Ever compose a great landscape shot only to realize that when you expose for the land, the sky becomes a pure white? This is a a common limitation photographers have to deal with when shooting landscapes in sunny conditions. You can either expose for the sky or the land? There are ways to tackle the problem: shoot in RAW or shoot multiple exposures and combine them later. But sometimes you just can't plan for these things. We all have a few otherwise great photos that suffer from pure white skies. Here's your opportunity to get those shots out and get them repaired.
Step 1: Open your photo. The exposure of the landscape is perfect, but the sky is so overexposed there is no detail whatsoever. We can't bring back detail that is not there, so we will recreate it. You will need some realistic sky blue colors to continue. You may sample blues from another photo of a sky.

Now create a new layer (2) and name it Sky.


In the Select menu, choose Color Range... The Color Range dialog opens up and allows you to select just by a specific color. Since overexposed areas are usually white, we want to select just the white sky. I start with a Fuzziness of 100 (3), but it can vary from photo to photo. Sample the sky color by clicking on the sky of your photo (4). You will see the preview in the Color Range dialog change to white where the sky is (5).



To set your colors, make sure you have the provided blue color swatch or another photo of a sky open. Double click one of the swatches on your toolbar. Instead of using the color picker, click the color on the screen you want to sample, then click OK. Repeat for the next color.



With the Sky layer selected, press Ctrl-T to transform the blue sky. You want to drag the bottom handle just a small amount to make sure the bottom edge of the sky overlaps the top of the mountains slightly (8). Hit Enter to accept. and press Ctrl-D to clear any remaining selections.



Try experimenting with different sky colors.
1 comment:
You stole this from my website verbatim. Take it down or I sue you into oblivion.
Post a Comment