CREATE A SUNSET

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

Give a photo a warm glow and a sunset effect

IT WILL TAKE

15 minutes

YOU WILL LEARN

How to lighten or darken tones and add a subtle wash of colour

YOU’LL NEED

Affinity Photo, a photo that will suit a sunset 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 colour, 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 colours, 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 of when there’s less contrast, you can capture more detail in a scene and then 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 computer-generated sunset to any photo, so you don’t have to hang around until the evening to take a shot!

A computer-generated sun

We’ll demonstrate how to change the scene’s colours for a warmer, more sunset-like hue. As we’re using non-destructive adjustment and live filter layers to change colour and tone you can fine-tune the sunset’s look at any stage, even after closing and then 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 favourite land or seascapes.

Create your own sunset so you don’t have to hang around until the evening!