How do I kill the blown out sky?

scottcolbath

In the pic below, I would like to pull some of the light from the sky. I was driving up to Prescott and came across these guys who I offered to take thier pic sine they were all using cell phones to take pics of each other. I happened to have my 30D with my 70-200 mounted. I just cracked this off in the landscape mode, gave one of the guys my email addy and left.

I know I can use the lasso tool in CS2 and adjust just that area, but I do not have a steady enough hand to cleanly get around the heads and such. Is there another way in CS2 that I can work on darkening the sky some? Or.......Is there a way to fine tune a lasso'd area once it's been drawn? :wink



S.C.

pathfinder

Do you have Photoshop?

The trick is selecting the background in Photoshop, and then use a curve to darken the sky. Here is how I select the sky The Quick Select tool is not in CS2, so you will have to use the magic wand probably.

Here is another way to darken the sky

Or you can select the sky with Color>Select, or with Quick Mask to paint a selection on the sky and then do the curve to darken the sky.

BinaryFx

No selections, masks or fuss - about 5 seconds work:

1. Dupe BG layer into a new layer
2. Set new layer to luminosity mode
3. Apply Image, stamp the red channel data onto the RGB channel of the new layer, darken blend mode, opacity to taste (I used 50% in the sample below). Use a different blend than darken if you are after more drama, but this may require extra work.
4. If you are concerned that the jeans are now darker, pull a curve on the upper image that lightens the darker jeans but leaves the lighter sky alone.


Regards,

Stephen Marsh

http://members.ozemail.com.au/~binaryfx/
http://prepression.blogspot.com/

BinaryFx

Please follow this link to a .SWF movie of the process (30 sec, 6 mb, no audio):

http://tinyurl.com/nyjqb2

Look for the video titled "darken_sky"

www.screencast.com/users/Stephen_Marsh/folders/Video_Tutorials_Stephen_Marsh


Hope this helps,

Stephen Marsh

http://members.ozemail.com.au/~binaryfx/
http://prepression.blogspot.com/

Matt336

I just downloaded a trial of topaz to try it out. I did "Photo Pop" and got this.



And if I do exposure correction after that I get this.




I know it's kind of cheating but I wanted to try out topaz.:D

kwcrow

(I recommend avoiding selective adjustments at all cost, you usually can tell at the edges) If you have Lightroom 2 (I think adobe camera RAW also has this capability, not sure what version?) it makes it very simple!! just use the tool in the HSL pane and set tab to luminosity mode and select the sky and drag down. This will darken the sky and any colors that make up the sky. Very easy. ( You may need to mess with the blue and aquas sliders in camera RAW instead of the tool)
I used to use the method BinaryFX suggested, but now find this much easier with the later versions of ACR and Lightroom.
I probably over did it some to show the changes possible.
563758355_GSw4x-L.jpg

scottcolbath

Holy crap! Talk about a headfull.

Thanks for all the support, guys.

S.C.