When you take photos during sunset or sunrise they often turn out too dark or too bright and don’t come even close to looking like the scene that you saw. Why does this happen and how do we avoid it? In this article we’ll explore this question and provide a number of methods to address it, from simple to more technical. This article is aimed at casual photographers using smart phones or consumer-grade cameras.
To start, let’s look at an example with my moderately willing model and son Hudson.
The photo on the left is reflective of what you would probably see but the photo in the middle or on the right is probably what your camera is giving you. If you look carefully, you’ll notice that only parts of the images in the middle and on the right are “off”. In the middle image, the sky is way too bright but Hudson’s face looks pretty good. On the right-hand image, the sky looks good but Hudson is way too dark. So how is your brain able to arrive at the image on the left when your camera can’t?
Your eye (the sensor) takes in the scene, absorbing light (and color) which is processed by your brain (the processor) to produce an image. The image you see is not produced instantaneously like a photograph. Instead, you gaze at the scene and your pupils open and close, collecting data that is optimized for both the dark and bright areas of the scene in front of you. The brain processes this information and produces an image that is updated pretty much in real-time. So your eye and brain are more like a supercharged video camera on steroids than a stills camera. No wonder a single image from our cameras has a hard time competing!
Your camera also has a sensor and a processor. Your sensor may be able to capture a range of light (dynamic range) similar to your eye in certain conditions but the higher the dynamic range the harder it is for your camera to match the result your brain is giving you. Sunsets and sunrises are especially high dynamic range scenes. The sun is about as bright as it gets. Even if it is low in the sky or just below the horizon and lighting up the sky above it, that area is extremely bright compared to the items in your photo below the horizon line. Your camera has a light meter in it and that meter can only look at a certain area to help determine what settings to use in order to get a photo of appropriate exposure (brightness).
If you point your camera up towards the sky, your camera will render the sky in proper brightness but your foreground will become extremely dark, if not black. A human subject will end up way too dark or if you have your flash on you get a weird flashy looking photo that isn’t much better. If you point your camera down towards your human subject, the camera exposes them properly but the sky ends up way too bright if not entirely white and you lose that gorgeous sunset altogether. Your camera just can’t compete with your brain when it comes to brightening the darks and darkening the brights in an instant. In the video below, you can see how the camera adjusts the brightness based on where the light meter is focusing.
So now that we’ve covered exactly what happens and why, let’s talk about what to do about fixing those photos that are too dark or too bright.
1. Use your camera’s HDR mode
You may already be doing this and you don’t know it because the HDR is part of your camera’s default auto settings. Some phones/cameras have an option to turn HDR on or off. When you point your camera at a high dynamic scene in HDR mode will either take several photos in quick succession or take one photo, double process it as two, and then in both cases blend the images to get something that is (hopefully) more realistic. Most cameras list this as a High Dynamic Range (HDR) processing. While HDR modes are probably the easiest solution to the problem, some cameras are better at it than others.
HDR photos are sometimes rendered by making the entire photo properly exposed. This eliminates all shadows and highlights, resulting in an image that is also far from realistic. Below is an example that a popular HDR processor gave me using a “photorealistic” HDR setting. Yikes.
If your camera is taking several images in quick succession and blending them together, you may see a warning to hold your camera still. Without getting into weeds too much, this happens because your camera needs a longer shutter speed to get the darker parts of the image to look bright. If you move your camera during that longer shutter speed you’ll probably get blur in your photo. So heed your camera’s warning and if possible, stabilize it by setting it on something solid and stable while it is taking the picture (like a handrail, car hood, etc.).
Side note: you may get the “hold your camera still” warning any time you are in very low light conditions. Stabilizing your camera on something solid will not only reduce the chance you get a blurry photo but also improve image quality in general because your camera will be able to use a lower ISO setting which means less graininess.
So see if your camera has an HDR setting and test it out to see if you are satisfied with the results the next time you catch a sunset. If you don’t see a setting on you phone/camera for HDR, then there are good chances it is embedded into the auto settings in your camera. You may be stuck with it unless you are willing to venture into the pro mode of your camera (or switch off of auto mode). If you don’t like the results at all or if it only partially remedies the issue then read on and we’ll talk about some other options you have to get better results.
2. Make your subject a silhouette
Perhaps the easiest way to overcome your camera’s shortcoming is to embrace it. You can do this by letting the camera make your subject too dark or entirely black and thereby allowing it to just worry about getting the beautiful sky right. Rather than taking a photo of your friend’s face in front of the sunset, get a silhouette of them gazing out at the sunset instead. The results are often fantastic and it is much easier than trying to fight the conditions. Here’s the quick silhouette I took of Hudson at the same time that I made the other images in this post.
Your HDR may actually work against you with this approach. A silhouette often works best if your subject/foreground is completely or almost completely black. If the HDR mode is trying to brighten up that dark area, it may end up just looking like dark photo. So if you can turn off your HDR mode go ahead and do so in this instance. If you can’t turn it off you have a couple options.
You can venture out of auto mode and into your camera’s pro mode(s) or you can resort to making some edits to your photo to restore that kind of dark area to be an all black silhouette. The pro mode option is outside of the scope of this article but there is plenty of content out there to help you learn pro mode(s) in your camera that is the route you want to go. If you want to make some minor photo edits, read item #3 below and instead of brightening the foreground/subject, just darken it. Also keep in mind that silhouettes work well for all kinds of subjects: people, birds, buildings, city skylines, etc. And this approach also works well after the sun has set and there is just a fading but colorful sky. Give it a shot!
3. Photo Edit: boost your shadows and/or blacks
If you can get a photo where the sky is properly exposed but the foreground is too dark, you can improve the image by boosting (brightening) your shadows and/or blacks with a photo editor. Unfortunately if your foreground is properly exposed but your sky is too bright, you can’t necessarily just darken those highlights down to fix it. The reason for this is that your sky highlights are likely to get “blown out” which means they become pure white and your camera cannot recover these pixels to be something darker. So when you are taking your sunset/sunrise photo, make sure you expose for the sky. In other words, make sure your sky looks good and don’t worry too much about areas that look a little dark, we’ll fix those in your editing software after you get the shot.
While that all sounds simple enough, it can be a little tricky to pull off. Your camera probably has a touch screen that allows you to tap on the image where you want the focus to be. When you do that, it will also probably take a light meter reading for that same location. So if you’re taking a picture of your friend’s face, you want that to be in focus. When you tap on their face, your camera is going to try to expose for that dark area and will blow out the sky. Many cameras including those on the newer Samsung Galaxies and iPhones have a tool to manually adjust the brightness after you have chosen your focus point.
What you are looking for is a small sun icon which is actually a slider that you can either move up and down or left and right depending on your phone. If you don’t see the sun icon after you select your focus point, you may need to lock your focus in order to get it to show. To do so, hold down your focus point to lock it and then you should see the sun icon if your phone has this feature. Tap (or tap and hold) your focus point onto your main subject, adjust the sun slider until your sky looks close to what you are seeing in front of you. Don’t worry about the dark areas at all, just make sure the sky looks good. Now snap your photo!
The next step is to open your photo in a photo editor. You can use the default editor or any number of free or paid photo editing apps that are out there. As long as you find a decent one, it should have a slider for shadows and maybe also blacks in the basic editing tools. You’ll probably also see a slider for exposure, contrast, highlights, and maybe others. Start with the shadows/blacks since that is probably the main issue that needs addressed. Increase (brighten) the shadows and then the blacks and you should see the detail in your darker areas come to life. The tendency is to over-do it so a good practice is to get it to where you like it and then back off a little bit. This will keep your photo from looking over-edited.
Note: If you’re going for a silhouette as outlined in #2 above, just reduce (darken) the shadows and/or blacks instead of brightening them.
Some editors have luminosity or range masking capabilities that can also be of use for this task. Range masks are limited to more advanced and often premium or paid apps and probably aren’t necessary for the casual user but if you are look for more control over your editing adjustments this will do it. Look for a tool that is called masks or masking. Sometimes tools that remove or change backgrounds are called masking too, that’s not what you’re looking for. You’re looking for a masking tool that lets you select a range of brightness in the image to which the editing adjustments are applied.
Once you find the masking tool, you will probably be presented with a two-sided slider that will let you select the bottom and top end of the brightness level you want to select. You may also have the option to use brushes to hand-select areas you want to include or exclude from the editing adjustment. If you decide to delve into range masking and have a tablet you may find it easier to do this type of editing on the larger screen.
If your photo editor has a mid-tones or lights slider you can also adjust those up (or down) slightly also and see if you like the result. You can also try bumping the contrast up just a bit…again, try to not to over-do it. That’s it! Make sure you save your edits if your app doesn’t do it automatically.
Side note: If this is your first foray into your editing settings, you may want to poke around and see what other tools are at your disposal. Three other tools that I would suggest spending a little time to check out would be the crop tool, color adjustments, and detail (sharpening). Here’s a really short blurb on each. I plan on expand on each of these in more detail in future blog posts.
Crop: you probably know that you can crop in on the area you want to show and crop out areas you want to exclude. Your crop tool probably also has a straighten or rotate option that you can use to make sure your horizon line (or other straight lines in your image) is straight so your photo doesn’t look crooked.
Color: complexity in these tools ranges widely and may include white balance, saturation/vibrance, color mixers, and color grading. Start with the white balance and particularly the color temperature setting which adjusts from cool (blue) to warm (yellow). Many photos and especially those with people in them can often benefit from just a touch of warmth, maybe +5-15 on your adjustment slider.
Detail: This tool will attempt to sharpen the edges in your photos, making it look more crisp. Be careful not to over-do it. If your tool has radius and detail sub-sliders, keep those all the way down (or left) so you get a fine sharpening effect that doesn’t result in a crunchy or grainy photo. Make sure you zoom in on the image to make sure you’re not getting an effect you don’t want.
4. AI Processors
The technology for automatic AI-driven image processors is advancing rapidly. New programs are being released constantly and existing ones are improving. In their current state, these tools do about as good of a job as an automatic HDR setting and in some cases maybe as good as you can do with your own photo edit as described in #3 above. But as technology advances, these options will be more relevant and will probably become your best solution for fixing your sunset photos. BUT, you still need to make sure you capture your photo using the methods outlined in #3 above (focus on your subject but adjust brightness for the sky so you don’t blow out your highlights).
AI won’t be able to recover blown out pixels and will be forced to make up new pixels from scratch which in kind of defeats the purpose of capturing the moment. My suggestion is to learn the capturing and editing process outlined in #3 so you can spot and hopefully avoid mistakes that AI may make when it is driving your editing tools. This isn’t a review of AI editors so I’m not going to name or recommend any at this time but below is the result I got from one of the currently popular AI editors when I asked it to “fix brightness so the sky and person are properly exposed.”
Well that’s interesting…for now it may be easier to get to know your camera settings rather than spending your time arguing with AI. But it’ll get better.
Summary
To summarize, you have at least four options for dealing with sunset (and sunrise) photos that are too dark or too bright.
1) Get to know and use your phone’s HDR mode (or not and turn it off if it doesn’t do a good job)
2) Take a silhouette
3) Expose for the sky (but focus on your subject) and brighten up your shadows after you have taken the photo.
4) Use an AI photo processor
If your phone has a capable HDR setting then feel free to use it. Chances are that HDR will disappoint you at least part of the time. I’d recommend embracing silhouettes and getting to know #3 so you can capitalize on your camera’s capabilities. Once you get to know your phone’s focusing and exposure compensation tools your photos will quickly be elevated to the next level. And maybe also keep an eye on AI developments in the camera/photo editing world.
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