Make your landscape photos pop in Lightroom on mobile

Quickly apply edits to different areas in a landscape photo with the AI-powered Scene Enhance Quick Action.

Published January 12, 2026

00:01

Introduction

If you like to photograph landscapes and edit on your mobile device, you're going to love the AI-powered Scene Enhance Quick Actions in Lightroom on mobile that'll let you quickly adjust specific areas in a photo.

Hi, I'm Seán Duggan with the Adobe Learn team.

Let's take a look at the Scene Enhance feature that you can use to emphasize or de-emphasize different areas in a landscape scene, such as the sky, mountains, water, and more.

Let's get started with this image of a beautiful Irish landscape.

Here in the Edit screen,

00:33

Accessing scene enhance quick actions

I'll tap the Magic Wand to open the Quick Actions.

Lightroom will analyze the image to determine which Quick Actions to suggest for this photo.

If there was a person in this image, Quick Actions would suggest additional options that are relevant for that type of photo.

Next, I'll tap Scene and Lightroom will analyze the scene.

Right away it offers up several Presets that you can try.

When you select one of the Presets, you can use the Amount slider to either reduce or increase the strength of the effect.

And here's a quick tip: Tap the image so that you can see just the photo.

Then tap it again to bring back the controls.

I'll tap the thumbnail for None to get back to the original image.

I'll swipe up on the lower part of the screen.

01:21

Understanding detected scene areas

In addition to sliders for the Subject and the Background, you can see that Lightroom has detected several distinct areas in the scene.

For this image, it's found the Sky, Mountains, Vegetation, Water, Artificial Ground, and Natural Ground.

It even recognizes the house and provides a slider for Architecture.

With these controls, you can either emphasize or de-emphasize those specific areas.

I can enhance the Sky with more contrast and color saturation, or I can take it in the other direction.

I think I'll leave the Sky the way it was, so I'll double tap on the circular slider control to reset that.

That shortcut works with any slider in Lightroom on mobile.

02:07

Emphasizing mountains, water, and ground

With the Mountain, moving the slider to the left reduces the contrast, making it appear flat and dull.

And if I move the slider the other way, the contrast and the clarity are increased, which makes it more visually prominent in the scene.

So depending on the type of scene area, there are different adjustments being applied.

Next, I'll emphasize the Water by moving the slider to the right to enhance the blue.

I also want to explore some changes to the road which Lightroom has identified as Artificial Ground.

I'll move the slider to the right to boost the contrast and enhance the surface texture on the road.

There, that looks good.

If I press and hold on the image, you can see a before a view, and when I lift my finger, we see the after view showing the changes that I made to the mountain, the water, and the road.

The great thing about Quick Actions and Scene Enhance is that you can apply changes to specific parts of the image without having to make selections or do manual masking, because Lightroom is creating the masks for you.

Let me show you what I mean.

03:16

Exploring auto-generated masks from scene enhance

I'll tap the Checkmark in the lower right to apply the Scene Enhance changes.

In the lower row of icons, you can see that there's a dot below the Masking icon.

This means that there are now masks for this image.

I'll tap that icon to open the Masking controls.

On the right side, you can see the thumbnails for the three masks that were created when I applied Scene Enhance to the mountain, the water, and the road.

I can drag this tab at the bottom to expand the Masks panel, and you can see their names.

Since Lightroom has created masks for these areas, I can use them to apply other edits.

03:55

Refining scene masks with additional edits

For instance, I want the road to look much darker.

I'll tap the thumbnail for the Road mask, and then I'll go to the Light panel and I'll make some adjustments with the Exposure and Contrast sliders.

I'll also increase the Highlights to brighten the lines on the road.

Here we go.

That looks great.

And that's exactly what I had in mind.

I'll tap the Checkmark to apply that.

I'll press on the image to see the before view, and then release to see the after view with all the adjustments.

That's definitely an improvement.

I love having all these incredible possibilities for image processing right here on my phone.

Quick Actions and Scene Enhance in Lightroom on mobile have changed the way that I edit on the go because in addition to being very convenient, they're also really good.

I can go from an original photo to sharing an improved and polished version in no time.

Now it's your turn.

Check out these great features with some of your own photos.

Note: Stock assets provided are for practice purposes only. See terms.

What you’ll learn

Enhance specific areas in a landscape scene

Tap the magic wand icon to open the Quick Actions, then tap Scene. Lightroom will analyse your photo and provide a list of different elements in the scene such as Sky, Mountains, Water, Vegetation, Natural Ground, Artificial Ground, and even Architecture. Choose an element to modify and use the slider to emphasize or de-emphasize that part of the scene. In addition to elements that are specific to the image you’re working with, there are also options for the Subject and Background.

Take advantage of the masks created by Scene Enhance

When you enhance a landscape element in the scene, Lightroom creates a mask that you can use to apply further edits. Tap the circular Masking icon to open the Masks panel and view the masks that were created with Scene Enhance. Tap a mask to make it active and then apply additional changes.

Instruction by: Seán Duggan
Adobe Stock Contributors: borisb17

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