How to Craft Perfect Sunsets in Luminar Neo
How to Craft Perfect Sunsets in Luminar Neo
We all love photographing sunsets - but turning a flat RAW file into something that truly captures that warm, atmospheric glow is where the real challenge begins.
RAW files often come out looking dull and lifeless, with none of the drama or color we remember in the moment. The good news is that with the right approach in Luminar Neo, you can bring that sunset back to life in a natural and controlled way.
In this article, I’ll walk you through my editing approach for sunset photography - from shaping light and color to adding mood and atmosphere - so your images feel as powerful as the moment you captured.
And make sure to watch the video below, where I demonstrate the full edit in real time.
Sunset photography tips before you start editing:
Before we dive into the editing tips, a few things about capturing the image need to be mentioned:
Make sure it’s clean, meaning it’s not blurry (tripods help, but aren’t required).
Raw files are better because they give you more leniency in editing.
Work to ensure your base exposure doesn’t blow out the entire sky because you are trying to get the light right in the foreground. You can bracket if needed, or exposure a bit darker overall to control the highlights. But as you will see in the video below, some blown out highlights are actually not that bad. There is an editing trick I share that helps with that.
All the normal rules of composition apply.
How I Edit Sunset Photos in Luminar Neo
Start by Shaping the Light
When editing sunsets in Luminar Neo, I always begin with the light. Before worrying about color or atmosphere, I want the image to feel balanced and natural from a tonal perspective. Once the light feels right, everything else tends to fall into place much more easily.
For me, that is at least two tools and normally three. In order, they tend to be these (though it can change based on the image):
Develop Raw: Use this to set the base exposure, work on highlights and shadows, make temperature adjustments as needed, etc. I rarely make any adjustments to Saturation or Vibrance here. There are better tools for that.
SuperContrast: I’ve used this tool for as long as I can remember, and it always works. It separates light into the three major tonal areas - Highlights, Midtones, and Shadows - and allows you to manage contrast in each of them. It can have a massive impact on the overall look of the light in the image.
Light Depth: This tool came out last Fall, and I use it on just about every image. It’s perfect as my third tool because it helps you isolate very specifically where the light falls in an image. It’s a great complement to the two previous tools. It also gives you some additional controls (temperature, for example) so it helps with the white balance as well.
The tools I outline here are the core building blocks I use for shaping the light and getting the look that I want.
If you find yourself consistently working on sunsets, that’s exactly the kind of image my Lovely Light preset pack for Luminar Neo was designed to support. These presets give you a strong starting point for natural, beautiful light and color - and then you can fine tune the image to your tastes.
Refine Details without Overprocessing
I’m not big on excessive detail in an image, unless it’s a grungy sort of thing that just begs to be a bit crispy. This is obviously a personal choice, but for many sunsets I tend to go for a softer overall look. To achieve this, I use Structure AI and tend to drag the slider to the left, which softens up the image. For a landscape shot, I will often do this in the sky and water, and then do the opposite (drag the slider to the right, increasing the structure) for the land itself. This would involve two different instances of the Structure AI tool, as well as masks to isolate those adjustments to the intended area in the photo.
Enhance Color After the Light Feels Right
As much as I love color - and I love it a LOT - I truly believe you have to save it for later in the edit, after adjusting light and detail. Any light adjustments you make can impact how the colors look in the image, and that is one of the major reasons I do it that way.
As far as tools go, there are a LOT of color tools in Luminar. My preference is to use 1-2 tools in total for color adjustments, but it does depend on the image. I also frequently use various masks to make local adjustments with these color tools. If you don’t do that, you may end up with an over-saturated image.
Color Harmony: This is the best color tool in Luminar, bar none. It’s technically 4 different tools in one, so it has a lot of power. What I often find is that I use two or three of them, and then apply this with a luminosity mask so that it softens up the overall display of color in the image. The video below is a good example of that.
Golden Hour: This is perfect for most sunsets, and does a great job of accentuating that which is already warm in the image. Just be careful you don’t overdo it. Masking is also helpful here.
Toning: I love this tool because it separates color adjustments into either the highlights or shadows of an image. With a sunset, the warm colorful light is in the sky, which is going to fall into the highlights section of the tool. So I add a little saturation there and adjust the hue to my taste. You don’t have to push too far to see an impact. Depending on the image, I may do a similar adjustment to the Shadows, but with less saturation. That helps blend the colors in the image together well. That is also demonstrated in the video below.
HSL: Because this tool gives you the ability to control three aspects of color - hue, saturation, and luminance - you can really dial in color here. This is great for finishing up your color work since it allows you to be very selective with color.
When I was building my Luminar Neo preset collections, I kept this exact stage in mind - subtle color shaping after light is already balanced. If you want a faster way to get into this kind of controlled, natural color direction, you’ll also find it reflected in my Luminar Neo Preset Mega Pack, which includes a range of tonal starting points for different lighting conditions.
Add Mood and Atmosphere as Finishing Touches
As I near the end of a sunset edit, I start thinking about the overall mood and atmosphere of the image, and how I may want to enhance that a bit. There are a lot of great tools in Luminar Neo for doing this exact thing. Some of my favorites are:
Mystical: I can’t get enough of this tool. I just adore it, honestly. It’s great at softening up the look of a photo, adding a little contrast, and just enhancing the overall mood. If you haven’t tried this one yet, please do. I bet you'll love it as much as I do.
Glow: This tool gives you options like Soft Focus and Orton,which can inject a little extra mood into a sunset. I don’t use this all the time, but when I do I find that a little bit can go a long way.
Atmosphere: If your image already has some fog or mist in it, this tool is perfect for giving that a little extra boost.
Usually at the end of an edit, I go back and experiment with the light one more time. This can be some minor contrast or color adjustments or even a slight vignette. It varies by image and is based on the overall look of the image as it currently stands vs what my vision is for the shot. Experiment and see what works for you.
Here’s one last trick: If your sunset is blown out, consider a radial mask over the sun, with a generous feather to the mask, and then use Develop to INCREASE the exposure of that area. It’s essentially making it look MORE blown out, but it also creates a glow that can add to the overall mood of the image.
Check out the video below to see some of these moves in action and how they complement the overall look of a sunset image. In particular, you can see how I take that blown out sun and use the radial mask trick. It works quite well and I’ve been doing this for a long time, and always like the results.
Final Thoughts
So that’s my approach - some practical ways to shape light, color, and mood when editing sunsets in Luminar Neo.
The key takeaway is simple: don’t try to force sunsets into perfection early. Instead, build the image step by step until the atmosphere starts to reveal itself.
If you want to go further with this style of editing, I’ve put together some preset collections that are built specifically around warm light, soft contrast, and atmospheric color grading - so you can get to a strong base edit much faster and spend more time refining your creative vision.
You can explore them here:
And don’t forget to watch the video below to see the full edit in action.
Thanks for following along!
