Fixing dull skies..

divuk83

divuk83

divuk83

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York
Sky is a bit boring in the pic and I was wondering if anyone has any tips on making it a bit more interesting. Was going to be boring and HDR it but there is way to much noise when I do that.

Thanks in advance.

Dave

gtmtbheslingtonweb.jpg
 
Hmm, looks like its completely flat to me, I doubt there's any detail there to bring out.

Personally I don't think theres much you can do with it - but I'm sure someone will come along and prove me wrong!
 
Was it shot in RAW? Can you get the RAW file or a bigger version of the JPEG on high settings linked to?

At first look in PS, it just looks to be a pretty uniform colour, which will make any drastic changes difficult.
 
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Was quite a dull sky unfortunately. Sky was nice and blue this morning but went all crappy as soon as I left the house!
I would tweak the blues a bit but there is blue on the bike so it looks strange when I do that. Was shot in RAW, been cropped a bit, had the birds near the tree cloned out and tweaked the colours a little bit.

Un-edited file straight off the camera.
http://www.divuk83.net/downloads/DSC_0386.NEF

If anyone can make any better I would love to know how to do it.

Cheers in advance.

Dave
 
OK, I've had a play. Things I did - 1) increase contrast and saturation of the image. 2) rendered some clouds in a new layer with a transparancy of 25% (in foreground colour - black) - Filter | Render | Clouds. 3) used a layer mask to remove the clouds from the bottom half of the image. 4) used the paintbrush with a foreground colour of blueish and then greyish on the colour mode (at the top) and an opacity of about 35% to give the rendered clouds some colour. 5) ran it through the noise filter. For both the layer masking and the colouring, I was using the default round brush on a hardness of 0% and a diameter of about 700, to give a decent gradient towards the edges.

Here is the finished product and I did one in B&W too, as I thought it was quite groovy. What do you think?

http://img201.imageshack.us/img201/5103/25270853oo5.jpg

http://img77.imageshack.us/img77/6336/89117873ty6.jpg

I think I've explained everything there, so you can have a go yourself. Ask if I missed something.
 
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I opened it twice in PS, copied an underexposed one (exposed for the sky) onto the proper exposed one and used a layer mask. S'ok for a quick job. Also bumped up the blues in RAW on the underexposed one (for the sky).

dsc0386xa5.jpg
 
Thanks everyone some really useful stuff there. I have installed the raw plug in for cs2 and added some clouds to it as well as tweaking the colours slightly.

I have uploaded it over the original file so its replaced the one in my first post.

Cheers

Dave

This is the old version minus the clouds:

gtmtbheslingtonweb2.jpg
 
robertgilbert86 said:
I've been trying to add a graduated filter in CS2 but I keep failing, I did do a quick google but was wondering if anyone had an action or guide to do it.
Click to expand...

Assuming you have two layers.

- Select the top layer
- Click the 'add layer mask' button
- Select gradient tool
- Make sure your colours are defaulted to b/w (hit 'd')
- Draw your gradient

Or;

- Select top layer
- Hit 'q' to go into quick mask mode
- Draw your gradient (it'll appear as red/transparent)
- Hit 'q' to make the magic happen.

:)
 
Scam said:
snip
Click to expand...
Can't fault that, really. Generally, I use a blank (transparent) layer to do any modifications/gradients/filters/etc on, rather than a copy of the original, as you can then alter the background at will, without changing all of the overlaying copies of it.
 
I did the same when I uploaded it, then pressed F5 and realised they were different after all! Its pretty faint cloud but any darker and it would have gotten a bit too noisy.

Cheers for the tips. :D

Dave
 
Hmn the clouds dont work really. They might if you use a gradient mask to make them dissapear (i.e. go to plain white-ish) towards the ground. But generally as a rule, adding stuff that isnt there will never quite look right unless you're very, very good!
 
divuk83 said:
That looks good. How would I do that (in big simple words please) :D

Cheers

Dave
Click to expand...

BIG WORDS?

Sorry, couldn't resist!

I can only really show how to do it in the GIMP as I don't have photoshop to show with, but I'd imagine it would be very similar...

Anyway, step 1, create a new layer..



Step 2, fill with a graduated fill, from a deeper blue to a slightly lighter blue, then change the layer opacity to 35% (in the layer dialogue above, its the slider near the top)



Step 3, add a layer mask...



Step 4, make it white, full transparency..

 
Step 5, change your back and foreground colours back to black and white. Then, with the layer the layer mask selected, apply another graduated fill of black to white to it, like this...



Step 6, apply the layer mask...



Step 7, save as JPEG, which will automatically flatten the image...

I did actually change the saturation and levels a tiny bit on the layer below with the foreground in, just to bring the green out a little as well, but thats by the by.
 
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