I have updated this tutorial with a video version (12/12/06). Details (http://retouchpro.com/tutorials/?m=show&id=222)

Swampy
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Let me get you the information this way, and I'll work on the RTP publisher later. The Photo's below should be in corresponding "step-by-step" order

Digital cameras are notorious for blowing out the sky and leaving a white glareish mess. Here's the easy way to fix most photos with this problem without having to make tedious selections. This tutorial was created in Adobe Photoshop CS2, but should be usable with any version of Photoshop that supports adjustment layers. [details (http://www.retouchpro.com/tutorials/?m=show&id=222)]

1. Open original image, duplicate and turn off original background.

2. Make a marquee selection of the sky.

3. Add a Selective Color Layer adjustment layer, In the pop-up chose the WHITES and slide the Cyan and Magenta sliders to the right until you get a sky color that you like.

4. If you want more variation in the sky you can apply a black and white gradient to the newly created mask (For this tutorial I have duplicated the sky mask layer and applied the gradient to the mask on the duplicate layer and turned off the first adjustment layer.)

5. We can take this one step further and let the water more reflect the sky. Duplicate the sky gradient layer and reverse the direction of the black and white gradient on the mask.

Make sure that you have "Absolute" selected in the Selective color dialog box.

Hi Swampy. I liked the way you explained your tutorial, especially posting the screen shots. I always get more out of a tutorial that features a visual guide. I have seen tutorials with 20 steps and no reference images and I am left in the dark with many words on how to do, but no results. How do you get your screen shots? steveb

Thank you, Steve. Hope you found the information usefull. :-)

I do my screen shots using the built in Mac screen capture with the option to marquee the portion of the screen you wish to capture. This saves them as PDFs which I then open in Photoshop and add any circle highlights etc, then resave "for web" to reduce file size.

Great stuff.
Just one nagging thing, the 1st image is very small, not much detail.

Nice and short tute though.

Peter

Ah, exactly what I was trying to figure out. Great tutorial, simple and easy to follow, many thanks.

deej :bigthmb:

Using this method, you can go a step further and add clouds to the mask by painting in black with a soft clouds brush (you can find cloud brushes on the Adobe exchange site).

Since the adjustment was done to the whites, your clouds do not interfere with the tree line so you can paint right down over the trees.

Thanks Swampy,your tutorial is great and easy for me to follow...i was sad that some of the photos i took in Spain had a blown out sky...now i can hopefully fix them... :nod:

Patricia..

Thanks, Swampy. Very nice. I didn't have a cloud brush so I just selected the selective color mask and ran filter/render/clouds on it.

Wonderful, Phil! A great addition to the tutorial!

It is good to learn something new everyday.

Rich

Hi Swampy. This is my first post..looks like a great forum. I like your tutorial...thank you. However, I notice a slight halo around the tiops of the trees..(more noticeable when zoomed in). Is there a way to get a cleaner division between the trees and the new sky?
Cheers,
Paul

Paul

There are some free actions floatin around on the web that will help in defringing blue/purples.

Sorry to be so brief. Fell and broke my shoulder yesterday. Typing not so good,

Cheers! :happy:

Swampy...So sorry to hear you have broken your shoulder...it must be extremely painful....heres hoping it heals wonderfully and you are not out of action for too long....

Lovely job on the sky Phil....

Patricia.... :happy:

PK.... Thank you for the get well wishes! So far no surgery planned, but that may mean a longer healing process. Things are slow around here in the summer so maybe I can get acouple books read. :-)

Hi Swampy,

... so sorry to hear about your broken shoulder .... I really wish you the best and the fastest recovery possible...

Just to thank you for a great tutorial!!! :bigthmb:

I'd only like to add a small tip... If the blown out sky is pure white or very close to it, you won't be able to add any colour to it, unless you tone it down to a very light grey ....

Thank you, Flora! :happy:

Your tip about a "total blow out" may be true, but I've not experienced that in any photos I've worked on. I'll keep my eyes pealed for the exception though.

Hi.

I'd only like to add a small tip... If the blown out sky is pure white or very close to it, you won't be able to add any colour to it, unless you tone it down to a very light grey

Flora, does this only apply with ‘Relative’ Checked.? Swampy has ‘Absolute’ Checked.


I hope you Get well soon Swampy.

Ken.

good eye there, Ken. Using absolute may make a difference.

And thank you for the get well wishes! :)

Hi,

Flora, does this only apply with ‘Relative’ Checked.? Swampy has ‘Absolute’ Checked. ... Thanks for pointing that out Ken!! :) .... I've nearly never used the 'Absolute' option .... and I hadn't looked closely at the attachments ...

Using absolute may make a difference. It surely does!!! I've just tried it and it works perfectly!!! ...

Get well soon ... and thanks again for a great Tutorial!!! :) :)

Great tutorial,

Thank-you

I haven't tried it... no need since I can already see how this will help.
You can also blend this technique with CTRL+Clicking an alpha channel before adding a mask. That would apply the edit only to the bright sections of the image.

Great idea... something I hadn't thought of.

Is there a problem with the page I'm unable to view the tutorial?
Garry

Swampy, I am in your debt for sure! This is absolutely a great tutorial, and has opened up even more things for me, as I never even realized what the selective color thing could do!! THANK YOU!!!

gsudell...
If you clicked on the "details" link, you won't see anything. I'm on a Mac and the Java Script for uploading tutorials doesn't work with my computer. The tutorial is contained in the balance of the first post in this thread including the 5 images that were uploaded with it.

1stLight.. Thank you for your kind comments. Glad to be of inspiration. :-)

Swampy always has such cool ideas!

I took the plug-in approach, as usual...

Image 1:

After a quickie sky and water highlight selection, I added Alien Skin Xenofex's (http://www.plugsnpixels.com/xenofex.html) Little Fluffy Clouds to give the sky blueness and a gentle cloud texture. I then added Cumulous clouds using Twisting Pixel's PixelCreation (http://www.plugsnpixels.com/pixelcreation.html).

Never leaving well enough alone, image 2 adds sunshine from Knoll Light Factory (http://www.plugsnpixels.com/knolllightfactory.html) and graduated fog from nik Color Efex Pro (http://www.plugsnpixels.com/colorefexpro.html). Finally, I added Warm Soft Effects and Vignette from Digital Film Tools 55mm (http://www.plugsnpixels.com/55mm.html).

It's getting to the point where it doesn't matter what the weather and lighting conditions are when you go out to shoot! Or better yet, don't go out at all (http://www.plugsnpixels.com/terraingen.html)!

plugsnpixels: The first one just looks disconnected. The clouds in the reflection don't even approximate a mirror of what's in the sky. Of course, maybe that was your intention. I like the second one much more, kind of a low hanging, persistant haze -- adds a touch of mystery to the scene.

True. No, not specifically my intention, but I did rotate the image 180 before reapplying the same filter in an attempt to avoid the same orientation of the reflection. Thinking about it more now, I should have flipped it horizontally as well (that might have worked better).

I lightly erased the PixelCreation clouds in the reflection to make them more natural, FWIW.

I'm glad you liked the second attempt. I enjoy layering on the post-effects. I did something similar with the cover image of my 4th ezine (http://www.plugsnpixels.com/ezine.html), using a scenic generated from scratch in the free (for personal use) Terragen (http://www.plugsnpixels.com/terragen.html).

True. No, not specifically my intention, but I did rotate the image 180 before reapplying the same filter in an attempt to avoid the same orientation of the reflection. Thinking about it more now, I should have flipped it horizontally as well (that might have worked better).

Yeah, a flip works, a rotation not so much.

I did do this exercise some time ago, but didn't post it. Here it is in case you're interested. This demos a flip of the clouds I added -- with a few more enhancements. I think it's pretty convincing.

As I got started I was hoping Xenofex would allow me to apply its effect to a new layer (as the more current Alien Skin plug-ins do), which would have made the flipping easier (my original plan). It didn't, so I resorted to the (incomplete) workaround described above.

Your example is great--looks perfectly believable.

Thank you for posting this and for doing a video too. I've never used the selective color adjustment layer before. I'm sure it will serve me well. It's always amazing to me how many different ways there are to do things in photoshop.

I hope your shoulder is all mended.

Thanks Swampy for a great tutorial

So useful. Just found your tutorial after struggling for several days to fix what was otherwise a promising sunset pic from a viewpoint I'll probably never be able to find again!

Swampy, excellent tut. Thanks for taking the time to throw that together. Sometimes, I like to use the selection and delete the sky altogether and paste in my own from one of my many sky shots. Get well, soon. Wish I could PS your shoulder back to health for you :)~ Kirk

Swampy,
I would really like to view your "Fixing a blown out sky" video, but only have a 56K dial up connection, and it is taking forever to download. Is it possible to get this as a pdf file? If so where. I am in dire straights. We go to the printer on Friday, and I need to resolve this one as it is a cover photo.

Christo...

The basic information you need is right in the tutorial step-by-step. I included 5 pictures of the progressive steps.

http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/rp-tutorials/13348-fixing-blown-out-sky.html

Dear Swampy,

Sorry for taking so long to respond. This past week has been deadline and print week, always a hectic time resulting in little sleep, not enough time, etc. I will be off for a nap shortly.

I thought I downloaded the full sized images, but in checking today, it looks it was the thumbnails-hence the inability to se the images.

I will try this again-although tomorrow.

Thanks again for you patience and assistance. I will let you know how things turn out.

My first ever tutorial understood (by me) within a few minutes or ever.

I must have attention deficit disease or something..........

What's the subject?

Thanks Misses Swampy!

What if the blown out portion is not the sky, but a white garage as in this case?

Christo, This may not work as well on the garage door. I would first try a Shadow/Highlight adjustment and go from there. From your picture, I can't tell what the object or structure is to the right of the garage door (fence? shed?) and that may have to be handled separately.

I just wanted to add my thanks for this tutorial video. Great technique, exactly what I was looking for. I've been using it with great success on some B&W conversions, too.

Many thanks, Swampy!

Thanks Swampy. It is the garage door and a fence. I was able to clone the the half of the garage door, flip it and skew it to fit. I then copied the fence to the right of that and pasted it in. It did not look too bad. The only problem I came up with was in removing the shadows on the grass. I used the clone tool, but it does not come out looking "realistic". Not sure how to handle that part of it, but need to get it sent off to the printer tomorrow, It will be in B&W, so am hoping it does not become that obvious. Thanks for the help.

Phil,

I studied your filter/render/clouds solution (not sure if I can do this with GIMP) and was surprised and happy to see you took time to do the cloud reflections in the water too. That is some amazing work and I am going to try to do something like it myself.

I also just noticed that I am 'bumping' and old thread...but it seemed most appropriate to keep the comment in here, so I hope that's ok.

Jim