white skies

chrisjlee

I had no choice but to shoot on an overcast day; thus, producing boring white clouds.
Any suggestions about making the sky more interesting ( like bluer) ?

gluwater

Could you post the pic so we could see what you are dealing with?

rutt

If you have Dan Margulis' LAB book, Chapter 8 deals with this topic. I plan to write a summary in a week or so.

Whatever technique you actually use, you have to be very careful when you do this because after all the sky was grey and the light was defused. If you make the sky blue, the light on the subjects is in danger of not looking right. In particular, what happened to the shadows?

Anway, here is a simplified version of one of Dan's methods for this.

Before:

1. Convert to LAB
2. Duplicate layer
3. Curves -- The goal is to construct a nice blue sky. Don't worry about the rest of the shot. I used these L and B curves:
   
   
   
   and then the layer looked like pretty bad except for the sky which was a feasible color for a blue sky:
   
   
4. Open the blending options dialog box for the layer. Mac: Control-Click on the layer, choose blending options.
5. Now use the Blend-If slider to keep only the blue sky from the topmost layer and the rest of the image from the background layer:
   
   
   
   I started out by moving the black slider from the "Underlying Layer" to the left until only the sky was showing from the top layer. This hapens because pixels from the top layer are blended (shown) only if they lie within the range defined by the slider, in this case, only if they are extremely light.
6. At this point the edges of the blend, where they sky meets the rest of the image might probably won't look right. Split the slider you just moved: Mac Option-Click on the slider, and pull the right side of it all the way to the right. This tells PS to gradually grade over from showing the bottom layer to showing the top layer using partial transparancey though the range of the split slider. Pixels as dark or darker than the left side of the slider come from the underlying layer. Pixels as light or lighter than the right side of the split slider come from the top layer. In between the two sliders, pixels get some of each, more underlying layer if they are on the dark side, and more top layer if they are on the light side.
7. Voila:
   

Shay Stephens

Don't shoot sky...
The best way to do this is to not shoot the sky. Put a tree or something darker than pure white behind the subject. I often find myself having to take portraits outside on gray a dreary days, and the best way is to just not shoot sky.

rutt

Shay Stephens wrote:

The best way to do this is to not shoot the sky. Put a tree or something darker than pure white behind the subject. I often find myself having to take portraits outside on gray a dreary days, and the best way is to just not shoot sky.

Spoken like a photographer instead of a dark room rat!

chrisjlee

rutt wrote:

If you have Dan Margulis' LAB book, Chapter 8 deals with this topic. I plan to write a summary in a week or so.

Whatever technique you actually use, you have to be very careful when you do this because after all the sky was grey and the light was defused. If you make the sky blue, the light on the subjects is in danger of not looking right. In particular, what happened to the shadows?

Anway, here is a simplified version of one of Dan's methods for this.

Before:

1. Convert to LAB
2. Duplicate layer
3. Curves -- The goal is to construct a nice blue sky. Don't worry about the rest of the shot. I used these L and B curves:
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   and then the layer looked like pretty bad except for the sky which was a feasible color for a blue sky:
   
   
   
   
4. Open the blending options dialog box for the layer. Mac: Control-Click on the layer, choose blending options.
5. Now use the Blend-If slider to keep only the blue sky from the topmost layer and the rest of the image from the background layer:
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   I started out by moving the black slider from the "Underlying Layer" to the left until only the sky was showing from the top layer. This hapens because pixels from the top layer are blended (shown) only if they lie within the range defined by the slider, in this case, only if they are extremely light.
6. At this point the edges of the blend, where they sky meets the rest of the image might probably won't look right. Split the slider you just moved: Mac Option-Click on the slider, and pull the right side of it all the way to the right. This tells PS to gradually grade over from showing the bottom layer to showing the top layer using partial transparancey though the range of the split slider. Pixels as dark or darker than the left side of the slider come from the underlying layer. Pixels as light or lighter than the right side of the split slider come from the top layer. In between the two sliders, pixels get some of each, more underlying layer if they are on the dark side, and more top layer if they are on the light side.
7. Voila:
   
   

Thanks. That was what i was looking for.

mereimage

Hey, nice tutorial Rutt-thanks
I thought I'd try it out to learn it and then I added a little twist:




After dupl. layer and going to lab color I made a color selection on the sky, no feathering, I inverted it to black and used the filter- add clouds, and then adjusted the brightness of the selection with levels to make it look like a B&W cloudy sky. I then deselected it and ran lab curves like you instructed. Did the blending option and used them to select the sky for blending but set the Opacity at 50% and the Fill opacity at 75% (adj. to my eye). I didn't like the cast in the clouds so went back to Levels and used the right dropper to select the lightest part of the clouds to go to white. It was fun playing with this technique. PS seems to have a multitude of ways to make selections and control blending, it always amazes me.....Mereimage

rutt

That's a really nice take on this technique. I've done similar by shooting the sky separately and then using the blend-if technique to reveal it where the sky is white in the original. I like your way of constructing the sky without having a shot at all.