The trick to achieving "transparency" is to light up the dark parts, not burn the bright parts

Reeds under the setting sun. Original picture of the fuselage straight out. The dull shadows make the entire photo lifeless.

The picture above is the first photo to be demonstrated. The time is still dusk, the most suitable golden hour for photography, and the subject is a clump of reeds. The setting sun and the background sky constitute the bright part of the entire photo. Because only the yellow color can be preserved at a very high brightness, the setting sun hangs in the air like a golden plate. Other than that, there is nothing to emphasize in the bright part. So the first step to adjust the highlights is to try to restore the details of the sunset, but such an effort is doomed to fail in most cases, and this time is no exception.

Lowering Exposure to -0.30 and increasing Restore to 33 restored only limited sunset detail. There is little point in continuing to adjust, because it is difficult to further enhance the visual effect, and it will only put more pressure on the adjustment of the dark parts, and the reeds in the dark parts are the main body of the entire photo. I did not adjust the "Brightness" because there is nothing to adjust for the bright parts. At this time, I am not sure how to adjust the "Brightness" to benefit the subsequent adjustment of the dark parts.

There is no doubt that the dark part will determine the tone of the entire photo. If you want to create a depressing feeling, you should undoubtedly continue to darken the entire reed. But I think this tone is not suitable for this photo. A bright tone may be more in line with the artistic conception of this photo. This means that in addition to increasing the contrast, the dark parts where the reeds are located should also increase the brightness in a wide range.

You may first think of increasing the "brightness" to control the brightness of the dark parts, but you only need to try to adjust the "brightness" to find that this is not advisable, which not only makes the sunset lose almost everything details, and failed to create the contrast between light and dark that the dark parts should have.

The secret is hidden in the twin brothers "Fill Light" and "Black". If you are brave enough and slide these two sliders to the right, a miracle will appear. The originally existing low-pitched elements disappeared, and a bright "transparency" was suddenly added. This benefits from both the visual illusion of increased shadow detail and the expansion of the tonal range occupied by the entire dark area.

The final value of "Fill Light" is 65, and the value of "Black" is 61.