PhotographyBB Online Magazine
Photo Retouching Tricks TECHNIQUES, TIPS, AND TRICKS FOR POST PROCESSING DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHS
BLUE SKIES SMILING AT ME! - By Tom Crosman Deep blue skies grab more attention than pale blue dismal looking skies. Most everyone knows that using a circular polarizer filter increases color saturation and makes skies appear a deeper blue. There are also some other simple ways to make skies a richer blue. One technique is to use a graduated neutral density filter which darkens the sky; however, sometimes ND grad filters can darken other areas such as mountainous landscapes, which of course is undesirable. Another in-camera technique besides the polarizer is to underexpose the sky.
Since the sky is typically one of the brightest areas of an image, the question becomes, how can we underexpose the sky without making the rest of the image underexposed as well? Use a flash to light the subject. This technique won’t work for all shots but can be useful for images where you have a subject close to the camera and a lot of sky in the background. Adjust the exposure so the subject is properly exposed and the sky naturally becomes deeper blue. In the first image shown here, I used the on-camera flash to light the tree trunk on the left. You can simulate underexposing the sky in Adobe Camera Raw quite easily by lowering the luminescence of the blue channel. This technique works best with images where the sky and its reflections are the only blue in the image. Here is an example of the tab in Adobe Camera Raw for making this adjustment. Our next example will demonstrate a similar technique with a small twist. Shown here is a raw image with the ACR default adjustments.
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(See next page for processing adjustments)