel Photo Edits Using Photoshop Tools – Follow this tutorial to learn how to turn a lifeless color photo into a black and white fine art photo in just 9 steps using Photoshop CC.
In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to turn a color photo taken at a relatively short shutter speed into a black and white fine art photo that looks like it was taken at a very long exposure. In nine steps, we’ll show you how to improve your frame by changing the exposure, converting to black and white, creating motion blur in the water, and changing the sky. I’ll be using Lightroom Classic for basic adjustments, along with Photoshop CC for more complex layer-based editing. If you want to do basic editing in Photoshop, Adobe Camera Raw is also a good option. If your image is not Raw, you can open a JPEG or similar file and go to Filter > Camera Raw Filter.
How To Create Stunning Travel Photo Edits Using Photoshop Tools
I’ll also show you how you can use two types of motion blur to achieve long-lasting effects that mimic weather patterns and real-world physical motion. To maintain accuracy, we mask each section so that the blur controls only one part of the frame at a time.
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My workflow is to first do basic editing in Lightroom Classic and then export for editing in Photoshop CC. I like to do my initial edits in color for two reasons. First, I’m blessed to see the world in color, and that’s how I naturally perceive the world. Understanding darkness and lightness and the tonal gradients between them is much easier when you have color because you can pick up subtle visual cues. Second, I want to see how my edits affect the tonal balance. Because it directly applies to my photography, black and white or not. In other words, lightening the blue while keeping the yellow darker creates a different look than otherwise.
I made two corrections to this image. I increased the Exposure slider to 1.50 to lighten the image a bit, and increased the White slider to 31 to create a wider dynamic range between black shadows and white highlights.
Use the Black and White tab in Lightroom (or Adobe Camera Raw if you use Adobe Camera Raw) to convert your image to black and white.
There are several ways to convert an image to black and white, but my favorite in Lightroom Classic is to go to the Black & White tab in the main panel of the Develop module. If necessary, you can make additional adjustments to the image here before exporting it to Photoshop. Alternatively, you can click the Profile drop-down and select Adobe Monochrome. When you’re done, right-click the image and choose Edit > Edit in Photoshop CC. Photoshop CC will now automatically open the image and display the loaded image in a window if it is not already open. Here we recommend that you opt out of Lightroom Classic to save RAM and CPU performance for future editing.
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First mask the area you want to work with and then apply the blur. Motion blur only applies blur to one plane at a time. This means that it does not change after the direction is applied.
Now in Photoshop CC I want to duplicate the layer (Ctrl+J) before masking the first part. Using the Quick Mask Tool (W) I selected the water part of the beach at the bottom of the frame and clicked the Add Layer Mask button at the bottom of the layers palette. The mask is now in use. I selected the thumbnail of the layer and then went to Filter>Blur>Motion Blur.
In the window that appears, adjust the angle to -3 to make it slightly downward to the right of the frame, mimicking the natural curve of the sand. I then set the distance slider to 1725, which is pretty extreme, but what I want to do here is replicate a very long exposure in the scene. I then clicked OK to apply the blur effect.
I used Photoshop’s Replacement Sky feature to add some interesting cloud shapes to the upper third of the frame.
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There is very little detail in the sky. This is a rare sight when filming in the UK. Unfortunately, this is not what I want for this style of photo. I clicked on the original background layer and went to Edit > Replace Sky. The Replacement Sky tool provides various options for selecting the type of sky and controlling its appearance. It’s a good idea to choose a sky with scattered and broken clouds, like this example. This is because it creates a nice streak effect when it is momentarily blurred.
Photoshop CC did a pretty good job of masking the photo, but it wasn’t perfect, so I used the Brush tool to refine it.
Depending on your photo, the Replace Sky tool may or may not be effective at masking new sky displacements in your photo. Unfortunately, my photo was a little off, so I had to use the Brush Tool (B) to expand and brush certain areas. I selected the mask thumbnail on the sky replacement layer and then pressed D and X on my keyboard and selected white as the foreground color. Then I painted the sky around the mountain. If you want to paint instead of the foreground, use black as the foreground color (press X again).
Add a Levels adjustment layer to control the sky layer. I added more contrast here to make the text richer when using the blur in the next step.
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At the bottom of the layers palette I created a new adjustment layer and selected the Levels adjustment. To make a layer affect the layers below it, hold down the Alt key on your keyboard and place the cursor between the layers in the Layers palette. Your cursor will turn into a curved arrow and a box, and if you left-click, the adjustment layer will now only control the layer below it.
I increased the shadows to 62 to make the sky a bit darker. I also dragged the highlight control point to 233 to keep the brightness. This increase in contrast was essential for creating dramatic effects in the following steps.
The next step is to convert the image to black and white by adding an additional adjustment layer. After applying, you can adjust the color intensity using the sliders in the properties window that appears. This helps the tone match the original image. This was mostly fine for my purposes as I wanted to add some sort of motion blur before I finished editing.
With the sky layer separated, I noticed that the horizontal line on the left side of the frame was gradually fading away from the horizon, so I used the brush tool to completely add the remaining fade to the mask.
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Before finishing the edit with the final motion blur, I always like to double-check the mask on the sky layer. You can select the layer you want to view by holding down the Alt key and clicking the eye icon in the Layers palette. I noticed here that there is some fading in the mask towards the horizon in the lower left corner of the sky. To fix this, I used the Brush Tool (B) and painted the affected area white.
A really useful tool for adding directional motion blur is the Path Blur tool. It doesn’t appear under the Regular menu in the Filter menu, you find it in Filter>Blur Gallery>Blur Path. A new window will appear here. The Path Blur tool is very powerful, so it might be worth closing other windows/programs before you get to this point (especially Lightroom, which can eat up some of your RAM or Photoshop’s graphics power).
You can click in the Path Blur window to create a custom path where the blur effect will be applied. Creates three arrows in the image, creating continuous motion blur from lower right to upper left, but also extending to the upper left of the frame. Notice how the clouds blur and give a curved effect? This is exactly what I wanted to do here, as if to simulate a change in wind direction. This can make things more realistic. To change the intensity of the blur, change the Speed slider (I chose 373%) and experiment further with other sliders if you need to improve the blur. I thought that was enough, so I left the other settings at their defaults. Click OK and your image is complete.
By converting to black and white and using motion blur, I was able to create long fine art shots from scenes that were already shot in color at fast shutter speeds. The sky replacement was used to add interest to the top.
