create a sunset from scratch

How to give a cold photo a warm glow and a sunset effect

If you’ve been keeping up with recent issues, you’ll know that Affinity Photo is a digital darkroom that’s packed with tools to help you fix common problems with color, tone, and composition. The software can help you overcome the results of incorrect camera settings to make a subject look as good in print as it did to the naked eye.

Affinity Photo is also packed with tools that can produce more creative–looking results, such as adding a sunset to an image captured much earlier in the day.

A sunset (or sunrise) will enhance any landscape with a romantic golden glow and vibrant colors, but it takes skill and effort (and a bit of luck with weather conditions) to capture one effectively. If you meter the camera to ensure you capture the brightest sky details, you’ll end up plunging the backlit landscape into silhouette.

By shooting your subject at a time when there’s less contrast, you can capture more detail in a scene and decide how much of the landscape you want to retain during the post–production process.

Using the techniques in our walkthrough, you can add a computergenerated sunset to any photo, so you don’t have to hang around until the evening to take a shot!

We’ll demonstrate how to change the scene’s colors for a warmer, more sunset– like hue. As we’re using non–destructive adjustment and live filter layers to change color and tone, you can fine-tune the sunset’s look at any stage, even after closing and re-opening the document.

We’ll also use Affinity Photo’s Lighting filter to generate a sun from scratch. To make the computer–generated sun blend in well and match the lighting in your photo, we’ll show you how to place it in a specific position in the sky using layers and blending modes. You can then run with our techniques and add stunning sunsets to your own favorite land or seascapes.