Help with Blue Sky?

brvheart

Hi everyone -

I was hoping to get a more rich blue sky on this one but keeping the highlights and tones of the exposure. This is to hang on the wall but the request was to get the sky a deeper rich blue. Can anyone tell me how to go about this using LR 2.5 and PS CS3?

Also I think that it needs straightened but we back and forth for a long time before I gave up and just accepted that it looked how they wanted it to look...

jjbong

Hard to comment, as the photo does not appear to be downloadable.

The first thing that comes to mind is to mask out the sky, and then adjust it under the mask to get the color you want (possibly in LAB, curving the A and B channels). The sky is bright and blue, so constructing a mask based on Lightness and inverted B might work.

I could be more helpful if I could actually look at the image in PS.

BinaryFx

Nice fountain and shot! I would like to see a wide angle view though.

Something strange with the sky...it is so light and blue and the fountain looks like it is shot at night/twilight.

My first thought was that a darker blue sky will compete and perhaps detract from the fountain...however I guess I will have to wait and see!

EDIT: John, one could right click on the image above and copy the URL, then hack the name in the URL to the larger version, knowing how SmugMug works... This SmugMug "copy protection" is very weak, more like a false sense of security than anything and of course anybody can take screen shots.


Stephen Marsh

http://binaryfx.customer.netspace.net.au/ (coming soon!)
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~binaryfx/
http://prepression.blogspot.com/

Anthony

Try using selective colour in Photoshop and adding some magenta to the cyan.

Anthony.

MarkR

I assume you tried the targeted adjustment tool in the HSL area of Lightroom? (Specifically hue and luminosity).

If it affects the rest of the image, do the work on a virtual copy, then export the virtual copy and the master as layers in Photoshop. (There's an option to do this in LR.) You can then brush in/brush out the sky you want.

brvheart

YIkes - you guys are talking out of my league for PP! I have yet to master that art (or any really ), but I will do a google search and see if I can learn it with the directions that you have given.

Thank you all for the reply!

pathfinder

Looks like an Impossible Retouch

gtucker

I can't see the image at work but from what I can tell its kind of light grey ish, if you don't have the selective color adjustment in LR you could try getting a nice deep blue tone in photoshop and doing a gradient from the bottom to top and setting it to multiply, then just brush out everything you don't want to be affected with a mask on the layer.