What to do with the sky

[Regez]

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.

[Juergen D]

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

Juergen

[duwayne]

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.

[edgework]

Originally Posted by Regez

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.

[Swampy]

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

[albatrosss]

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.

[edgework]

Originally Posted by albatrosss

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.

[LonK]

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.

[Oh_Heck]

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.

[lurch]

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

[Regez]

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.

[Swampy]

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.

[lurch]

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.

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[Swampy]

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.

[lurch]

. . .select "Use Document Color Profile"

Hey, Swampy, thanks! I'd missed that, and always grumbled because the colors weren't right.

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