Minimizing & Eliminating Haze

[Mike Buckley]

Some of us, especially Christina and I, have discussed both the detrimental and helpful effects of haze in landscape photography. Most of the time we've discussed the detrimental effects and that happened again just yesterday. I just now post-processed an image that had a typical amount of haze. So, I thought it might be helpful to show the before-and-after effects and how I made them happen.

To put the post-processing in context, I applied only five adjustments:

• Adjusted levels and curve;
• Applied sharpening to everything but the sky;
• Adjusted to minimize haze on the mountains;
• Applied Local Contrast Enhancement to everything but the sky; and
• Cropped.

I use Nikon Capture NX2, so the precise settings that I use may not apply to other software applications. Even so, the relative settings should be helpful regardless of the software used. The settings I use as a beginning point of departure are shown below in a normal font enclosed in parenthesis. The settings that I decided upon for this image are shown in a bold font.

Contrast: (10) 25
Brightness: (-10) -14
Warmth: (10) 22

Credit for using this technique goes to Jason Odell, author of many photography eBooks.

Reducing haze is just as important when making monochrome images as when making color images. Though I actually prefer my black-and-white and sepia versions of the image shown below, I chose to demonstrate the before-and-after effects using the color version because so many people can relate more to color than to monochrome styles.

To demonstrate the before-and-after effect best, click an image to display the larger version and then toggle back and forth between the two images.

NOT including the Haze Removal



Including the Haze Removal

[HaseebM]

The difference is very visible when I toggle the images back and forth, well done!

[Brownbear]

Thank you for sharing Mike. Amazing reduction in the haze.

I will try it on a few of my hazy mountains. Thank you!