Enhancing a Sunset Photograph with Lightroom and Photoshop

Learn how to make your dusks and dawns more vivid, vibrant, and alive with Lightroom and Photoshop.

Learn how to make your dusks and dawns more vivid, vibrant, and alive with Lightroom and Photoshop. This short, project-based course walks you through the steps needed to transform a dull sunset image into a beautiful photo worth sharing, using the tools in Lightroom and Photoshop. Leveling, cropping, retouching, and tone and contrast adjustments are par for the course, but Chris Orwig also shows how to take advantage of virtual copies to create different color treatments, and then combine those treatments in Photoshop for a really stunning final effect.

Introduction

• Welcome
• Using the exercise files

1. Overview of the Process

• The photographic process of capturing the image
• Lightroom and Photoshop roadmap project overview

2. Editing the Image in Lightroom

• Leveling and cropping the photograph
• Retouching away distracting elements
• Enhancing the color and contrast
• Sharpening the details
• Reducing unwanted color and luminance noise
• Creating and processing a virtual copy
• Opening two images as layers in Photoshop

3. Creating Vivid Colors in Photoshop

• Combining two images together with masking
• Adding adjustment layers
• Enhancing warm sunset colors
• Fine-tuning the colors
• Final project review

Conclusion

• Next steps