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Looking to add a magical, ethereal glow to your images? Golden Hour offers an amazing opportunity to take beautiful photos accentuated by the soft natural light. When you know how to take golden hour photography, you’ll be able to produce stunning imagery even without being a professional.
Use the following guide to capture the perfect golden hour portrait and add a golden hour aesthetic filter to your photo with YouCam Perfect.
What Is Golden Hour
Golden hour occurs roughly one hour after sunrise and one hour before sunset. It’s the day when the sun is lower than usual in the sky but not obscured by the horizon. This creates a warm, soft, and dreamy aesthetic light with an orange glow that adds radiance to photos. Skin tones look more flattering in portraits, and longer shadows paired with bright sun give photos a dramatic composition.
You can check when Golden Hour is happening specifically in your area or you can just start watching before sunset — you’ll know the golden hour sky has arrived when everything takes on a fiery radiance.
6 Tips on How To Edit Golden Hour Photos
Read on to discover the six tips for the best golden hour aesthetic photos and learn how to edit golden hour photos with YouCam Perfect.
- Add Golden Hour Filter
- Adjust The Color to Fake Golden Hour
- Change to Golden Hour Sky
- Give Portrait a Golden Hour Glow With Lens Flare
- Shoot in the Opposite Direction of the Sun
- Shoot Toward the Sun to Play With the Silhouettes
1. Add Golden Hour Filter
Golden hour photography is tricky because you only have a few minutes a day to work with. Miss that limited time span and your images won’t have that same pop. Luckily, there is another solution. With YouCam Perfect, you don’t need to wake up early or chase sunsets to create stunning golden-hour images. You can create one-tap golden hour photos with instant aesthetic light illusion effects. It’s simple! Try the following steps to see what we mean:
- Open your image in YouCam Perfect.
- Click on the Effects option in the bottom menu.
- Scroll to Light Shadow, pick Light Shadow 02, and adjust the strength to your liking.
- Go back to Effects, select Sunkissed, and choose Sunkissed 04.
- Enjoy your new golden hour photo!
2. Adjust The Color to Fake Golden Hour
If you are dedicated enough to get outside right after sunrise or before sunset, YouCam Perfect can also help you edit the golden hour photos you took. The app’s extensive selection of photo editing tools gives you the ability to adjust:
- Contrast
- Brightness
- Shadows
- Exposure
- Much more
It’s like having a professional photography editing suite in the palm of your hand. Make tweaks and corrections on the go so you can post your new photos without any delay.
👉 Read: How to Enhance a Photo Like a Pro
3. Change to Golden Hour Sky With Sunset
Have you arrived on location to take golden hour photos, but the sky is grim or not as colorful as you were anticipating? It’s not a problem with YouCam Perfect!
Quickly replace the sky in your photo with one of the Sunset options in Sky Replacement for a dreamy golden hour vibe. Just open the setting and choose from a number of options that instantly replace the sky in the image. You can make it seem like you snapped a photo at the perfect moment.
4. Add Sunlight Effects With Lens Flare
During golden hour, the sun is positioned low in the sky, creating a lens flare when snapping photos. But if you miss this cool phenomenon, YouCam Perfect can help you add a lens flare to your portrait or landscape snap after the fact. Choose from several different light shapes, sizes, and directions depending on the vibe you’re going for. When placed correctly, these effects look natural and stunning.
5. Shoot in the Opposite Direction of the Sun
The fourth tip for golden hour photos? Shoot away from the sun. That way, everything will be illuminated with a soft, golden glow. Warm light makes it easy to keep the exposure of an image balanced, and it also invokes feelings of happiness.
If you shoot into the sun, the sun’s rays will overtake everything, and your subject will be a shadow flooded by light. It can work (as you’ll see below), but it just takes more practice.
6. Shoot Toward the Sun to Play With the Silhouettes
With that said, shooting into the sun can produce some cool effects if you know what you’re doing. For example, you could try:
- Lens flares — when the sun creates a bursting glow in the photo that can make it seem like your subject is frolicking on a happy, summer day.
- Sunbursts — similar to a lens flare, this is when you shoot into the sun but obscure most of it with a tree branch or other object. The result is a small number of aesthetic light spikes that dramatically highlight a photo.
- Silhouettes — This happens when your subject is completely blacked out, and your background is overexposed, creating a dramatic and mysterious effect. If you try any of these golden hour photo tips, just remember to adjust your exposure accordingly.
👉 Read: How to Make a Silhouette from a Photo
Get the Best Golden Hour Filter App Today
With YouCam Perfect, every hour can be a golden hour! Download the app now on the App Store or Google Play to get started.
▼ Watch our tutorial to learn how to add golden hour effects to photos!
More Filter Ideas:
- Photo Filters: All You Need to Know
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- Best Photo Effects App To Turn Your Photos Into Works of Art
- Different Ways to Create Awesome Photos with the Glitch Effect
- How To Use Rainbow Filter Effects Like a Pro
- Use Movie Style Effects to Make Your Photos Look Cinematic
- Vintage Photo Filters: How to Get the Retro Look
Want to get more photo editing tips and tricks? Subscribe to the YouCam Perfect YouTube channel, and follow us on Instagram for creative editing ideas and awesome selfie tips!
