More Sky Troubles

Goldeeno · Jun 27, 2007

I wanted to try a B+W barn/building shot, and on the day i take my camera the sky is horrible. Can anyone try and help with doing something with it. Ive had a go but only by changing the layer blending.

Heres the original

And my attempt, just put the layer in "Exclusion", and changed saturation, hue etc.
I love the barn and foreground detail, but i think the sky kills the photo a bit.

The_Traveler · Jun 27, 2007

what this picture needs is a new sky.

B&W is tonality. The existing tones in the sky are so close that they will become a mush in B&W no matter what you do.

Goldeeno · Jun 27, 2007

Enough said, cheers ill know for next time. Thanks

heip · Jun 27, 2007

Goldeeno · Jun 27, 2007

Thats better, but im not so keen on the gainy effect. I should have gone back this evening, the sky was awesome, dammit!
Cheers

photo monkey · Jun 27, 2007

I thought i might try to give you a hand, let me know what you think.

heip · Jun 27, 2007

Nothing better than the real thing! Keep an eye on the sky, and when you nail it please post it here.

Goldeeno · Jun 28, 2007

Oh i will, one day... went back today on the way to work, and the cloud was a sheet.. even worse, grrr

Nice edit photo monkey, its much better, but i preffer my darker contrast, Nice tho.

photo monkey · Jun 28, 2007

Thanks, it a tough sky to work with.

ksmattfish · Jun 28, 2007

"Exclusion" and "difference" blending modes are more about visualizing multiple layers than creating effects for output.

Here's my quick (under 10 min) try...

make new layer
increase saturation on new layer: cyan +20, blue +20
channel mixer on new layer: 100% red channel, grayscale
shadow/highlight tool on new layer: 20% highlights, 50% tonal width, 100 radius
curves on new layer: to taste for sky (don't worry about anything else)
reduce noise: strength 6
make a new layer on top from the color background layer
channel mixer on new layer: 20red/70green/10blue, grayscale
curves to taste for foreground (don't worry about sky)
use masking to combine foreground from newest layer with sky from other BW layer, merge down
burn/dodge various areas of BW layer using selection lasso and curves
make new BW layer
smart sharpen one BW layer: high percentage/low radius
mask together BW layers: sharpened layer for foreground, non sharpened layer for sky
merge down (BW layers only)
unsharp mask BW layer: low percentage/high radius
switch blending mode of BW layer to luminosity
flatten image
increase saturation: +50 cyan, +30 blue, +25 red, +10 yellow

It would look better if I'd worked on a larger file; less noise and posterization in the sky, etc...

And in BW...

channel mixer: 40r/50g/10b
usm: low percentage/high radius

Goldeeno · Jun 29, 2007

Lol, thats awesome, probably how id want the photo to be if anything. Must have taken awhile and for that im greatful!
Cheers

ksmattfish · Jun 29, 2007

Goldeeno said:
Must have taken awhile and for that im greatful!
Cheers

Less than 10 minutes; that's the beauty of Photoshop! Of course if I was working on these for print I would have spent more time on making the masking more precise. For web only display I can get away with fast and sloppy masking.

John_05 · Jun 29, 2007

i had some time to spare, so i figured i would try an edit with the picture too.

i couldnt get the sky exactly how i wanted it so i went a little overboard with the edit, but it wound up looking interesting (to me, anyways), so i figured i would post it anyways.