Concrete Haze

Work with the haze, not against it

The instinctive move on a hazy skyline is Dehaze — this edit leaves it at zero. Instead, highlights drop to −75, pulling detail back into the bright atmospheric distance, while shadows rise +39 to open the near buildings. The haze stays, but it becomes structure: each layer of the city separates into its own tone, from dark foreground towers to the pale silhouette of the Empire State Building.

Blue is the enemy of grey

A hazy sky wants to tint everything cyan. Here blue saturation falls to −55 with luminance raised +20, turning the sky from washed-out blue to bright neutral. Magentas (−49) and purples (−37) go with it, killing the violet cast that haze puts into shadowed glass. The result isn’t monochrome — vibrance at +14 keeps what little color remains honest — but it’s unmistakably concrete-colored.

Small moves, big flatness

Contrast +6, clarity +4, exposure −0.25: the Basic panel is almost timid. The look comes from the relationship between crushed highlights and lifted shadows, not from any single dramatic slider. With whites at −17 and blacks at +7 adding a gentle matte fade, the tonal range ends up narrow and even — the visual language of overcast architecture photography.

Where this preset works

Skylines, brutalist architecture, foggy mornings, aerial city views. It rewards photos that already have atmospheric depth — haze, smog, distance. On clear blue-sky days it will leave the sky looking strangely pale; that’s the preset doing its job on the wrong photo.