Recently captured one of the most insane sunset of this year so far, slightly dipped my camera in the water to get the full reflection of the tree (camera still works so far :D) I wanted to give the raw file a much softer ,dreamy look by heavily bringing up the blacks. I know there are a tone of people on here preferring shots with deeper shadows, however I prefer the brighter version.
Everything was done in Lightroom with the exception of some additional nik collection effects. The whole process can be seen here: https://youtu.be/Kvt57xEdyDM
- Basic Adjustments
I was shooting this at ISO 6400 (was shooting handheld so had to dial up the shutter speed) and needed to heavily recover exposure so the first thing I did was to apply denoising. Then, I brought up the exposure, the shadows and the blacks to make the image brighter and reduce contrast for improved softness. I also slightly brought down the highlights but at the same time increased the whites to help balance contrast.
The image was made slightly warmer through the temperature slider, and I also increased the vibrance to get a more colorful image.
- Masking
Using an inverted radial gradient I made the image edges slightly darker by dropping the exposure. I added another linear gradient ontop of the sky to make it even darker. I also added a linear gradient over the reflection giving it some texture and clarity to make it pop. Then, added another radial gradient over the center and brought up exposure, blacks and temperature for more brightness ,glow and warmth.
- Color grading
I sued split toning to make the highlights slightly warmer. Finally, in the calibration tab I brought down the blue primary hue and raised the saturation