Useful Photography Tip

Useful Photography Tip #172: Don’t Forget About Graduated Filters in The Editing Process

Chris Gampat
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02/17/2017
1 Min read
Chris Gampat Just across the river

Last Updated on 02/18/2017 by Chris Gampat

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Ask any landscape photographer and they’ll tell you that one of their most valuable tools is a graduated ND filter. But sometimes they’re just not available on you when you’re shooting. Luckily though, you’ve got them built into Lightroom and Capture One Pro 10. And you can use them to get a whole lot more detail from the skies when you go shooting, and later on when you’re editing.

The best thing to typically do in post-production is first ensure that your exposure was taken as low contrast as possible or by underexposing to get more details from the highlights in your sky. Then pull the graduated ND filter down, nerf the exposure, and adjust the contrast and highlights as you see fit.

When you’re done, just go back to editing the entire photo and have fun.

The key here: have fun just like I said. I don’t usually shoot landscapes but the photos after the jump will show you what I was able to do in the editing process.

black and white filters graduated nd filter images
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Chris Gampat is the Editor in Chief, Founder, and Publisher of the Phoblographer. He provides oversight to all of the daily tasks, including editorial, administrative, and advertising work. Chris's editorial work includes not only editing and scheduling articles but also writing them himself. He's the author of various product guides, educational pieces, product reviews, and interviews with photographers. He's fascinated by how photographers create, considering the fact that he's legally blind./ HIGHLIGHTS: Chris used to work in Men's lifestyle and tech. He's a veteran technology writer, editor, and reviewer with more than 15 years experience. He's also a Photographer that has had his share of bylines and viral projects like "Secret Order of the Slice." PAST BYLINES: Gear Patrol, PC Mag, Geek.com, Digital Photo Pro, Resource Magazine, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, IGN, PDN, and others. EXPERIENCE: Chris Gampat began working in tech and art journalism both in 2008. He started at PCMag, Magnum Photos, and Geek.com. He founded the Phoblographer in 2009 after working at places like PDN and Photography Bay. He left his day job as the Social Media Content Developer at B&H Photo in the early 2010s. Since then, he's evolved as a publisher using AI ethically, coming up with ethical ways to bring in affiliate income, and preaching the word of diversity in the photo industry. His background and work has spread to non-profits like American Photographic Arts where he's done work to get photographers various benefits. His skills are in SEO, app development, content planning, ethics management, photography, Wordpress, and other things. EDUCATION: Chris graduated Magna Cum Laude from Adelphi University with a degree in Communications in Journalism in 2009. Since then, he's learned and adapted to various things in the fields of social media, SEO, app development, e-commerce development, HTML, etc. FAVORITE SUBJECT TO PHOTOGRAPH: Chris enjoys creating conceptual work that makes people stare at his photos. But he doesn't get to do much of this because of the high demand of photography content. / BEST PHOTOGRAPHY TIP: Don't do it in post-production when you can do it in-camera.