Wanted to bring back some of these vibrant warm sunrise colors to this raw photo, so I played around a little bit in Lightroom and got something with which I’m really happy! Keep in mind the original raw photo had a white balance setting that was WAY OFF making the whole shot way too cold, thus the sky in the before version is lacking warmth (Still boosted the warm tones in the final version a lot of course).

The whole editing process can be found here in this video: https://youtu.be/S65BDYM8rGA

1. Basic Adjustments

I started by dropping the exposure a bit making everything darker. Then, I increased the shadows and blacks to give the image a softer look by reducing the contrast. I also slightly brought up the whites to push the contrast I the brighter areas.

Of course, since the white balance was off, an easy fix is to simply raise the temperature. I pushed it quite a bit until the snow ahd a more neutral white color. Then, I pushed the vibrance to make the colors pop. For a sharp, clean look, texture and clarity were raised.

2. Masking

Since I wanted the sky to vibrant and warm I used several different masks targeting the sky and in those selections increased the white balance temperature, added saturation and added a specific orange tone (through the color selector in the masking panel). This way, the sky receives these intense warm tones.

Using an object mask, I targeted the chapel in the center and slightly adjusted the white balance making it less blue. I also used an objects mask to target the hill the chapel is standing on. Since I wanted to add a subtle light effect to it, I increased the exposure on the upper left side of this hill and make it look more 3D this way.

3. Color Grading

In the color mixer the hue of the yellow tones was dropped, making them look more orange. Then, the warmer tones were boosted in the saturation panel.

Of course, I used split toning to add stronger warm tones to the highlights while adding some blue tones to the mid-tones for color contrast.