Some RAW files arrive on your screen flat, gray, and lifeless—promising nothing. This is one of those files.
Captured on the ice at Franz Josef Glacier back in 2014, the original exposure is underexposed and muddy, the kind of image you might scroll past in your catalog and wonder why you even kept it. But beneath that unpromising surface lies everything needed to create a clean, icy landscape with real depth and drama.
This tutorial demonstrates how a systematic processing approach—working through global adjustments, targeted color enhancement, and selective masking—can transform a disappointing RAW file into a finished image that captures the raw beauty of one of New Zealand’s most dramatic glaciers.
Franz Josef remains one of the fastest-moving glaciers in the world, descending from the Southern Alps down toward the rainforests of the West Coast. Today, the only way to experience it up close is through a heli-hike or guided tour—standing on that ice, surrounded by towering seracs and crevasses, is genuinely humbling. The hikers in this frame provide crucial scale, reminding viewers just how massive these ice formations truly are.
Let me walk you through the complete editing process that brings this scene to life.
THE PROCESSING WORKFLOW
Understanding the Starting Point
The original file is underexposed—I’m not sure what I was thinking on the day, but the exposure was simply too conservative. The ice reads as dull gray rather than brilliant white, the contrast is flat, and the overall image lacks the punch that glacier photography demands.
The good news: shot at ISO 200 with a Canon 5D Mark III, the file is clean with minimal noise and excellent latitude for recovery. The information is there; it just needs to be brought forward.
Step 1: Global Tonal Adjustments
As always, I work from top to bottom through Lightroom’s adjustment panels, bypassing color temperature and tint initially. Any changes I make to contrast or saturation will affect color perception, so color correction comes at the very end once the tonal foundation is established.
Exposure Recovery: The first priority is simply brightening the image. I increase exposure significantly to bring the ice forward and establish a proper tonal baseline.
Highlight Protection: Immediately after increasing exposure, I pull the highlights back down. Glacier ice has bright, reflective surfaces that can easily blow out. By protecting these highlights early, I preserve the texture and detail in the ice formations.
Contrast Building: With exposure and highlights balanced, I begin building contrast through the whites and blacks sliders:
- Push whites up to make the ice truly luminous
- Pull blacks down to deepen the shadows in crevasses and rock formations
This push-pull creates immediate pop and dimension. The image begins to feel three-dimensional rather than flat.
I also increase the global contrast slider moderately—glacier photography benefits from strong contrast that emphasizes texture and form.
Before and After Check: I pause here to compare the progress. The transformation is already significant—the ice is beginning to glow, the shadows have depth, and the overall tonal range is vastly improved.
Step 2: Midtone Contrast and Texture
Glacier photography is fundamentally about texture—the cracks, seracs, ice falls, and crevasses that define these massive formations. To emphasize this textural quality, I turn to the clarity slider.
Clarity adds midtone contrast, which affects the middle values between pure black and pure white. For this image, I push clarity higher than I typically would for other subjects—approximately 35 points. This creates that crisp, defined “crunch” that makes the ice formations feel tangible and dimensional.
It’s an aggressive move by conventional standards, but glacier ice can handle it. The result is striking without crossing into over-processed territory.
Step 3: Targeted Color Enhancement
Vibrance and Saturation: I begin with the vibrance slider, which selectively boosts under-saturated colors while protecting skin tones (important given the hikers in the frame). A 20-point increase brings subtle color forward without creating garish oversaturation.
Global saturation receives a modest 5-6 point boost—just enough to enrich the overall palette without pushing too far.
Color Mixer: The Blue Channel Here’s where artistic vision enters the equation. Real glacier ice often has subtle blue tones, particularly in shadows and deeper crevasses where light penetrates the compressed ice. I want to emphasize this quality.
Using the targeted adjustment tool, I select the ice and increase blue saturation by approximately 22 points. Is this completely realistic? Perhaps not. But it creates the icy, crystalline feel I’m pursuing—the image should evoke the cold, the altitude, the pristine nature of glacial ice.
The adjustment is subtle in the final image, but it shifts the entire mood from merely “white rock” to genuinely “ice.”
Step 4: Sharpening and Lens Corrections
Sharpening Strategy: At ISO 200, noise is negligible, so I skip noise reduction entirely and move directly to sharpening. I set sharpening to 80 points at this stage of processing.
This is base sharpening—if I were outputting to a large print, I’d add additional print-specific sharpening in Photoshop based on the print size and media. For web display, this level is perfect as-is. The key is building sharpness in layers rather than applying it all at once.
Lens Profile Corrections: I enable both chromatic aberration removal and lens profile corrections. Lightroom recognizes the 24-70mm lens and automatically compensates for its inherent vignetting and distortion characteristics.
Interestingly, enabling profile corrections removes the natural vignetting—which I’ll deliberately add back later through post-crop vignetting. But starting from a corrected, neutral baseline gives me more control over the final result.
Step 5: Selective Masking for Refined Control
This is where the image truly comes alive. Global adjustments create the foundation, but selective masking allows precise control over specific elements.
The Ice: Maximum Impact
Using a brush tool, I paint over the ice formations, carefully avoiding the hikers and rock. I make the brush edge harder for precise selection—holding Shift + left/right bracket keys adjusts brush hardness, while the bracket keys alone change brush size.
My adjustments to the ice:
- Slight exposure increase (5 points)
- Pull highlights back down to protect the brightest areas
- Push whites up significantly
- Pull blacks down aggressively
This creates maximum contrast specifically in the ice—that crisp, biting quality that makes the formations feel sharp and cold. The ice begins to glow with internal luminosity rather than just reflecting light.
Comparing before and after this mask reveals the dramatic difference—the ice now has presence and impact.
The Hikers: Protecting Human Elements
Here’s where I notice a problem: the aggressive ice masking has darkened the hikers, making them muddy and indistinct. They’re blocked up, losing detail.
Rather than simply subtracting them from the ice mask, I create a new mask using Lightroom’s object selection tool. I paint roughly over the figures, and the AI immediately recognizes them despite the busy background—the strong contrast between human figures and ice makes the selection accurate.
Adjustments to the hikers:
- Increase exposure to bring them back to visible range
- Lift shadows to reveal clothing detail and prevent silhouetting
Now they’re clearly visible again, providing the crucial sense of scale that makes this image work. Without visible human figures, the viewer has no reference for the massive size of these ice formations.
The Background Rock: Final Contrast
The dark rock formation visible through the ice in the background is reading flat. I want it darker and more contrasty to create depth and recession.
Another brush mask, this time painted over the background rock:
- Increase exposure slightly (counterintuitively—I want to see it clearly)
- Push whites up
- Pull blacks down hard
This creates strong contrast in the background, making it visually distinct from the midground ice. The added “bite” (as I think of it) creates clearer spatial separation between the planes of the image.
Step 6: Composition Refinement
Cropping for Impact: The foreground includes a section of dark rock without ice—it adds nothing to the composition and actually weakens it by creating dead space. I crop it out, which simultaneously brings the hikers more prominently forward in the frame.
I also adjust the angle slightly, rotating the frame so the hikers appear more naturally upright. These are subtle corrections, but they improve the overall balance.
Post-Crop Vignetting: With the crop finalized, I add subtle vignetting—only about 10 points. This gently darkens the corners and edges, naturally drawing the eye toward the center of the frame where the hikers and main ice formations reside.
Final Tweaks: In these last moments, I make tiny adjustments based on the complete composition:
- Exposure up by 10 points (the crop changed the overall brightness slightly)
- Blacks down a touch more
This is pure fine-tuning—small movements that feel right rather than following any technical rule.
BEFORE AND AFTER
© Michael Evans Photographer
© Michael Evans Photographer
TECHNICAL DETAILS
- Camera: Canon 5D Mark III
- Lens: Canon 24-70mm f/2.8
- Shutter Speed: 1/50 second
- Aperture: f/8
- ISO: 200
- Year: 2014
🏔️ PRACTICAL ADVICE FOR FRANZ JOSEF GLACIER
Getting on the Ice
Franz Josef is no longer accessible via valley walks. The glacier’s retreat and the dangerous nature of the terminal face mean the only way to experience the ice up close now is through a heli-hike—a helicopter flight that lands you directly on the stable upper glacier.
Book Through: Reputable operators like Franz Josef Glacier Guides offer half-day and full-day heli-hike options. Book well in advance, particularly during summer months (December-February).
Timing and Weather Strategy
Go Early: Helicopter flights typically operate in the morning, and for good reason. The West Coast’s weather often deteriorates by mid-afternoon as clouds roll in from the Tasman Sea and rain arrives. Morning flights have significantly better weather reliability.
Allow Buffer Days: Franz Josef weather is notoriously unpredictable. If you only allocate one day and conditions are poor, you’ll miss the experience entirely. Plan for at least two days in the region—if day one is weathered out, you have day two as backup.
What This Means: Don’t treat Franz Josef as a “drive through and see it” destination. It demands flexibility and patience. The reward for that patience—standing on ancient ice surrounded by the Southern Alps—is extraordinary.
What to Wear and Bring
Dress in Layers:
- Waterproof outer shell (essential—weather changes rapidly)
- Warm fleece or down mid-layer
- Moisture-wicking base layers
- Waterproof pants—absolutely NO jeans (they become heavy and cold when wet, restrict movement)
- Track pants, hiking pants, or athletic leggings work perfectly
Footwear: The heli-hike operator provides crampons. You need sturdy hiking boots or trail runners with good ankle support.
Sun Protection: Glacier ice is intensely reflective. Sunglasses and sunscreen are non-negotiable, even on cloudy days.
Where to Stay and Eat
Accommodation: Franz Josef Village offers various options from backpacker lodges to motels. Staying in the village itself (rather than neighboring Fox Glacier) gives you the most flexibility for early morning departures.
Dining: Snake Bite Brewery is the standout—excellent burgers, a surprisingly good Asian menu, and well-crafted beers. After a day on the ice, their food and atmosphere hit perfectly.
Beyond the Glacier
Lake Mapourika: Just minutes from Franz Josef Village, this calm-water lake offers kayaking and stunning reflections of the surrounding peaks. It’s an excellent backup activity if weather cancels heli-hikes, or simply a peaceful way to spend an afternoon after your glacier experience.
The lake’s mirror-like surface at dawn or dusk creates beautiful photographic opportunities—a completely different mood from the dramatic glacier ice.
THE GLACIER’S MOVEMENT
Franz Josef is one of the fastest-moving glaciers on Earth, descending approximately 300 meters per year under certain conditions. This makes it both fascinating and unpredictable—the glacier you see today is literally not the same glacier someone photographed five years ago.
The terminal face has retreated significantly in recent decades due to climate change, which is why valley access is no longer safe or permitted. The glacier’s rapid movement creates constantly changing ice formations, crevasses, and seracs. What you see on a heli-hike today will be different from what someone sees next year.
This impermanence adds poignancy to glacier photography. You’re documenting something in constant flux, something that won’t exist in this exact form again.
📸 GEAR USED
- Camera: Canon 5D Mark III
- Lens: Canon 24-70mm f/2.8 L
- Processing: Adobe Lightroom Classic
- Techniques: Global adjustments, selective masking, targeted color enhancement
💬 QUESTION FOR YOU
Have you experienced Franz Josef Glacier or any of New Zealand’s glaciers? What struck you most about being on the ice? I’d love to hear about your glacier photography experiences—the challenges, the awe, the moments that stayed with you—in the comments below.
WATCH THE FULL TUTORIAL
For the complete step-by-step walkthrough demonstrating every adjustment and masking technique in real-time, watch the full video above.