hello I'm Robin Whalley welcome to Lenscraft today we're looking at a question
I'm often asked how do I fake sunset light and I'm going to be explaining how
to do this using just Nik Viveza the image I'm using is one I shot a few
days ago in the middle of the afternoon and I want to make it look like it's
from later in the day at the moment the light is very white although there's a
slight magenta cast to the image when we've finished our Viveza edits the image
is going to look like this though the reason I'm using Nik Viveza is that
it's quick and very easy to make this kind of adjustment
I should also stress that this technique won't work with every photo you need to
be sensible and choose a good starting shot with this example the first thing I
want to do is remove the magenta color cast ordinarily and do something like
this in the raw convertor but today I'm doing everything just using Nik Viveza
there are several tools in the phaser that I could use to fix the color cast
I'm going to try just three of these in turn I'll start with the warmth slider
moving this to a negative adjustment
it makes quite a good job of the adjustment next I'll try removing rat
from the image using the red slider again this makes a good job of the
adjustment and I probably prefer it to the warmth slider finally I'll try the
hue adjustment moving this to the right increases the magenta whilst moving it
to the left reduces it whilst it does correct the magenta cast I don't like
the effect on the rest of the blue sky based on this I'm going to reduce the
red slightly to correct the color cast
now it's time to analyze the image to understand the lighting conditions
remember the aim is to create a believable simulation in this image the
light is coming from the right of the frame and catching the tops of the
clouds this means I must add the sunset color to those areas for this I'm using
a control point and I'll select the white clouds on the left by holding down
my command key or control key if you're using a PC you can see the selection as
you move the control point around the white areas you see are the selection
where you see gray there's a partial selection and where you see black there
isn't a selection at all I can now use the control point to increase the warmth
of the light falling on the clouds this is to simulate the color in the sunset
light I'll then do something that's a bit counterintuitive which is to reduce
the brightness of the light in that area this has the effect of intensifying the
colors still further now whilst we have a good color in the clouds the contrast
is wrong if you imagine a low sun shining on the clouds it would produce
quite a high contrast we can simulate this by increase in the contrast with
the contrast slider know that I'm happy with the adjustment I can expand the
control point further to see how it affects the other clouds I like this
because it produces a natural effect across the sky this is why we use a
control point it's avoid changing the entire image in a uniform way which adds
to the realism now let's suppose we want to create a more intense orange color in
the cloud we can do this by adjusting the proportions of red green and blue in
these areas by reducing the blue slider we make the yellow in the area more
intense we could also shift the yellow more towards orange by reducing the red
slider reducing the green slider also has the same effect
something else to try is repositioning the control point this can often produce
interesting lighting and color effects and sometimes improves the initial
selection also try duplicating the control point and moving it to another
area
if the effect is too strong try reducing the size and possibly some of the
adjustments
in this image I'm now finding the blue in the sky too intense given the
contrast against the orange of the clouds I can fix this by selecting the
area with the control point and then by reducing the saturation
I'm now happy with the overall colors in the image as a finishing step I'll try
applying global adjustments to the image to reduce the brightness
add a little contrast and possibly even more warmth remember though keep these
global adjustments subtle if you want the image to appear natural
in this example I'm also going to reduce the global saturation as it snow looking
too strong
so there you have it a quick and easy way to fake sunset
light using only Nik Viveza when you combine this with other tools in the
Nik collection and with photo editors like Photoshop you can create amazing
transformations if you've enjoyed this video please share it with others if you
have any questions or suggestions for future videos please leave a comment
below I'm Robin Whalley you've been watching lens craft I'll see you soon
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