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How to enhance colors in sunset photos with a single layer, and get optimal results

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June 30, 2017 by Dunja Djudjic 5 Comments

Even the magical light of the golden hour requires some enhancement in post-processing. There are a few ways to do it, and Denny Tang of Denny’s Tips suggest one of the simplest I’ve seen so far. He uses a single adjustment layer, and it’s the Channel Mixer. The whole editing process is pretty fast, yet gives natural-looking results on the photos taken during sunset (or sunrise).

Why the Channel Mixer?

With vibrance and saturation adjustments, the image will quickly begin to look over-processed. When you enhance the colors with Channel Mixer, the results will be more natural-looking and more details will remain preserved.

How to do it?

Open the image in Photoshop, and add a Channel Mixer adjustment layer.

First, select the Red channel and adjust it as follows: set the Green and the Blue to -50% and the Red to +200%.

Then, select the Blue channel, set the Red and Green to -50% and the Blue to +200%.

From here, the colors can still look too intensified and unnatural. So, you may need to decrease the layer opacity for optimal results.

You can save these settings as a preset for future editing. Go to the panel menu in the top right corner, choose “Save Preset” and give it a name. You will later be able to access it from the “Preset” drop-down menu.

Here are some of the examples of color enhancement with Channel Mixer and Vibrance, so you can compare. I used 100% vibrance and 50% saturation with the Vibrance adjustment layer and reduced the opacity to around 50%. With the Channel Mixer, I followed the tutorial and reduced the opacity to 50-70%, depending on the image.

Original

channel mixer

vibrance and saturation

original

channel mixer

vibrance and saturation

original

channel mixer

vibrance and saturation

And here are some of Denny’s examples. He left the layer opacity 100% in all photos to show the impact of the channel mixer adjustments:

Have you used this method to enhance colors in the photos taken during golden hour? If not, what’s your preferred method for doing it?

[Quick Tip: How to INTENSIFY Sunset Photos in PHOTOSHOP (ONE Layer Only!) | Denny’s Tips]

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Related posts:

2 quick ways to add contrast without touching the contrast slider How to remove eye bags under 1 minute in Photoshop Ten Photoshop tips in under ten minutes to help you improve any photo Quick Photoshop tip: how to remove unwanted color cast in only a few clicks

Filed Under: Tutorials Tagged With: Denny Tang, Enhance, golden hour, photoshop tutorial, Quick Tip, sunset

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  • catlett

    Oh wow “Even the magical light of the golden hour requires some enhancement in post-processing.”

    I never knew that. Nobody ever told me that it is REQUIRED. Who do I pay my fines to for all these years?

  • Katrin Davis

    Wow, pics are really great. Mine are pretty unnatural when I try to do that manually in Photoshop. I use Photolemur (https://photolemur.com) instead and sunsets look great too.

  • Bjarne Winkler

    Note: This also works nicely in GIMP 😉

  • Renato Murakami

    They feel a bit overdone in some of the shots, but definitely a keeper for the duller/greyer ones.

  • Bolkey

    Good to bring this under our attention once again. I had completely forgotten about is. But do hold back: several of the examples are way overdone!

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Dunja Djudjic is a writer and photographer from Novi Sad, Serbia. You can see her work on Flickr, Behance and her Facebook page.

John Aldred is based in Scotland and photographs animals in the studio and people in the wild.

You can find out more about John on his website and follow his adventures on YouTube and Facebook.

JP Danko is a commercial photographer based in Toronto, Canada. JP
can change a lens mid-rappel, swap a memory card while treading water, or use a camel as a light stand.

To see more of his work please visit his studio website blurMEDIAphotography, or follow him on Twitter, 500px, Google Plus or YouTube.

JP’s photography is available for licensing at Stocksy United.

Clinton Lofthouse is a Photographer, Retoucher and Digital Artist based in the United Kingdom, who specialises in creative retouching and composites. Proud 80's baby, reader of graphic novels and movie geek!
Find my work on My website or follow me on Facebook or My page

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