Balancing Light In A Backlit Sunset

Backlit sunsets can be both beautiful and tricky to edit. In this tutorial, I walk you through a series of masking techniques to tame the exposure challenges of a mountain sunset scene. By carefully balancing the light, we’ll recover hidden details in the shadowed slopes without losing the glow of the sky.

Along the way, I’ll show how localized adjustments can shape the mood of the image—lifting structure in the mountains while leaning into the cool tones in the sky to emphasize depth and atmosphere. If you’ve ever struggled with uneven light in your landscape photos, this workflow will give you the tools to make your backlit images shine.