Blue sky mining

[marlene]

I've got a photo with a very washed-out sky -- almost white. The rest of the photo's pretty good.

Is there an easy way to make the sky bluer? It should be easy to select the area I'd need to make blue, and it's a relatively small area.

The client wants me to just lop off the top of the photo to get rid of the pale sky, but I thought I'd see if I can fix it first.

I've got some software I bought a year or so ago (one of those Andromeda bundles) but never got around to installing. Would any of these help? Nik Color Efex Pro, Splat, Xenofex, LensDoc Filter. (There are also some other filters in the bundle, but I'm sure they aren't applicable here -- Varifocus, Perspective, and Redeye.)

The job doesn't go to press until early next week, so I would have some time to fiddle with new software over the weekend.

mxh

[Michael Rowley]

Marlene:

I've got a photo with a very washed-out sky

Photographers often collected 'good' skies: couldn't you find a suitable sky shot somewhere?

[marlene]

The sky is only a small portion of the photo (the rest is buildings and shrubberies and stuff).

I do have nicer skies (thanks to Photodisc), but I don't know how I'd get it into the existing photo. Anyway, I don't think I'm allowed to change it that much. I can enhance it, but not too much.

mxh

[Andrew B.]

The way I've done this is to mask in another sky. This takes some work. Nik has some gradient filters in blue. Or you could try laying in your own gradient. Xenofex has a Little Fluffy Could filter and makes a blue sky for the clouds. But that would probably be worse to blend in than a real sky from another photo.

[LoisWakeman]

Marlene, if you can select the sky then feather the selection, you can drop in a semi-transparent gradient from darker to lighter blue anngled appropriately for the direction of the sun - but pick a colour that matches the cast of the foreground for best results. Depending on what editor you use, you may find the feather gives a faint line arpound the top/outside edges of the sky: in which case, you can add a border the same width as the feathering, remake the selection and tint, then crop off the excess.

[annc]

Do look at the solution Don McC proposed to me in my image help plea thread. It might help you a lot with this problem.

http://desktoppublishingforum.com/bb/showthread.php?postid=9389#poststop

[Michael Rowley]

Marlene:

I don't think I'm allowed to change it that much

Interesting point that: you think putting in a nicer sky would be changing the photo a lot, whereas electronic touching is OK?

[marlene]

Well, I think the person who submitted the photo might notice if I put in a real nice sky with clouds. The existing sky is actually pure white -- I just checked the file in Photoshop, and it's 0% everything. Not one single pixel of color!

I wanted to just add a tiny bit of color -- very pale blue -- just so the sky's not pure white. But the photographer has requested a photo credit, and might notice if the sky is no longer white, so I guess I'd better leave it alone.

I'll just crop out the sky as the client originally requested.

But it's still useful to know about options for dealing with the problem -- I needed to fix another sky a few days ago, but didn't know how and was very short on time, so I had to just let it go. That sky wasn't as bad, though -- it wasn't 100% white.

mxh

[marlene]

Thanks for the suggestions. I decided not to fool with it, since the photographer requested a photo credit and might notice.

But I'm sure I'll need to use these kinds of techniques sometime in the future.

mxh

[marlene]

I decided not to fool with this particular sky, but when I get a chance I'll install those programs and experiment with them.

Thx,

mxh

[marlene]

I saw that and archived it. I can't wait to try it!

mxh