Golden hour look for Lightroom & Sony Alpha
The last hour before sunset, amplified: amber highlights, glowing skin, soft lifted blacks and just enough haze to feel like the light is physically in the frame. Warm without tipping into orange, soft without going flat.
How to shoot and edit it
- Shoot backlit or into side light — the grade extends existing warmth, it can't invent it.
- Lift blacks slightly to mimic the flare that low sun puts into a lens.
- Keep shadows neutral rather than warm, or the whole frame turns monochrome amber.
What you'll get
A Lightroom Classic preset you can import as a .xmp, a Sony Alpha Creative Look recipe for new-menu bodies, and a Picture Profile recipe that works on every Alpha back to the A7 III — all tuned to this look, in one generation.
Generate it nowRelated looks
Gold 200 is the drugstore film that turned into an aesthetic: a golden overall cast, punchy yellows and reds, shadows that lean slightly green, and blacks that never quite reach black. Cheap film chemistry became a look people now deliberately buy.
Nostalgic Negative is built on American new-colour photography of the seventies: amber shadows, faded lifted blacks, golden skin and a general sense of a print left in a drawer for forty years. Warm without being orange, faded without losing structure.
Light, clean and almost unprocessed: luminous whites, pastel highlights, minimal contrast and neutral skin. The wedding and interiors default, and hard to do well — with nothing hidden in the shadows, exposure and white balance have to be right.
Make your own version of Golden hour look
Adjust the description, add a reference photo, or import a preset you already own — Preset Lab returns the Lightroom values and the in-camera settings together.
Open the generator