Any ideas on how I can add color to this sky? I would like to add a little red or red/yellow along with the reflection in the water. Can this be done without selecting and replacing the complete sky? I played around with curves and the hugh adjustment but I just can't seem to come up with anything that looks natural.

After I add color to the sky I will add fog with my Mistical Lighting plug in. That I can do, it just needs a little more color.

Thank you.

A. William Regez

One way is to make an Empty Layer above your background layer and fill it with the color you like. Reduce the opacity, add a Layer Mask and with a soft, black brush, (play with brush opacity) paint out the color where you don't want it.

In my case, I used to Layers with two shades of orange. I also used Curves, Empty layers sete to softlight blend mode to enhance the clouds, trees, etc.

k

Nice job Ken,

I used the red channel for a mask for a levels layer to darken the sky, then created a new mask with an inverted mask to brighten the foreground elements. Then I created a gradient map, masked again with the red channel, and used a variety of sun set colors. Adjusted the levels on the masks a little to isolate the colors and thats about it.

Michael

Hi Regez,

Here are the steps of the image below:

1.) Inspect the channels, and you see that the red channel has the lightest sky.
2.) Ctrl-left click on the red channel to select R-Luminosity.
3.) Select > Feather the selection by 3 pixels. (optional, I think)
4.) Convert to Lab Color Mode.
5.) Window > Documents > New Window (you have now 2 windows open, one for preview, please arrange the left small and the right large on screen).
6.) Select the focus on the left small image window.
7.) Select the a-channel from the channels pallette.
8.) Ctrl+L (Levels), adjust Levels of a = 80, 1.00, 150
9.) Select the b-channel from the channels pallette.
10.) Ctrl+L (Levels), adjust Levels of b = 41, 1.00, 170

As you will see now in the large window on the right, you have adjusted the color saturation of the lighter sky and water. The mask held back the adjustment of the darker areas. You may want to vary the colors to taste.

11.) Gaussian blur both a and b channels by 8 pixels (I did, to get rid of the Jpeg Artifacts)

Close the small window, deselect and convert to RGB


berwin

Hi Regez

Here is yet another solution. I have just finished reading the two free chapters from Margulis's LAB Book (you can find the link to those chapters in the Lab Book thread). In it he explains how the LAB color space is well suited to make sunsets more colorful. I had to try.

Basically I converted to LAB mode and steepened the A (warm colors) and B (cold colors) curves.

More precisely, I selected Image>adjustment>curve and selected channel A. I grabbed the top of the A curve in the upper right corner and dragged it to the next grid intersection (it's a 10-grid) to the left. (The curve is still a straight line, but the slope is now steeper.) I then did the same with the B curve. I didn't touch luminosity. That's it.

I tried to achieve a similar effect in RGB mode with Image>adjustment>hue/saturation, but increasing saturation quickly gave an unnatural effect. This is in contrast to the retouch in LAB mode which looks nice even with the intense colors.

I'm impressed with LAB mode. I'm going to explore it further.

Pierre

Hi Regez,

Welcome to RetouchPRO.

Created a new layer, blend mode to colour. Created a graduated layer, centred on water line coloured between a (BG) yellowy orange to a (FG) reddy orange. Masked with a mask made from green channel.

Adjusted layer opacity to about 28%.

I realized when I woke up that the procedure I outlined in my previous post affected color balance.

Instead of curves, I used levels in this one. Because I only modify the slope of of the curve of channels A and B in LAB mode, I bring the maximum down 50 to 205 and the minimum to 50 in those channels. This insures that the curves pivots at the midpoint and doesn't affect color balance.

I then selected the lighter half by ctrl-alt-acute to a multiply mode layer.

I include two images, one emphazizes the early hour and the other emphasizes the morning mist. I made the second one by adding a screen-mode layer filtered with diffuse glow.

Pierre

Hi Regez,

Welcome to RetouchPRO.

Created a new layer, blend mode to colour. Created a graduated layer, centred on water line coloured between a (BG) yellowy orange to a (FG) reddy orange. Masked with a mask made from green channel.

Adjusted layer opacity to about 28%.Hi Gary

I see more green than orange. Is that your intention or do I recalibrate my monitor?

Pierre

Berwin,

What a wonderful method to create the sunset. Many thanks for sharing that.

K

From the red channel I created two masks, one from the upper sky and water highlights and another from the entire sky and water. One I filled with deep strong red and the other I filled with fluoro pink. After that it was simply a matter of adjusting the opacity of each added layer until I was happy with the tonal ranges and the blend. I chose these colours as I thought they would lend themselves better to a fog

I used the black channel in CMYK to secure my selection. Dragged a sky image I had into the picture and clicked on the mask icon. Reduced opacity to let some of the original cloud detail through. I like this approach as I seem to have less problems with Out of Gamut colors that I get using Hue/Saturation or agressive a,b channels in LAB.

Cheers

Dave

Hi Pierre,

The colour gradient is orange, but at 28% opacity, the background colour will predominate.

Does not look green on my monitor, but will by no means be a vibrant orange. I was looking for a subtle tint, maintaining the "reality" that Regez was looking for.

Gary