Lightroom Tutorial: Discovering Haze/Dehaze Feature

Compared to previous versions, Lightroom 6 (or Lightroom CC) has several new features that can make wonders with your travel photos. One of them is Haze/Dehaze. As the name suggests, it removes or adds haze to an image, and it can be used both for its direct purpose or creatively. So let's explore the possibilities of Haze/Dehaze, discover how it works and what is the difference between Dehaze and other editing options.

In Lightroom CC, Haze/Dehaze is a newly added slider to the Effects panel. It's a simple slider that goes from -100 for adding lots of haze to +100 for completely removing it.

The photo below was taken in Midlands, England, on a sunny but very hazy afternoon in mid-March. By simply dragging the slider to the right, I got a much clearer, brighter and appealing photo:

Let's have a look at a different photo taken in Porto, Portugal. A huge wild ivy covering old ruins as a dark green carpet caught my eye as I was walking on the famous Dom Luis I bridge, so I took a few shots of it. To keep the dark subject dark, I used exposure compensation to darken the image by -1/3 or -2/3. However, the resulting image straight out of camera still looked somewhat washed out, so I applied Dehaze to it in Lightroom:

Note that Dehaze works differently than Clarity or Contrast: while Clarity adds more definition to the image, it tends to make the colours more pale. Adding Contrast, on the other hand, does a pretty good job at a first glance, however, it's not quite the same as Dehaze (compare the houses on the left).

So let's go back to the first version using Dehaze feature. This time, however, I noticed that simply applying Dehaze worked well for the right green part of the image, but made the left part with houses in it too contrasted and unnatural. I therefore decided to apply it partially by adding two Graduated filters: one covering the ivy on the right with Dehaze +96,

and another one covering the houses on the left with a much lower Dehaze +21,

thus producing a more balanced and natural look.

Note that Dehaze may often darken the image, so I also added some Whites (+36), a little Clarity (+9) and finally some Vibrance (+25). Here's the final result compared to the original out-of-camera photo:

The Dehaze feature may not only enhance the washed out images, but also give a good punch of colour to photos taken on a clear day:

Another way to use Haze/Dehaze creatively is to actually add haze to the photo for a particular dreamy feel:

Note that if you add Haze, the hues in the photo will also change, and this may also work as a creative effect:

So have you tried the Haze/Dehaze feature yet? Give it a go and share your photos with us!