Create the incapturable

How do we address exposure problems especially in sunset photos? This can be done in Photoshop by editing the same RAW photo twice. Below is a mother and daughter picture taken from Pixabay.

sample photo of mother and daughter taken from Pixabay.

Open the image in Photoshop and create a layer copy by clicking Control or Command J, then transform it to a smart object. Open the image in camera raw filter, I cranked the shadows all the way to the right, added exposure, bit of clarity and vibrance. Then click on the background copy and make another layer copy by clicking Ctrl J, convert to smart object. This time I worked on the sky and lessen the exposure by about -.80, shadows -21, clarity 20 and vibrance 11. You can choose to add layer masks on both smart objects to tweak the color or lower the opacity and then finally flatten the image. Here is the adjusted photo where we can now see mother and daughter on a sunset background.