The problem with outdoor photos that look flat and washed out
You stand at the top of a hill on a summer holiday and take a photo of the view. On the day it looked spectacular — vivid greens, a clear horizon, layers of colour in the distance. The photo comes back flat, hazy, and drained of contrast. The hills are grey. The sky merges into the background. The whole scene looks like it was photographed through a dirty window.
This is atmospheric haze — a layer of particles in the air that scatters light and reduces contrast and colour saturation, particularly in the middle and far distances. It is also the result of shooting through car windows, plane windows, or glass barriers at attractions and wildlife parks. Even overcast coastal light can produce the same washed-out effect.
Photoshop Elements has a dedicated tool for exactly this problem. It goes by different names depending on where you find it — Haze Removal in the Enhance menu, Dehaze in Camera Raw — but all of them do the same thing: restore the contrast, saturation, and depth that haze steals.
The fastest route: Quick Actions
If you want a one-click result without opening any dialog, the Quick Actions panel is the place to start.
In Expert mode, go to Window → Quick Actions to open the panel. Scroll through the available actions and click Haze Removal. Photoshop Elements analyses the photo and applies an automatic correction — no sliders, no decisions needed. The result appears instantly on the canvas.
Quick Actions haze removal works particularly well on landscape shots with a uniform layer of aerial haze. For a subtle haze or a photo where you want fine control over the strength of the correction, the Enhance menu gives you much more precision.
Full control: Enhance → Haze Removal
For the most control over the correction, use the dedicated Haze Removal dialog in the Enhance menu.
- 1Open your photo in Expert mode.
- 2Go to Enhance → Haze Removal.
- 3The dialog opens with a single Amount slider ranging from 0 to 100.
- 4Drag the slider right to remove haze — watch the contrast, colour saturation, and depth build back up in the preview as you move it.
- 5Click OK when the result looks right.
How much to apply: most outdoor shots respond well to an Amount of 40–70. Going above 80 often produces an over-processed look — the shadows become too dark, the colours too saturated, and the result starts to look artificial. If you find yourself pushing past 70 and it still does not look right, the haze may be too thick for the tool to fully correct, or the original exposure itself is underexposed.
Tip — apply to a duplicate layer: because Haze Removal applies directly to your pixels, it is worth duplicating the layer first (Layer → Duplicate Layer) and running Haze Removal on the copy. This keeps the original underneath, and you can adjust the opacity of the corrected layer to dial the effect back to exactly the strength you want.
What it works best on
Haze Removal is most effective on:
- Landscape and scenic shots — rolling hills, mountain ranges, valley views where distance creates natural aerial haze
- Coastal and beach photos — sea spray and moisture in the air softens distant horizons
- Photos taken through glass — car windows, bus windows, aircraft windows, zoo glass, aquarium panels
- Overcast outdoor portraits with a flat, low-contrast background
- Photos taken in fog or mist — though very heavy fog is beyond what the tool can fully recover
It is less effective on:
- Photos that are simply underexposed — the haze tool adds contrast and saturation but cannot invent detail in shadows that were never captured
- Indoor photos — the tool expects outdoor haze and can produce unnatural results when applied to indoor shots
For RAW files: the Dehaze slider in Camera Raw
If you shoot in RAW format and open your files through Camera Raw (go to File → Open, select a RAW file and it opens automatically in Camera Raw), you will find a dedicated Dehaze slider in the Effects panel.
In Camera Raw, click the fx icon in the panel strip on the right to reveal the Effects section. Drag the Dehaze slider to the right to remove haze, or to the left to deliberately add haze for a soft, atmospheric effect.
The advantage of the Camera Raw Dehaze slider over the Enhance menu version is that it is fully non-destructive — your RAW file is never altered, and you can return to Camera Raw at any time to change or remove the correction entirely. For any serious outdoor photography work, applying Dehaze in Camera Raw before the image even opens is the cleanest approach.
A before-and-after check
Whichever method you use, always compare before and after. In the Enhance → Haze Removal dialog, the preview updates in real time as you drag the slider. To see the full before-and-after on your canvas, click Undo and Redo (Ctrl+Z and Ctrl+Y) after closing the dialog — this lets you flip between the original and corrected version instantly.
If you used a duplicate layer, toggle the layer's visibility eye icon off and on to compare.