Blown out sky

[Jeremiah Johnson]

I took this on a cloudy day over the weekend, and was wondering if anybody had advice on:

using photoshop to recover the cloudy sky; and

how to avoid this problem in the future. I'm pretty new to all this photography stuff. Okay to edit...

 

[Arch]

It wouldn't be possible to recover this sky, all the colour and detail is gone.... do you shoot in RAW (digital) or are you using film?.....
What you can do in future is to use a polarising filter over the lens... or an ND grad filter. I always slightly underexpose any landscape shot and then bring out the detail and lighten in Photoshop.... to me its the best way of achieving balenced tones throughout.
With this shot, if i really wanted a sky, i would probably replace the sky area completely either with the sky from another shot taken on the same day, or a sky from a different shot completely..... luckely tho i dont think the sky takes too much away from this image as most of the frame is filled by the action in foreground :thumbup:

 

[Jeremiah Johnson]

No, my camera doesn't shoot in RAW, it's a jpeg. Thanks for the advice. Underexposing sounds like the way to go next time.

 

[slickhare]

as said before, a polarizing filter could correct this when shooting. if you're doing a lot of outdoor shots i highly recommend one. i have the same problem when i shoot outdoors. it's quite frustrating actually.

 

[Onyx]

ive never seen a camera that only shoots in jpeg that can use a filter. maybe some high end point and shoots but this is to be expected when you want detail in the dark rock. cameras dont have the dynamic range to epose shadows and highlights so they are both detailed.

 

[Philip Weir]

If you shot on film [tranny] you might be able to recover the sky detail by doing two scans and stripping the sky in in Photoshop [not difficult], but the extemes between highlight & shadow are too great for a single exposure on digital. I don't believe a polaroid filter would help as it was a dull day. Suggest as another post mentioned, try to strip in another sky. Philip. www.philipweirphotography.com

 

[Big Mike]

The exposure on the rocks/climber is good...and the light value of that is much lower than that of the sky. It would be very hard to get both properly exposed in one shot.

One way to get around this would be to take two shots. One for the sky and one for the rest of the shot. Then combine the shots with Photoshop (or whatever).

 

[castrol]

ive never seen a camera that only shoots in jpeg that can use a filter. maybe some high end point and shoots but this is to be expected when you want detail in the dark rock. cameras dont have the dynamic range to epose shadows and highlights so they are both detailed.

Quite a number of the PnS cameras have barrels that you can attach over
the lens to add any number of accessories. Wide angle lenses, filters and such.

I had one, but it just wouldn't do what I wanted it to do. It is possible though.

 

[Jeff Canes]

Well you could add some blue to the sky in PS with a guaranteed blue filter (rotated) or on another layer add some blue, also have you tried adjusting the Layers that should help enrich the colors some? Also IMO a white sky looks OK in B&W.

 

[bowronfam3]

Hey...here's my try at editing it...hope you like it!

 

[Dave_D]

take two shots. expose for the sky detail in one and your subject detail in the other then pick any method you want in PS to mix and match the two.

 

[Kevin D Burns]

Paint shop pro 9, dropper tool took color from as close as possible to the mountain then used flood fill at 23%. to finish I clarified the image.
I only use paint Shop pro. Time took me all but 20 sec's.

The best way to avoid this problem is to set the EV control to a -07 or lower, depending on the camera used. my Minolta's around -7EV, my Nikons around -05EV see what I am saying.

 

[2Stupid2Duck]

Most digital SLRs also bracket - which means you get three shots. Normal exposure and + or - .7 (or even a whole stop).

 

[Fate]

K, what ive done is added a new sky all together... i always have a problem with blown out sky.. which is why i like shooting black and white lol... so i found one of my skys from a few weeks ago. I did it real quick.. so the join is a bit crap.. but you get the idea lol.

 

[Kevin D Burns]

The B&W is not working for me, with this subject. I would like to see a color version. The tree tops look great in the sky but the mountains look almost negative. The cliff also lost texture from the darkness of the conversion.