I took this picture this spring while I was vacationing in Northern Minnesota along Lake Superior. It was a cold windy day, I guess they all are. I made some adjustments in Photoshop to bring out the colors. I like the picture but something is missing in the sky. I’m not sure what it is. Is it the color, the lack of clouds? I don’t think a sunset is appropriate. Any suggestions on what I should do, as well as how to do it? Your help will be appreciated.

I added some (gradient) blue to the sky and a very light fluffing of clouds.

Juergen

I think the photo looks a little flat.

Replaced the sky with one that had some clouds. Used levels to bring our more color and global contrast. Land on left of image was selected to give contrast boost using levels. Last - Local Contrast Enhancement using Unsharp Mask filter.

I took this picture this spring while I was vacationing in Northern Minnesota along Lake Superior. It was a cold windy day, I guess they all are. I made some adjustments in Photoshop to bring out the colors. I like the picture but something is missing in the sky. I’m not sure what it is. Is it the color, the lack of clouds? I don’t think a sunset is appropriate. Any suggestions on what I should do, as well as how to do it? Your help will be appreciated.Don't know what your original looked like but the version you posted is jpeg'd all to crap. It's quite possible that your original sky can be retrieved and brought into a usable state, probably with the red channel which usually has most of the contrast and drama in a sky, but what you've posted has no information, just large 8x8 pixel blocks of jpeg patterns.

Check out my vidoe tutorial on "Fixing a Blownout sky" In the tutorial forum or from my web site.

I just replaced sky. Didn't seem much else to do. Matter of taste but you can't go by someone, like me, that has no art ability whatsoever.

I just replaced sky. Didn't seem much else to do. Matter of taste but you can't go by someone, like me, that has no art ability whatsoever.It's a nice looking sky, but you have to deal with that fringe from the previous background that's outlining your trees.

Try this: Duplicate your background layer and place it directly above your masked foreground layer. Name it "Defringe"

Layer>Create Clipping Mask to restrict the information in Defringe to only the pixels visible in the foreground layer.

Set the blending mode to Multiply.

Hide the layer with a layer mask.

Now move in close and with a small brush at low opacity, paint white into the mask everywhere you see an unwanted fringe from the old background. In theory, you could just create a selection and expand it slightly to move the edges over the fringe area (Eismann does something like that, I believe) but I find that you get better results by customizing the defringing to the actual needs of the image. Some areas will need more than others, but at some point, you will reveal enough of the multiplied pixels to match the lighter fringe pixels to the new background.

Takes a little time, but the results are worth it.

It's a nice shot, Regez. Yes, IMO the sky needs a bit more character. Then pop the color saturation a bit. I even added a bit of mist over the water. Your taste may vary of course. Do all this on your non-compressed image (w/o the excessive jpeg artifacting) and you should have a winner.

Just keep in mind that sometimes less is more. I think your scene is interesting enough that you don't need to worry about adding in clouds. A clear sky can be just as pretty.

I just had to try bringing out the sky that was there. The jpg artifacting that edgework talked about sure did make the job harder. There was great satisfaction in proving in the end that it could be done, though I finally gave up on fighting with posterization. Here's your photo, with its own sky revealed.

Carole

Wow – That was fun

I guess my first problem was reducing the image size and saving the file as a JPEG. Sorry about that. Should I have saved it as a PSD file?

I appreciate the comments about the image looking flat. I think sometimes I’m afraid that I will over saturation and over sharpen my images. As I look at some of my earlier work I did that that a lot. I better re-visit this, as these modifications that everyone made look great.

Actually I liked all of the new images and I appreciate all of your comments.

Swampy, I will look at your tutorial on "Fixing a Blownout sky" In the tutorial forum. I have been working with your tutorial on Watercolors 1 and 2 this past weekend. Thanks for all the help you have given me.

Thanks to everyone for helping.

Glad to be of help, Regez. I think you will find the simplicity of the Blownout Sky tutorial amazing, quick and effective. Those skies are the bane of digital photography, but my tutorial will make it very easy to fix them without having to make tedius selections.

Regez, that was fun! And thank you for the opportunity to (hopefully) be of help.

About file handling, you're pretty much stuck with posting jpeg files because of the 100K limit. Your file would have had jpeg artifacts in the sky no matter what. To get the best out of the situation, if you're using Photoshop, use Save>Save for Web. In that utility, resize to a width of 800 pixels and, under options (I think that's it . . .) pick Optimize to File Size and enter 100K. Then save. I've found that gives me about as good as I can get.

<C>

Too add one more item to Lurch's check list. There is a fly out menu in the upper right corner of the Save for Web preview window. Pop that out and select "Use Document Color Profile". This will help retain the actual colors of the image.

. . .select "Use Document Color Profile"
Hey, Swampy, thanks! I'd missed that, and always grumbled because the colors weren't right.

<C>

Edgework,

You said:

"Try this: Duplicate your background layer and place it directly above your masked foreground layer." Name it "Defringe"

Having trouble since its possible my reading comprehension is failing but could you re explain what you mean by "your (mine) masked foreground layer."

I tried your method but obviously I am doing something incorrectly. I could let this slide but your technique seem interesting and I don't think that I have ever come across it previously. I would appreciate another attempt by you to get this information across to me.

Thanks.

Swampy,

Forgot about your tutorial and when I tried it nothing could be easier. I have used this tutorial before on other images. As a matter of fact I have parts and pieces of your tutorial in my notebook. If I don't have a easy reference hard copy I'll forget I ever used it.

Thanks again for all your efforts.

George

Edgework,

You said:

"Try this: Duplicate your background layer and place it directly above your masked foreground layer." Name it "Defringe"

Having trouble since its possible my reading comprehension is failing but could you re explain what you mean by "your (mine) masked foreground layer."

I tried your method but obviously I am doing something incorrectly. I could let this slide but your technique seem interesting and I don't think that I have ever come across it previously. I would appreciate another attempt by you to get this information across to me.

Thanks.You have the trees and cliff masked out (I assume) in order that you can drop the sky behind it. The mask isn't tucking in to the edges of the trees tightly enough, giving you a fringe from the previous (lighter sky).

If instead you masked out your sky to fit it to the contours of your trees etc, no problem. Just invert the mask, apply it to your base layer and drop the (unmasked) sky layer behind it. The steps should work.

The idea is that you darken the lighter fringe with multiplied pixels from your new background, painting carefully so that your darkening effect is restricted only to those areas that need it.

It works the same way if the original background is darker than the new background. In that case, you just set the second background layer to screen, instead of multiply, to remove any dark fringe. This works well with hair in particular, since the most troublesome strands are kind of semitransparent and we expect them to take on the colors of the background.

Fastest reply I ever got from anyone anywhere.

Will give it a try. It seems perfectly clear to my now.

Thanks again.

Thanks Lurch and Swampy. I was wondering how to save the files. Now on to my watercolors. Thats where I really need help.

Thanks again to everyone.

Too add one more item to Lurch's check list. There is a fly out menu in the upper right corner of the Save for Web preview window. Pop that out and select "Use Document Color Profile". This will help retain the actual colors of the image.

If you're only saving for the web and not for printing, and the color profile of the image is already the same as your working profile in Photoshop, I'd suggest not to include the color profile and save the image as untagged. It makes sense to include a color profile to the image if the target audiences are PC users browsing with Firefox or IE, but color profiles aren't handled the same way in Safari on a Mac. What lookss good in Firefox or IE may not appear the same in Safari and vice versa. Getting rid of the color profile keeps the image consistent in all browsers and also keeps the file size a bit smaller. Just a suggestion.