Sequence of events

[christo]

You have a photograph of a house that you need to use in a publication. It was taken in the winter, and the sky was overcast. Overall the photograph is dark and you plan to remedy that using the >levels options. There also isn’t much contrast between the house and the sky. You want to use Flora’s One Easy Way to Make a Difficult Selection tutorial to make the sky blue.

What is the best approach to this-use Flora’s technique first or adjust the levels/contrast first? Does it matter?

[Flora]

Hi Christo,

Have been trying different ways with your picture which, as you say, has very little contrast between the roof of the house and the sky ....

I got the best result by increasing contrast (beside shadows and lights, it's just fine tuning the mid tones to darken the roof but not the sky ) ... and tweaking the saturation (I used Selective colors) .... before going for the channel mask described in my tutorial ....

Was going to send you my result per e-mail but seeing your post here I decided to answer here ...

Originally Posted by Christo

What is the best approach to this-use Flora’s technique first or adjust the levels/contrast first? Does it matter?

1) Adjust contrast/saturation.
2) Channel mask.

Yes, it matters... as I wrote in the tutorial, that selection method works best with high contrast being shadows/lights or colours ...

[christo]

Dear Flora,
Thanks for your input. Not sure I follow everything you stated, but do apreciate your effort to help.