Often you will see landscape images that seem amazingly unreal, and yet your own images seem drab and uninteresting - how do they make the images look so vibrant?

There might be wide range of colour that the photographer achieves in the image where the foreground is lighter while looking into  a setting sun with a brighter sunset- and it does not make photographic sense.

This can be achieved through what is termed High Dynamic range.
There are 2 ways you can do this one is to shot 2 images and then combine both in photoshop erasing various areas  to reveal the colour and tone you want.
The other is to shot as a Raw file and open the image twice  in the raw file converter with 2 settings, and again combine in photoshop. This works well for high contrast subjects where say the sunset is brighter than the foreground.

The original Raw file opened without adjustment

Here the image is opened with the exposure increased, and the saturation and vibrance pushed up.

The sky has a rich brooding colour but the foreground is too dark. I could burn this in, but I will retain more information by opening a second image with the raw file readjusted. Notice how the vibrance and saturation have been pushed to boost the colour

Exposure is 1.65 - Clarity +26 - Vibrance + 62 Saturation + 56

 Here the settings have been altered for the second opening of the file

The foreground shows better tonality - this layer is copied and then pasted onto the top of the darker image

Here Exposure ischanged from 1.65 to +0.95 - Clarity stays at +26

Vibrancestays at + 62 - Saturationfrom + 56 to +44

Here we see the 2 layers one on top of the other

A mask is added associated with the top layer is added and the selected areas masked out.

More on adding a mask to a layer.

Here we see the final image of the pink salt lake and the sun rise, which is a combination of both images - each opened with separate raw file settings.

Mouse over to view to orignial image without any adjustments to the RAW setings