Here’s the frustrating thing about shooting sunsets: While these scenes are among the most popular that we capture, oftentimes our results fall far short of the splendor we witnessed through the viewfinder. That’s because the beautiful warm tones and a perfectly balanced  exposure can be very difficult to get right in the camera.

Fortunately it’s not difficult to restore an unimpressive shot with the Lightroom editing method you’ll learn below in barely six minutes. And the good news is that this transformation can also be achieved with Photoshop and most other image-editing software.

The photo you see here was captured by self-taught landscape photography pro Neil Borg who admits that his original shot fell far short of what you could call “epic.” He had to do some strenuous hiking and a bit of dangerous climbing up steep slopes to reach the destination, that he calls “one of the best sunset locations in Malta.”

Before jumping into the quick edit Borgs notes that that are also beautiful views at the bottom the hill—just in case you ever decide to visit this spectacular site (there’s a link beneath the video). It was a very windy day, so Borg didn’t shoot with long exposures, and a quick glance at his shot reveals several problems, including severe under exposure biased by the overly bright sky.

Borg confirms these concerns by using the histogram to evaluate the image. His basic adjustments begin by reducing the whites to recover details in the sky. He also plays around with Highlights to further improve the sky. Then he does much the same thing in reverse to open up shadows and pull out more detail in that prominent portion of the shot.

The exposure is now significantly improved and there’s much better contrast, but the foregoing basic adjustments were just a start. The next step is to apply local enhancements to selective areas within the scene. He applies a Subject Mask to the peninsula reaching out into the water that was difficult to discern in the original dark shot, even though it’s a primary element in the image.

A smaller Brush Mask is then applied over lighter area of the peninsula and edges on the left side of the photo to balance out the tones and further accentuate the effect. Borg concludes the remarkable transformation by enhancing Vibrance and removing distracting elements. It’s a simple technique you can use to dramatically improve the sunset photos you make in the future.

Be sure to visit Borg’s instructional YouTube channel that provides many more shooting and editing tips for outdoor photographers of all skill levels.

We also suggest watching an earlier tutorial we posted, revealing what another pro calls the “seven biggest landscape photography mistakes” with straightforward methods for getting everything right.

Here’s an eye-opening tutorial from one of our favorite landscape photographers for those of you who struggle when processing images in Lightroom. It’s all about how Lightroom’s Auto Settings can set you up for refining a shot further and can even “save your photos.”

German pro Christian Mohrle has a portfolio full of absolutely spectacular landscape photos, and he’s just as good behind the computer as he is in the field. If you’ve watched his lessons in the past, you know that he takes a two-step approach when processing his work. He first makes basic adjustments to the image as a whole so it’s as good as possible for the selective edits and masking that follow.

The point of today’s episode is to help you achieve the optimum “base image” using Lightroom’s Auto Settings. In some cases, the result maybe be perfectly fine without further editing, but if more needs to be done this initial approach will greatly simplify any steps that follow.

Mohrle walks you through the simple process in just 12 minutes while demonstrating the further refinements he made to transform a really good sunset scene into a great one. We suggest downloading his Raw file with the link beneath the video so you can follow along and makes the changes yourself as they’re explained.

He admits that “I was struggling a lot and didn’t know what to do with the shadows, the sky, and the forest on the right side of the frame.” Mohrle tried several of his go-to basic adjustments, all of which proved unsatisfactory, at which point Lightroom’s Auto settings came to the rescue.

Mohrle’s photo was part of an HDR sequence and you’ll see how the individual shots were merged as a prelude to describing the way Auto settings work and how to apply them for maximum effect. By checking the Auto Settings box in the Photo Merge window the image is instantly much improved with greatly restored highlight and shadow detail—even before clicking on the Merge button.

According to Mohrle, this is what happened: “What Lightroom tries to achieve with these Auto settings is it wants to create a balanced exposure with better contrast.” To illustrate how this happens he opens the Basic panel so you can see every adjustment that was automatically applied.

If all an image needs are adjustments to these common parameters, well, you can call the job done. But sometimes a few more enhancements are necessary if perfection is your goal.  To that end, Mohrle moves on to straightforward masking, color grading and sharpening. Take a look at his before/after images and you’ll be impressed.

Then head over to Mohrle’s instructional YouTube channel where you’ll find much more of interest for shooting in the field and editing images in Lightroom or Photoshop. And don’t miss the related tutorial we posted with another top pro, explaining how to shoot and edit HDR photographs for perfect exposures every time.