Twilight Sky - Before/After

Have you ever seen the sky have brilliant blues, purples, pinks, oranges and reds?  Many times when we try to photograph these beautiful skies, the camera does not capture the colors as vividly as we see them with our own eyes.  In this tutorial using Adobe Lightroom, I’ll show you how you can bring out the amazing colors that you know were there.  Having your camera set to save images in RAW format instead of JPG will help preserve the colors and detail that you will be able to enhance in Lightroom.

One thing to note here is that these settings are what worked for this image and what I thought looked best.  When I took the photograph I had an idea in my mind what I wanted the final result to be.  The key thing to remember here is that you need to experiment with the sliders and settings to find what you like and what works for your image.  With this in mind, lets get started!

Step 1

The first thing to do with this image is to drop the temperature and raise the tint.  This will help make the blue look more blue and the hint of pink look more pink.

Step 2

Increase the exposure to .75 and the contrast to 75.  I want the trees to be a black silhouette against the gradient in the sky.

Step 3

Basic Panel Settings

Adjust the Highlights, Shadows, Whites, and Blacks.  The image to the right shows the settings I used.  These settings will vary based on your image and the effect your going for.

Step 4

Increase Clarity.  I like to use Clarity on landscape shots.  I think it helps bring out details and increase the contrast a bit.  Be sure not to over do it with the clarity, unless of course that is the look you’re going for.   Increase the saturation.  I typically use vibrance when there are people in the image and saturation for landscape images. 

Step 5

Under ToneCurve I changed the curve to a medium contrast.  I want to make sure the trees are black against the sky.

Step 6

In the HSL panel, I used the target adjustment tool to modify the saturation of the purples.  This enhances the pink and purple colors of the sky.

Step 7

Add sharpening.  The sharpening settings I used are Amount: 86, Radius: 1.4, Detail: 52, and Masking: 64.  Adjust the masking as you need.  If you hold down the Opt. or Alt. key while clicking on the masking slider, you will see a preview of the areas that are being sharpened in white. 

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Hold Opt. or Alt. while adjusting the Masking slider to see the areas that will be sharpened in white.

Step 8

Under Lens Corrections, I chose Remove Chromatic Aberrations to take care of some purple fringing around the trees.

Step 9

Add a Post-Crop Vignette.  I used an amount of 38 and changed the feather to 100.

The image is complete!  To see a before/after of your image, make sure you are in the Develop Module in Lightroom and press the ‘\’ key.  This will toggle between before and after images. 

If you have any questions or would like to learn other techniques in Lightroom, please leave a comment below.  Thanks for watching and reading this tutorial!

Before Image (left) and After Image (right).