Most interesting to me is the late comment by opgr, suggesting an adjustment of white balance in addition to darkening blue with HSL. I tried that and was amazed how the WB adjustment can actually change the white halos to black.
I did two ACR conversions, one normal, and one with a very bizzare and heavy handed darkening of blues with a WB that made dark halos. I layered the bizzare version on top of the normal one, changed it's blend mode to multiply or darken, then lowered its opacity until I got a sky and leaves I liked. That destroyed the rest of the image, but adding a simple channel mask easily fixed that. I just used a quickly tweaked blue channel from the normal conversion. I encourage others to play with that technique and see what you think.
Hi,
Okay, in the category of extremely out of the box thinking:
1. Do a regular Raw conversion,
2. Create a duplicate layer, with Darker Color Blending mode
3. On that layer, apply a Topaz Black and White Effects filtering with the following settings:
3.1 Reset everything
3.2 Go to 3.Local Adjustments and select the Color adjustment type and the Color brush
3.3 Use a large brush and maximum Opacity and Hardness, with zero Edge Awareness
3.4 Now brush over the entire image, which replaces the B/W conversion with the original color
3.5 Now go to the 1. Conversion panel and only select the color filter
3.6 Select a yellow hue and a high strength which darkens the blue of the sky and brightens the leaves
3.7 Click OK to apply the filter.
Now you can adjust the opacity a bit, or play with the Blend-if layer blending options, and apply a coarse mask to avoid blue land-based colors from being affected.
Cheers,
Bart
P.S. A similar effect can be achieved within Photoshop. Create A duplicate layer in Luminosity Blending mode. Convert it to Black and White where you pull the blues and push the yellows and greens. Now create a composite layer with a Darker color blending mode, and eliminate the B/W conversion layer. Voila!