Evening out Blue Skies

[Bro.Luke]

Hi,
I frequently run into a color shift in skies and struggle to even them out. I often abuse the polaraizer but have been using that for less sky shots but still find a color shift when at 90° from the sun. Seems worse at sunset/sunrise.

I shoot a Nikon D300 and have taken to NX2 although I have PSCS3 and LR at hand as well.

Luckily I've noticed this even in some real pros works so maybe I'm being over critical.

Here's the latest one that bugging me though: (in all honesty this one probably had the polarizer on as I bracketed with and with out but the breeze was worse than I thought and out of 12 shots only this one was still enough for my liking).

Thanks,

Warren

[bill t.]

The gradation is not objectionable IMHO.

Don't like polarizers, most of the time you're at the wrong angle, they just make things worse.

However...over on the pretty blue right hand side, take foreground/background color samples for the lightest and darkest blues.  Select only the sky areas.  Make a new layer over this image, use the selection to create a mask on that new layer.  One the new layer create a gradation with your two sampled blues.  Play with the transparency on the gradation.  Blur the mask if you need to.  Maybe pile up multiple gradations on the gradation layer at slightly different angles at low transparency, maybe slightly modify the shades of blue on each of these.  Maybe just borrow a different sky from another photo.  In Photoshop, anything is possible.

[Panopeeper]

The image looks a bit too bright; it is possible, that the sky was partially overexposed.

Was it raw or JPEG?

[Bro.Luke]

Thanks!

yea polarizers can be a hassle but can really saturate foliage so I try to use it and that's part of my bracket scenario.

This image was shot RAW as I do 100%. It was optimized and printed on Epson Enhanced Matte paper so needs to be a bit brighter I've found.

Speaking of exposures I am sure learnign to disregard any advantage so PP and trying real hard to nail it live. I don't seem to have the skill to get an image 1 stop +/- to look as good as a nailed one!

Still learning....FOR SURE!

Here's the latest! It's all about the light! A storm was starting to bear down and I walked out front and saw this...I'm afraid I can't quite capture the wild colors. The the right the sky is black with storm and the sun just down to the left and a small window of bounced light caused an interesting orange glow for a few seconds...

Thanks again,

Warren

BTW optimized for EEMPaper so it's a bit different in print..

W

[Richowens]

Warren,

 Nothing says the photo must be rectangular.

[attachment=7332:attachment]

 Rich

[Bro.Luke]

Warren,

 Nothing says the photo must be rectangular.

[attachment=7332:attachment]

 Rich

Oh but those ocotillo's rising up like snakes in the sky are what make the image for me!

Recently I've been drawn to views of real confusing scattered things. Previously I was more into straight square ordered architecture..

I recently scavended a bunch of my old photo school matts and recall most of my best work was with a Hassy and Rollei and loved the square! I actually have about 20 left that could be filled with some squares but I don't find myself cropping too much latly...helsp add to the chaos!

Thanks!

Warren

[Panopeeper]

Speaking of exposures I am sure learnign to disregard any advantage so PP and trying real hard to nail it live. I don't seem to have the skill to get an image 1 stop +/- to look as good as a nailed one!

Why don't you upload the raw file (yousendit.com), and we can take a close look at it. Raw processors are fooling the users about the true exposure.

[Chris_Brown]

I frequently run into a color shift in skies and struggle to even them out. I often abuse the polaraizer but have been using that for less sky shots but still find a color shift when at 90° from the sun. Seems worse at sunset/sunrise.[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=205164\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Polarizers only work on a portion of the sky where the light is reflected at 90˚ from the sun. If you use a short telephoto lens (or longer) you will not see the gradation in the sky. If you use a wide angle lens (35mm and shorter in my experience) you will see the sky gradate between light blue and dark blue because the lens is seeing beyond the area affected by the polarizer. It's completely normal, but the best fix for it is to forget about the polarizer (thus having an even hue & saturation throughout the sky) and enhance your sky in post.

[Mark D Segal]

Hi,
I frequently run into a color shift in skies and struggle to even them out. I often abuse the polaraizer but have been using that for less sky shots but still find a color shift when at 90° from the sun. Seems worse at sunset/sunrise.

I shoot a Nikon D300 and have taken to NX2 although I have PSCS3 and LR at hand as well.

Luckily I've noticed this even in some real pros works so maybe I'm being over critical.

Here's the latest one that bugging me though: (in all honesty this one probably had the polarizer on as I bracketed with and with out but the breeze was worse than I thought and out of 12 shots only this one was still enough for my liking).

Thanks,

Warren


[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=205164\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

You can adjust the colour and tone of the sky quite substantially in Camera Raw (or LR, same idea) using the controls for Blue in the HSL tab. If that doesn't do it for you, in Photoshop, you can isolate the sky by creating a mask to protect all but the sky, then re-create the sky with two sky layers : one darker and the other lighter, the upper one one of which has a gradient on a layer mask making the transition between the two such that the sky darkens from the horizon upward. When creating the sky layers you would of course select the exact hues and brightnesses you want for the sky in each layer.

(clarified July 5th AM)

[BernardLanguillier]

Litteraly 30 seconds work with NX2...



Just create one control point in the darker area of the sky and increase the brightness. You got to love U point technology.

Cheers,
Bernard

[Tim Lookingbill]

The mask technique would probably be better to get an even linear gradation from the top to the horizon. Not sure why the gradation goes from the top upper right diagonally to lower left horizon unless the lighter cyan-ish left portion of the sky was caused by some haze.

I did a quick fix assigning sRGB using Replace Color in PS 7 by first clicking on the cyan portion next to the thin branches and applying these numbers:

Fuzz...+80
Hue...+11
Sat...-15
Light...+30

Adjust each according to taste of course on a 16bit tiff to get an even gradation without posterization.

[attachment=7340:attachment]