White Skies

Suzumushi

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Jun 15, 2008
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Location
For now, Kyoto Japan
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picasaweb.google.com
Can others edit my Photos
Photos OK to edit
Many of my outdoor pictures come out with bright white skies. I know the easy answer is to look for better lighting conditions when taking the picture, but is there anything I can do in photoshop to fix this? The camera is an old P&S which is probably part of the problem.

Here's an example:

DSCF0210-web.jpg
 
What you could do in Photoshop would be to use the sky from a different picture, and paste this on top of it.
 
select color range of sky and darken/change color or select the sky and darken/recolor
 
real quick edit with color range tool and color replace, taking more time and attention to detail would improve it.
DSCF0210-web2.jpg
 
again someone else who lives in a place with cool looking architecture. I live where rich people buy KIT Homes...."I"ll take the 600,000 one).
 
Shoot at a better time of day if you can. Dial in some negative exposure compensation if you can to reel the sky back in. It may shadow the building a bit, but you can pull shadow details up right in the cameras on Nikons, or later with photo editing tools. Or use a grad ND filter of about 2-stops and you might not need to do a thing. Everybody is all about shooting RAW, doing HDR, yadda yadda, and nobody thinks about grad ND filters anymore. I use them all the time. A circular polarizer might help too.

Or shoot film, which is what I've been doing lately. :mrgreen: Depends on the film you're using, but negative print film commonly has a huge shoulder for highlight control which helps prevent the sky blowing out to pure white like it does all the time on digital. In nearly 30,000 DSLR photos not once have I ever seen a lighter pale blue sky and very light clouds like in this photo.

Nikon F100 with Fuji Superia 400 Xtra print film.

47980011-vi.jpg


That was taken mid-day, the worst possible time for any scenic shooting with very harsh light, and NO circular polarizer or grad ND filter, and film handled it in my newbie hands just fine. On digital it would have either blown out the sky to pure white, or I would have had to dial in so much negative exposure compensation that the trees would all be shadowed and dark. The proper "photographic" solution is a grad ND filter or a circular polarizer though.
 

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