Posted: Mon Feb 11, 2008 6:51 pm Post subject: More vivid sky
I'm looking to make the sky more vivid in this picture...
Any suggestions on how I might do this?
Also, the sky in this picture is really bright, but the land is really dark, if I compensate the exposure in the whole picture, the whole thing looks too bright
Most people will probably tell you to add in a gradient. If you don't know how to do that, I'm sure someone will explain it, it's not hard. It doesn't work as well if the sky is completely blown out, as in your second shot. You might actually try a blue gradient. (Again- I'm sure someone else will explain that, or post a link, or if not I can later.)
But I wanted to add that one thing I have started doing a "lot' in my work, is making selections around the parts of the image I want darker (or brighter, and then adjusting the exposure of just the selection. It works surprisingly well.
For my most recent shoot, I took the picture with an exposure I felt was too light in the sky (but not blown out), but too dark on the models face. When I opened the shot in CS2RAW, I lowered the exposure to get the sky looking the way I wanted it. Then, in photoshop, I made a selection around the model, and raised the exposure just on him.. Worked great!
Just an extra technique to keep in mind, if gradients don't give you what you want. _________________ Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought. - Albert Gyorgyi
select sky
inverse - so foreground is selected - always find it easier to do it this way- but its up to you
New adjustment layer - exposure - and play with settings until you get what you want
New adjustment layer, - Colour balance - select the sky this time ,play with settings again
hope that can be followed - keith is better at tutorials, but this is what I got in about 3 minutes
I have never done the gradient solution so a link for that would be really good here.
As you have shot in RAW Daves tutorial should help.
I would like to add something about dealing with blown parts of the picture, because if you can't reclaim those parts in the RAW converter and blend them into the image, they will always look pretty ugly. I keep a stock of hundreds of sunsets, clouds and skies that I've taken over several years so that I can usually find some part of an image I can put into the blown part to give it some definition. What I've done here is find a shot that I took into the sun with a similar cloud structure to the original.
I duplicated the original image and using the magic wand and feathering I removed the blown part from the duplicated layer. I selected the first layer and pasted the bit I want to add and moved and resized it accordingly. I had to change the colour a fair bit using Hue/Saturation/Lightness, but once I was happy with the colour, I used the eraser at a reduced opacity to take out any bits that really weren't working or just to reduce their intensity.
I then flattened and duplicated the image twice, on the first copy layer I set the opacity to 15% and set the blend mode to Multiply, the second copy layer I set the Opacity to 25% and chose Soft Light. Which gives the whole image a boost.
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