The post 3 Simple Steps to Make Your Skies Pop in Lightroom appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Jim Hamel.
You photograph a scene that includes a beautiful blue sky with puffy white clouds. You’re excited – until you look down at your LCD, only to see that the sky your camera captured is not what you see in front of you. It’s washed out. It has little or no detail. It looks overexposed, colorless, and really, really boring. So what do you do?
Here’s the good news:
You can fix this problem both quickly and easily in Lightroom. And you don’t need to be a post-processing wizard to make it happen.
In fact, there are three editing steps you can use to make your daytime skies pop. Each step is dead simple, and you can do just one of the steps, or you can do all three together.
Even if your sky already looks pretty good, these steps will help! Here’s a teaser of what it’ll do for your photos (with the unedited photo on the left and the edited photo on the right):
So if you’re ready to improve your skies in Lightroom, then let’s get started!
1. Darken the blues
Here’s the first step to enhancing a sky:
Darkening the blues.
This is simple to do in the HSL/Color panel in Lightroom’s Develop module. You’ll see a number of sliders that control individual colors – and you can adjust the hue, saturation, and luminance (brightness) of each color.
So find the Blue slider. Remember, the goal is to reduce the brightness of just the blue tones.
Then click on Luminance:
And pull the Blue slider to the left.
How much should you adjust the Blue slider? Honestly, there’s no set amount or range of values for this change; it’ll just depend on each picture. But I don’t recommend making the blues too dark (otherwise, the sky will start to look unnatural).
Once you’ve made your Luminance adjustment, you may want to add more punch to the blues. So click on Saturation and push the Blue slider to the right. This will intensify the blues even further and give your luminance adjustment more bite.
By now, you should see a dramatic improvement in your sky. Sometimes, adjusting the blues is all you need to do!
Note: As mentioned above, be careful not to go too far. Adjusting the blues too heavily can cause banding (i.e., separation of the colors into stripes) and other forms of image degradation.
2. Control the highlights
You may be wondering:
Why didn’t we start by toning down the highlights? After all, that would handle a lot of the washed-out areas of the sky.
The truth is that part of what makes a sky look great is deep, rich, blue tones combined with bright white clouds. If you crank down the highlights, yes, you will add detail to the clouds – but you will push the tones of the blues and whites together so that there won’t be the strong contrast you want.
That’s why we started by darkening the blue tones.
By the way, after darkening the blues, take a careful look at your photo. If there is sufficient detail in the clouds, you don’t need to recover the bright areas further. In fact, you may even want to increase the Whites or the Highlights to create more contrast between the blue sky and the white clouds.
Other times, however, your sky will still be too bright and the clouds will lack detail (even after adjusting the blues). If that’s the case for your photo, it’s time to tone down the brightest portions of the image by pulling down the highlights.
Here, you want to add detail to the sky, but not so much that your clouds turn gray. Let the histogram be your guide. Pull the Highlights slider to the left until there are no histogram peaks pressing up against the right-hand side of the graph.
Ideally, you’ll get an effect like this:
3. Add a blue tint to the sky
At this point, your sky should be looking very good. In fact, in most cases, the two steps shared above should be all you need to make your sky pop.
If you have a particularly flat and lifeless sky, however, you may want to bring out the big guns: adding a tint.
To do this, you’ll need the Adjustment Brush. (By the way, you can use the Adjustment Brush for either of the two steps above, but you usually won’t need to.)
So click on the Adjustment Brush icon:
Then find the Temp slider and drag it to the left. This will increase the amount of blue in the image – but only in places you paint with your brush.
Before you paint on the sky, there is one important thing you need to do:
Make sure the Auto Mask box at the bottom of the Adjustment Brush panel is checked. This will limit the brush to the sky so that it doesn’t bleed over into midground or foreground objects. Once Auto Mask is checked, go ahead and brush in the effect!
After you’ve brushed the relevant areas of the photo, you can always increase or decrease the blue tint by moving the Temp slider. You’ll end up with a beautiful blue sky!
When should you adjust your sky with Lightroom?
You can do a lot to enhance a sky in Lightroom.
But the old adage about getting it right in-camera still applies. Try to get your sky looking as good as possible in the field with proper exposure techniques. And if you have a polarizing filter, consider using it; the effect will make a midday sky look much better. You might also work with a graduated neutral density filter to tone down the sky and help balance it with the foreground.
Sometimes, with the proper techniques, you won’t even need Lightroom to improve a sky. But there will also be times when you just can’t get it looking right, or you make a mistake in the field (e.g., you accidentally overexpose the sky).
And that’s when you’ll want to use the steps I’ve discussed above.
So the next time your sky isn’t looking its best, try using Lightroom to achieve the effect you’re after. Follow the three steps I shared – alongside your normal workflow – to create breathtaking skies!
Enhancing skies in Lightroom: final words
Lightroom offers some powerful sky enhancement tools – and now that you’ve finished this article, you know how to use them for great results.
So find some photos that include washed-out skies. And practice improving them with Lightroom! Pretty soon, you’ll be a sky-editing master.
The post 3 Simple Steps to Make Your Skies Pop in Lightroom appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Jim Hamel.
The post 6 Tips for Capturing Dramatic Skies in your Landscape Photography appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Hillary Grigonis.
Don’t let the “land” in landscape photography fool you; a great landscape photo relies just as much on the sky as the land. Boring gray skies make for boring landscape photos, after all!
That said, capturing a dramatic sky in-camera is trickier than it seems. When the sky is lighter than the land, your camera will typically overexpose it, turning a brilliant blue into a vague and unexciting gray or white.
But with a little fine-tuning, it is possible to capture a sky that is the cherry on top of a great scene! Here are six tips for capturing more dramatic skies in your landscape photography.
1. Time it right
Landscape photography may not require the split-second timing that’s necessary for capturing a toddler’s smile or a wide receiver’s catch, but timing is still a big part of the picture. The sky that’s gray one day could be bright blue the next. So when planning out a landscape photo, consider how the timing will impact the sky.
Watch for weather patterns that add interest to a shot, like a storm brewing just above the horizon. Weather plays a big role in the overall mood of the image – so if you’re hoping to capture a dark and gloomy shot, head out when the sky is stormy.
On the other hand, if you’re hoping to capture a more relaxed or happy photo, look for blue skies dotted with clouds.
The time of day matters, too. While the middle of the day will produce the most shadows on the land, it’s when the sky tends to be the clearest blue. And just after sunset and just before sunrise is often a good time to capture wispy clouds and a warmer tint of light.
Of course, sunrise and sunset is great for dramatic skies, as well.
2. Try the wrong white balance
Photography rules are sometimes meant to be broken, including rules about always using the correct white balance.
You see, the wrong white balance setting can create a more dramatic sky. This is especially true when shooting toward the beginning or end of the day – using a different white balance preset will adjust the color in the sky.
Auto, Cloudy, and Shade white balance presets will get you an orangish sunset with a light blue sky (with slight variations in warmth depending on the setting you choose). A florescent setting, on the other hand, will typically turn an orange sunset purple with a brilliant blue sky. Tungsten offers a similar effect, but with even deeper colors.
Using Kelvin temperatures to adjust your white balance results in even greater control over the colors in the sky. At around 5500K, you’ll usually capture a sunny sky with an accurate white balance – that is, where things that are white are still white in the picture, and where things that are gray are still gray in the picture.
A higher temperature – 6500K, for example – will give the land an orange glow but also enhance the colors in a sunset. A cooler temperature, on the other hand (e.g., 3000K), will play up the blues and purples. By using the Kelvin scale, you have more options for picking a white balance setting that best captures the colors in your photos.
Here, the white balance was altered in post-processing to warm up the sky.
While it’s always best to get the shot right in-camera, shooting in RAW offers you even more flexibility when it comes to adjusting the colors in the sky (and the rest of the image, for that matter).
If you overdid things by making the shot too warm or too cool, you can easily adjust a RAW photo in post-processing, so that you use the color temperature that best fits the image. If you have a landscape photo that you already shot in RAW, open it and try different white balance presets, or the temperature slider, to see first-hand how shooting with a different white balance would have impacted the shot.
3. Compose for the sky
When the sky is more dramatic than the land, why not use that to determine your composition?
Pay attention to where you place the horizon when you are composing your shot. Use the rule of thirds to imagine the image is divided into threes, then place the horizon on one of those horizontal lines. If you are shooting a photo with an average-looking sky, try placing the horizon on the upper third of the image, so more of the land is included in the photo, like this:
As the sky here isn’t very dramatic, the higher placement of the horizon improves the composition.
But if the sky is really dramatic, take advantage of that and include more of it in the frame – by placing the horizon on the lower third:
The sky here is dramatic, so the image was composed to show less ground and more sky.
4. Use a filter
There are two filters every landscape photographer should have in their camera bag in order to capture more dramatic skies.
The first is a graduated neutral density filter. Now, a regular neutral density filter is like putting sunglasses over your lens – it limits the light coming in for bright scenes or long exposures. But a graduated neutral density filter places that darkening effect only on a portion of the image. And by positioning the dark portion of the filter over a bright sky, you can properly expose the entire scene.
Without a graduated neutral density filter, the sky will often be overexposed and bland, or the land will be underexposed and dark. With the filter, you can achieve an exposure that works for both portions of the scene. The only downside is that graduated neutral density filters don’t work as well with an uneven horizon, like when shooting a cityscape. Graduated neutral density filters come in both circular and square formats, but the square is often preferred because you can place the horizon anywhere in the frame.
The second filter landscape photographers should use to capture more dramatic skies is a polarizing filter. Polarizing filters work by adjusting the reflected light coming through your camera lens. Since the sky is blue because of this reflected light, turning the front of the polarizing filter will adjust the intensity of the blues in the sky. Since polarizing filters only affect reflected light, they can still be used when mountains or buildings make the horizon uneven. Polarizing filters are also great for enhancing or removing reflections on water or other shiny surfaces.
5. Experiment with motion blur and long exposures
Long exposures aren’t just for photographing waterfalls. If you use a long enough shutter speed, the clouds will blur, too, creating a sky of wispy streaks and a slight feeling of motion.
To capture motion blur in the clouds, you’ll need to use a long shutter speed. The best settings will depend a bit on the weather and how much motion blur you’d like, but you can try starting with a two-minute exposure and adjust up or down from there.
If you are shooting during the day, you may not be able to balance out a two-minute exposure with a narrow-enough aperture or a low-enough ISO; instead, you’ll end up with a photo that’s way too bright.
So how do photographers capture motion blur in the clouds when the photo obviously wasn’t taken at dusk or dawn?
They use a neutral density filter – which helps block out some of the light so that you can set a long exposure during the day.
(Note that a neutral density filter is the same thing as a graduated neutral density filter, but the entire filter is dark instead of just half of the filter).
6. Use the Adobe Camera RAW Graduated Filter tool
While it’s always best to get the shot right in-camera, there are a few editing tools that can improve the sky in your landscape photos. One of those tools is the Graduated Filter inside Adobe Camera RAW (this works the same in Photoshop and Lightroom).
With the Graduated Filter, you can drag an effect over the sky in your photo. Like an actual graduated filter, the effect will only cover the top portion of the image and gradually fade away, making it possible to create natural-looking edits.
The Graduated Filter tool can be used to adjust the exposure, creating an effect much like an actual graduated neutral density filter. But the tool can also adjust contrast, saturation, clarity, sharpness, and color. That opens up a lot of possibilities for applying edits just to the sky for more drama – creating effects that sometimes can’t be done in-camera.
This is the original photo.
This is the same photo, but with a Graduated Filter used on the sky to increase the drama.
Capturing dramatic skies in your landscape photos: conclusion
The sky can make or break a landscape photo. From timing and composition to filters and post-processing, when you consider the sky as you shoot, you’ll end up with more dramatic, frame-worthy shots.
Do you have any other tips for creating dramatic skies in your landscape photography? Share them in the comments!
The post 6 Tips for Capturing Dramatic Skies in your Landscape Photography appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Hillary Grigonis.
The post S’cuse Me While I Tweak the Sky: Tips for Dramatic Skies in Your Photos appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Rick Ohnsman.
Singing “Home on the Range,“ a cowboy might picture the perfect place where “the skies are not cloudy all day.”
A cloudless day might appeal to many people, but not to landscape photographers.
The so-called “bluebird day” generally makes for poor landscape photographs with a boring, featureless sky. Maybe you’ve also heard this: “When the weather gets bad, the photos get good.”
So what do you do when Mother Nature gives you few or no clouds to work with? Let’s look at some tips for dramatic skies.
There’s a good sky here, but it’s going to take some coaxing to bring it out. Canon 6D | Canon EF 24-105 f/4 | 1/4 sec | f/18 | ISO 200
In camera
If there are no clouds at all to work with, your options while shooting are pretty limited. You may want to compose your shot so that there is little, if any, sky. However, if you have even a few clouds to work with, here are some ways to make the most of them:
Use a polarizing filter
Polarizing filter effectiveness depends on the angle of your shot in relation to the angle of the sun. The strongest effect is with the sun 90 degrees to the direction your camera is pointing; you get varying degrees of effectiveness at other angles.
Look through the viewfinder, rotate the polarizer, and watch as the contrast between the sky and clouds changes. Sometimes this will be very dramatic, especially with white puffy clouds on a blue sky.
Adjust to your taste, backing off a bit if needed. There is such a thing as too much, however, so remember:
What you do with a polarizer when making the shot can’t easily be undone later in post-processing. Be careful when using a polarizing filter in combination with a wide-angle lens. Parts of the sky may darken more than others across the shot, giving an unusual look you probably won’t like, one that is tough to fix later.
A wide-angle lens (this shot was made at 17mm) plus a polarizer can be a bad combination. Note how the sky is darker in some places than others. This would have been better without the polarizer.
Use a graduated neutral density (GND) filter
Landscape photographers often deal with a wide dynamic range between a bright sky and a much darker foreground. Should you expose for the sky or the land, the highlights or the shadows?
A graduated ND filter that goes from a darker density at the top to clear at the bottom can help even out the exposure. The advent of digital editing tools that emulate this in editing has caused many photographers to dispense with using these filters.
One advantage to working without a GND is that you can change your mind later if you don’t want a GND effect. You can also better deal with scenes where the horizon isn’t perfectly straight across. Still, some photographers favor the traditional graduated ND filter in certain circumstances.
Bracket
Rather than use a graduated ND filter in the field to even-out a composition with a bright sky and dark foreground, take multiple bracketed shots while varying the shutter speed (but not the aperture).
Many cameras have this feature built-in, so you can make a series of bracketed shots with one press of the shutter button. Having a series of the same shot taken at varied exposures will give you the raw materials for some of the editing techniques we’re about to explore.
In edit
Sometimes you are able to capture an image that has clouds in the scene, but they are underwhelming and need some editing help to give them extra pizzazz. Let’s look at some tips for dramatic skies using standard editing techniques.
Basic sky editing
Lightroom is usually my editor of choice, and so the techniques I’ll mention next will use it as a reference. The concepts should translate fine to other editors, however, so if you grasp the ideas you’ll be able to implement the same changes, whether you use Capture One, ON1 Photo RAW, ACDSee, or something else.
Whatever you’re photographing, work to keep your exposure “in-bounds.” That is to say: Don’t blow out the highlights on the right side of the histogram or block up the shadows pushing them past the left side of the histogram. Whether working with a dark or light shot, or maybe an image with both light and dark extremes, if the entire histogram is “between the goalposts,” then you have an image that is workable.
That said, whenever possible, use the ETTR (expose-to-the-right) method. If you are not familiar with this, I suggest you read up on it. The greatest amount of data in a photo file is in the brighter tones. If you have a bright sky (and are trying to get some detail in the clouds) combined with a darker foreground, it is better to have to darken the image while editing. You can purposely expose for the highlights and get the sky correct in-camera, but then you may be later faced with trying to brighten up the shadows. A cleaner, less noisy image will result if you have to later bring down the highlights rather than if you drag up dark shadows “out of the mud.”
Also, we are talking about editing a RAW file, not a JPEG. If you are still shooting JPEGs then you have already limited what you can recover. If you don’t shoot RAW images, I suggest you stop here, learn why and how to shoot and work with RAW files, and then come back.
It’s maybe harsh, but if you want to be a more skilled editor and do things like recover cloudy skies, then learning how to work with RAW files is a prerequisite. ‘Nuff said.
Here is my standard workflow in Lightroom for just about any image. If there are clouds in the shot, it’s Step One that brings them alive.
Adjust the exposure slider. Don’t worry too much about making it just right. you’ll fine-tune again later.
Bring down the highlights. How much? Look at your image and watch the histogram as you work.
Open up the shadows. Move the slider to the right. Watch the image and the istogram.
Set your white point. There are several ways to do this. I like this method: Hold down the Alt key (Option on Mac). Click and hold the Whites slider. The image will turn black. Now while holding the key and the mouse button down, slowly move the slider to the right until you see a few specks of white on the image. Slide back left a bit if necessary. What you’re doing is making the points that you should into the brightest (whitest) points in the image. They will set the extreme right point on the histogram.
Set your black point. This technique is the same: Holding down the Alt/Option key, click the Blacks slider, hold, and drag left. The screen will go white until you reach a point where some black specks appear. I sometimes find I will allow a few more black specks (totally black) points to affect an image than white points, but that depends on the image.
Re-adjust your exposure and contrast. You may need to go back now and re-adjust your Exposure slider a bit and/or adjust the Contrast slider.
With just some basic Lightroom editing, the clouds look better already. Canon 6D | Canon EF 24-105 f/4 | 1/4 sec | f/18 | ISO 200
How much to adjust any of the sliders will depend on the image. In general, this simple workflow will get your image “in the ballpark” and likely help start bringing out detail in the sky.
You may want to move onto other global adjustments like Texture, Clarity, Dehaze, Vibrance, and Saturation, because you can adjust those to your taste. If, however, your sky needs special help, it’s time for some local adjustments.
Going local
It’s quite possible your sky will need some local adjustments to give it the look you seek. If you’re not familiar with Lightroom’s local adjustment tools and techniques, DPS writer Andrew S. Gibson has written a good article on that subject.
I will add a couple of things to try when using Lightroom’s local adjustment tools to help accentuate your sky and clouds:
Try the Range Masking tools to better select your sky. Used in combination with the Graduated Filter, the Radial Filter, and the Adjustment Brush, you’ll be able to apply your effects where you want them and not where you don’t.
Try using the Clarity and Dehaze sliders when seeking to tune the sky to achieve the look you want. Go easy, though. It’s easy to go way overboard, especially with the Dehaze slider.
Combine a Graduated Filter with the Luminance Range Mask in Lightroom to select the sky. Then use the sliders to get the look you seek.Now we’re talking! Compare this to the original image at the top of the article. Canon 6D | Canon EF 24-105 f/4 | 1/4 sec | f/18 | ISO 200
Multiple shots: HDR in Lightroom
I mentioned bracketing your shots while shooting high dynamic range subjects, such as with the bright-sky/dark-land combination you may often encounter.
When editing, having multiple bracketed images to work with will offer all kinds of possibilities. One of them is the ability to do HDR (high dynamic range) work within Lightroom. This is a whole lesson unto itself, and I suggest you learn it.
5 bracketed images are merged into a single HDR photo in Lightroom.
After producing an HDR image from multiple images merged in Lightroom, you’ll have a 32-bit file to work with, rather than the standard 24-bit single image files you are accustomed to dealing with.
The image will now have 10 stops of exposure adjustment (the Lightroom Exposure slider will go from a +/- 5 range to a +/- 10 range).
Make your bracketed shots so the darkest image captures all the bright sky detail and the brightest image picks up all the shadow detail. Combined into a single 32-bit HDR DNG image in Lightroom, you’ll have lots of adjustment possibilities to get a just-right exposure with good sky detail.
The 32-bit DNG file created after a merge-to-HDR routine in Lightroom gives a much larger exposure range to work with.
Moving to Photoshop
You can do a lot in Lightroom, but sometimes you need more control and more power. One of the things Photoshop offers that Lightroom doesn’t is layers. Here are some tips for dramatic skies using Photoshop for editing.
Blending
You will need at least two shots with different exposures for this technique. Let’s outline a very simple approach.
(You will need to use layers and masks in Photoshop, so if you’re not familiar with those, here’s your chance to learn.)
This will work best if you shoot from a tripod so your images are identical except for exposure. Shoot at least two shots, one exposed to capture all the bright details in the sky, the other exposed for the darker areas of the land.
If you’re coming from Lightroom, highlight both images, then click Photo>Edit In>Open as Layers in Photoshop. Have the lighter image on top.
To be sure the images are sized and aligned perfectly, select both layers in Photoshop (F7 turns on the layers palette), click the first layer, hold down Shift and click the second layer, and then from the top menu click Edit>Auto-Align Layers>OK.
Create a mask on the top layer. (With the top layer selected, click the Add Layer Mask icon, which looks like a rectangle with a circle in it).
Use the Brush Tool with the color set to Black. Click on the mask you just created. Now paint over the sky. As you do, you will reveal the darker sky layer underneath. Adjusting brush size, opacity, and brush softness will help you better control things.
One shot exposed for the sky, the other for the land. I then layered, aligned, and blended using a mask in Photoshop. Canon 6D | Canon EF 24-105 f/4
The multi-layer masking approach can also work well if you use Photoshop selections to choose what you will keep from one layer and use from the other layer. Selection techniques can be simple or very complex in Photoshop, depending on how complex a selection you need to make. I will point you to a good entry point for further study: this article by DPS writer Yacine Bessekhouad.
Here’s a different technique to try when you have a blue sky and not much additional blue in your shot. Use the Lightroom targeted adjustment tool in the HSL/Color panel to bring down the luminance level of the blue. You can go even further with a monochrome conversion. The look is similar to having used a polarizing filter.
Do some multiplying
Perhaps you only made one shot, didn’t bracket and, despite some of your editing techniques, the sky and clouds still seem a little wimpy. Never fear.
Here’s something else to in Photoshop:
Make a duplicate of the layer. (Ctrl/Cmd + J.) You will have two duplicate layers on top of each other.
Duplicate that copy again so you now have three duplicate copies. Temporarily turn off the bottommost layer (probably labeled “Background”) by clicking the eyeball icon.
Now, change the blend mode to Multiply. The detail and contrast in the clouds should be amplified.
Duplicate again for further amplification.
Repeat with additional duplicates; hit Ctrl/Cmd + J as desired to keep duplicating. until the sky turns the way you’d like. Don’t worry about the foreground just yet.
To reduce the duplicates into one layer, merge the visible layers: Layer>Merge Visible (or Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + E).
You will now have just two layers, the merged layers and the background layer. Turn the Background layer back on by clicking the eyeball again.
You will now need to use one of the selection and masking techniques to mask out (“erase”) the probably over-darkened land/foreground portion of the top layer.
Here I brought the shot into Photoshop, made a duplicate, and then applied the Multiply blend mode to the top layer. Bringing back the darker portion was easy here with a straight horizon line. This look is similar to what you might get with a traditional glass graduated ND filter.
S’cuse me while I switch the sky
In the rock classic “Purple Haze,” Jimi Hendrix sang, “S’cuse me while I kiss the sky.” Some people later thought the lyrics to be “kiss this guy;” that’s called a misheard song lyric or mondegreen. A website is devoted to them. As a photographer, I prefer to sing my own version: “S’cuse me while I switch the sky.”
Could this sky be any more boring? Let’s help it. Canon 6D | Canon EF 24-105 f/4 | 1/60 sec | f/8 | ISO 100
Sometimes when there’s no clouds at all, or a plain blue sky, a plain gray overcast sky, or maybe you blew out the sky and there’s nothing to recover, you’re left with no alternative. A sky replacement is needed.
Other times, you just want a different sky for a more dramatic effect.
Whatever the case, substituting skies is a great way to get some nice images and a really great way to polish your editing skills.
Now here’s a nice sunset. Let’s work a piece of this in. Canon 6D | Canon EF 24-105 f/4 | f/11 | ISO 200
With Photoshop
Put the clouds layer on top, then use a black brush on a white mask and paint to reveal the lower beach area again.Back in Lightroom for some more fine-tuning. Isn’t this a much nicer image than the original?
Sometimes sky replacement is an easy task, such as when you have a flat horizon or perhaps a hard-edged building against the sky.
Of course, if you have trees with leaves or intricate details to select, it can be much more challenging.
Some might have called this a perfect day when this historic train rolled into the Boise (Idaho) Union Pacific Depot. Not a cloud in the sky. Boring! At least with the hard, straight lines and continuous blue color, making a selection is easy.
My goal here is not to teach you the various techniques of sky replacement. There are many instructional articles and online tutorials for that. Here’s an example from DPS writer Simon Ringsmuth for basic level sky replacement. Here’s an online Youtube tutorial where a more detailed foreground tree is dealt with. Here’s yet another tutorial with different techniques.
As I said, sky replacement can be a deep dive into Photoshop tools and techniques. But what if there was a simpler way? We’re now beginning to see one-click tools that do a pretty good job of sky replacement.
Here’s a dramatic sky. But will it work?Impressive, but does it work? Might you question if this really was the sky that was present when the photo was taken?
With Luminar 4
Sky replacement software has been around for a few years, but it’s only been recently that it’s produced good results with relatively complex subjects. The use of artificial intelligence in applications has made a huge difference in the quality of the finished image.
The “king of the hill” at this writing may be Skylum’s Luminar 4.
This was an easy job for Luminar 4 and this stock sky looks pretty convincing.
Luminar 4 comes with a few dozen skies you can use as replacement, and you can add your own skies.
(If you’re serious about getting into sky replacement, I would strongly encourage you to start collecting sky images, snapping shots whenever you see an interesting sky and adding them to a folder for possible later use.)
Nice shot, but it would be better with a dramatic sky. Canon 6D | Canon EF 70-200 f/2.8 | 200mm | 1/30 sec | f/16 | ISO 100
Something to bear in mind when deciding whether to use the included skies or your own is resolution. The replacement sky should have a resolution at least as great or greater than the image to which you’ll be adding it. Using a low-res sky image with a higher-res original image will just look bad and degrade your shot.
This sunset sky in the Luminar 4 collection was just right for this shot. The program also let me tune the color balance of the original image to match more effectively.
A confession here:
I have only dabbled with sky replacements in Luminar 4 using the free demo version, so I don’t claim to be an expert. I am reasonably impressed with what I’ve seen so far. Even with a fairly complex subject, such as the harbor shot below with lots of sailboat masts and rigging extending into the sky, it did a very nice job.
Might you do better with Photoshop? I guess that would depend on your skill level. Artificial intelligence has not yet reached the level of human skills and intelligence. Then again, much will depend on your level of proficiency with Photoshop. Speaking for myself, I’m not sure I could currently do better than Luminar at this time.
And doing it with a few simple clicks? Good stuff, if you ask me!
With the masts and rigging extending into the sky, replacing the sky with Photoshop selection tools, layers, and masks would be challenging. With Luminar 4, it was done with a few clicks. Perfect? Maybe not, but impressive. It added the birds, too!
Other tools
Luminar isn’t the only program for doing sky replacements. I work on a PC and my tablet and phone are Android devices, so I’m not as familiar with what’s on the Apple side of this kind of software. I do know other forms of software are moving toward the use of AI and doing sky replacement.
I was pleased to stumble across an Android app that may not be as refined as Luminar. And for images you might shoot with your phone and want to do a sky replacement for the web, Enlighten’s Quickshot does an admirable job and is very easy to use, right on your phone. I see it is also available for iOS.
I replaced the sky in this shot right on my Android phone. I used Quickshot, a pretty good little app. For online work that will be posted on the web, it seems plenty capable.
Ethics of sky switching
So if you can, does that mean you should? If you can replace the sky in a photo, should you? When does the result stop being a photograph and become an art piece, a reflection of the skills of a photo editor and not those of a photographer? Would you enter an image in a photo contest where you had replaced the sky?
I don’t claim to have the answers, but I have raised the ethical questions surrounding sky replacement before. Take a look at this article I wrote several years ago which dives deeper into that subject.
If you’re going to do magic…
Have you ever had the misfortune of watching a really bad magician? A show where it is clearly evident the performer really did have something up his sleeve or where there was no doubt about how the trick was done? I’d use that example as a lesson in what not to do if you decide to do sky replacement with your photos.
A shot where the light in the sky comes from one side while the subjects in the foreground are lit from the other side would be an example of “bad magic.” So would different light temperatures between land and sky or evident fringing where poor selection and masking was done. Rather than embarass yourself with a poorly executed sky replacement where even non-photographers can spot the fakery, practice your skills for yourself only. I believe only when you’re ready for “primetime” should you begin showing your sky replacement images.
Then, of course, you will face a new dilemma. Once people are aware you can produce shots with amazing skies, even when you do capture a photo in-camera with a gorgeous sky they will wonder, “Is that real or did you add it?”
If you’re going to “do magic” and replace skies, it had better be convincing. You tell me: Is this the original sky or not?
Conclusion
I hope you picked up some good tips for dramatic skies in this article. I also hope you’ll give consideration into not just when and how to implement these techniques, but if you should or shouldn’t.
Some people really don’t enjoy photo editing and would prefer to do everything in-camera as much as possible. For others, editing is part of the craft and no photo is complete until it has undergone an extensive edit session.
As I write this, the Covid-19 crisis lingers, and so maybe you have more time at home to work on your editing skills. Meanwhile, let me leave you with this sign-off used by Garrison Keillor, host of the radio show, “A Prairie Home Companion.”
“Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.”
The post S’cuse Me While I Tweak the Sky: Tips for Dramatic Skies in Your Photos appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Rick Ohnsman.
The post Weekly Photography Challenge – Epic Skies appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Caz Nowaczyk.
This week’s weekly photography challenge – EPIC SKIES!
Dramatic cloudy sky by Caz Nowaczyk
Capture some epic skies, either in a close up of dramatic clouds or a dramatic sky in a landscape vista. It could be a stormy sky, the northern lights, a dramatic sunset or sunrise, or the milky way. You get the idea!
Play with post-processing too, if you like.
The choice is yours! I look forward to seeing what you share
Check out some of the articles below that give you tips on this week’s challenge.
Tips for photographing EPIC SKIES
6 Tips for Capturing Dramatic Skies in your Landscape Photography
3 Simple Steps to Make Your Skies Pop in Lightroom
Tips and Tricks for Night Photography of the Starry Sky
7 Tips to Improve Your Skyline Photos
How to Use a 10 Stop Neutral Density Filter to add Drama to the Sky
Beginners Tips for Night Sky and Star Photography
Simply upload your shot into the comment field (look for the little camera icon in the Disqus comments section) and they’ll get embedded for us all to see. Or, if you’d prefer, upload them to your favorite photo-sharing site and leave the link to them. Show me your best images in this week’s challenge.
Share in the dPS Facebook Group
You can also share your images in the dPS Facebook group as the challenge is posted there each week as well.
If you tag your photos on Flickr, Instagram, Twitter or other sites – tag them as #DPSEpicSkies to help others find them. Linking back to this page might also help others know what you’re doing so that they can share in the fun.
The post Weekly Photography Challenge – Epic Skies appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Caz Nowaczyk.
Skylum has released a Luminar 2018 update that brings its new AI Sky Enhancer filter to the image editing software. The new tool works “almost instantly” to improve the sky in photos, only requiring the user to adjust a slider, according to the company. AI Sky Enhancer replaces the masks and filters that would otherwise be used to enhance skies.
The new tool was created by Skylum’s AI Lab and is powered by a deep neural network that was trained using hundreds of thousands of images. Luminar uses the enhancer to detect and adjust only the skies in images, including ones that are cloudy, partly sunny, bright blue, and more.
Skylum offers a long look at how AI Sky Enhancer works in a new blog post, where it explains that the tool relies on semantic segmentation, in part, to separate an image into layers based on detected objects. By doing this, AI Sky Enhancer is able to adjust the sky independent of other image elements while keeping issues like noise and halos to a minimum.
The software automatically applies a mask to the sky in these images, working to selectively adjust elements like brightness and contrast as the user moves the tool’s slider. “Every parameter is applied selectively, as if you were doing it yourself using masking and layers,” the company explains in its post.
The AI Sky Enhancer update is free for Luminar 2018 and arrives ahead of Luminar 3 with Libraries, which will be available starting December 18. Skylum will offer all of its new Luminar features for free to current Luminar 2018 owners until “late 2019,” it explains on its website. The application is available to purchase through Skylum for $ 59/€59/£53.
Longtime DPReview member Tanveer, whose username is tsk1979, created this beautiful time-lapse over the past two years, mostly with a Sony a7 mirrorless camera. The video includes the summer Milky Way, the winter Orion, Andromedia in the North and Sagittarius in the South.
So throw on a pair of headphones, dim the lights and take a few minutes out of your day to immerse yourself in the night sky. Also be sure to check out Tanveer’s image galleries and Facebook photography page.
During Adobe MAX 2016, the company gave a behind the scenes look at a new technology that they’re developing called SkyReplace. The new software makes it very easy to replace the sky and even adjust the overall look of a photo with little to no Photoshop knowledge.
Adobe says SkyReplace uses deep machine learning to automatically figure out where the boundary lines lie between the sky and the rest of the elements in the photo such as trees, mountains and buildings. It can then not only swap out the old sky and insert a completely new one, but it can also adjust the rest of the photo to take on the same look and feel as the replaced sky by adjusting color, light and contrast thus creating a more realistic look.
Processor maker Ambarella has announced its two newest and most powerful chips. The H2 and H12 are 4K (UHD) capable processors, with the more powerful H2 able to compress 10-bit 4K/60p video using H.265 HEVC compression or 4K/120p with the less efficient H.264 AVC system. The company says it’s the drone market that’s now pushing the capabilities it needs to offer – way beyond what compact cameras tend to need.
With the drone market in mind, the H2 also includes a 1.2Ghz quad core processor that allows it to handle the data required to keep a drone in the air. It can also output a low-delay Full HD video stream at the same time as compressing a 4K stream, allowing a near-immediate high res view to be sent to a remote operator.
What we found interesting is not just that applications such as drones are so demanding (that makes sense), but that the expectations of the drone and sports camera markets are so far beyond what is being offered in the still camera market. One big difference between the two markets is that, with the continued decline of small-sensor compacts, most of the sensors used in stills photography are much larger than those used in action cams or drones, which makes heat management and data readout more challenging. Even with this difference, it’s interesting to know that 60p and 120p 4K processing is already ready for consumer devices.
Ambarella vice president of marketing and business development Chris Day says that sales of processors for drone/flying cameras now makes up 10% of the company’s revenues, highlighting how fast-moving the sector is. ‘These things need Ultra HD video, high frame rates, great imaging, electronic stabilization and lots of CPU power. And, of course, this all needs to be with low power consumption: it’s pretty demanding but it’s a great fit for us.’ he says. Asked about the impact these technologies are likely to have on the conventional stills camera market, he points out the narrowing of boundaries between sectors: ‘companies such as DJI are starting to make their own cameras, rather than mounting conventional Sony or Micro Four Thirds cameras on there.’
With fast, high quality, high bit-depth video likely to become more common on action cameras and flying cameras, it’ll be interesting to see how many of these capabilities start to appear on more conventional cameras in the coming months and years.
Press Release:
Ambarella Introduces Low Power 4K Ultra HD SoCs for Sports and Flying Cameras
Ambarella H2 delivers 4K Ultra HD at 60 frames per second with under 2 Watts of power consumption
SANTA CLARA, Calif.–(UNDER EMBARGO – until Jan. 6, 2016 at 8:00 AM Eastern)–Ambarella, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMBA), a leading developer of low-power, HD and Ultra HD video processing semiconductors, today introduced the H2 and H12 camera System-on-Chips (SoCs) for a new generation of sports and flying cameras. H2 targets high-end camera models with 4K Ultra HD H.265/HEVC video at 60 frames per second and 4K AVC video at 120 frames per second. These high frame rates deliver smooth video during fast action shots and slow motion playback. H2 also includes 10-bit High Dynamic Range (HDR) video processing to handle high contrast scenes and supports DSLR quality photography. H12 targets mainstream cameras and offers 4K Ultra HD HEVC video at 30 frames per second. Both SoCs have extremely low power consumption allowing for the design of small form factor cameras, and feature advanced 3D electronic image stabilization, potentially eliminating the need for mechanical gimbals.
“With the introduction of H2 and H12 we now provide a complete portfolio of 4K Ultra HD HEVC solutions for sports and flying cameras,” said Fermi Wang, President and CEO of Ambarella. “H2, our first 14nm chip, delivers 4Kp60 Ultra HD HEVC video with 10-bit HDR processing, as supported by the latest generation of 4K HDR televisions. H12 delivers 4Kp30 Ultra HD HEVC video for outstanding video quality at mainstream camera price points.”
H2 features a new generation image processing pipeline which includes 10-bit HDR video processing and excellent imaging, even in challenging low-light conditions. The integration of a 1.2 GHz quad-core ARM® Cortex®-A53 CPU with floating point and NEONTM provides significant processing power for customer applications including flying camera flight control, video analytics and wireless networking. Its hardware de-warp engine supports wide-angle panoramic camera designs, while USB 3.0 connectivity provides fast upload of high resolution video. H2 supports live streaming of a second, low-delay, Full HD video stream for wireless monitoring and camera control.
H12 supports both 4Kp30 Ultra HD HEVC and AVC video encoding. It integrates a 1GHz single-core ARM® Cortex®-A9 CPU with floating point and NEONTM to provide the processing power required for customer applications including flying camera flight control and wireless networking. Its de-warp capability allows the use of wide-angle lenses with minimal image distortion. H12 also supports the live video streaming of a second, low-delay Full HD video stream.
Ambarella will demonstrate both H2 and H12 at a private event during the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, January 6 – 9, 2016.
Pricing and Availability
For pricing and availability please contact Ambarella at www.ambarella.com/about/contact/inquiries The URL for this news release is: www.ambarella.com/about/news-events.html The URL for the related image is: www.ambarella.com/about/news-events/press-images/H2-H12-press-images.html
Don’t let the land in landscape photography fool you–a great landscape photo relies just as much on the sky. Boring gray skies make for boring landscape photos. But capturing a dramatic sky in camera is trickier than it seems. With the sky lighter than the land, the camera will typically overexpose the sky, turning a brilliant blue into a vague and unexciting gray.
But, with a little fine tuning, it is possible to capture a sky that is the cherry-on-top of a great scene on land. Here are six tips for capturing more dramatic skies in your landscape photography.
Photo Courtesy Justin Katz Photography.
1 – Time it right
Landscape photography may not require the split second timing that’s necessary for capturing a toddler’s smile, or a wide receiver’s catch, but timing is still a big part of the picture. The sky that’s gray one day, could be bright blue the next. When planning out a landscape photo, consider how the timing will impact the sky.
Watch for weather patterns that add could add interest to a shot, like a storm brewing just on the horizon. Weather plays a big role in the overall mood of the image–if you’re hoping to capture a dark and gloomy shot, head out when the sky is stormy. On the opposite end, if you’re hoping to capture a more relaxed or happy feeling, look for blue skies dotted with clouds.
Photo Courtesy Justin Katz Photography.
The time of day matters too. While the middle of the day will produce the most shadows on the land, the sky tends to be the bluest then. Just after sunset and just before sunrise is often a good time to capture wispy clouds and a warmer tint of light. Of course, sunrise and sunset makes for a dramatic sky as well.
2 – Try the wrong white balance
Photography rules are sometimes meant to be broken–sometimes, using the wrong white balance setting creates a more dramatic sky. This is especially true when shooting towards the beginning or end of the day–using a different preset will adjust the color in the sky. Auto, cloudy and shade presets will get you an orange-ish sunset with a light blue sky, with a slight variation between the settings. A florescent setting, on the other hand, will typically turn an orange sunset purple, with a brilliant blue sky. Tungsten offers a similar effect, but with even deeper colors.
Using Kelvin temperatures to adjust your white balance results in an even greater control over the colors in the sky. Around 5500K will usually capture a sunny sky with an accurate white balance–that is, where things that are white are still white in the picture, or neutral tones. A higher temperature, for example 6500K, will give the land an orange glow but also enhance the colors in a sunset. A cooler temperature, on the other hand (say 3000), will play up the blues and purples. By using the Kelvin scale, you have more options for picking a white balance setting that best captures those colors.
While it’s always best to get the shot right in camera, shooting in RAW allows you even more flexibility when it comes to adjusting the colors in the sky (and the rest of the image, for that matter). If you perhaps overdid it by making the shot too warm or too cool, you can easily adjust it to find the color temperature that fits the image the best. If you have a landscape photo that you already shot in RAW, open it and try different white balance presets, or the temperature slider, to see first hand how shooting with a different white balance would have impacted the shot.
3 – Compose for the sky
When the sky is more dramatic than the land, why not use that when determining your composition? Pay attention to where you place the horizon when you are composing your shot. Using the rule of thirds to imagine the image is dived into threes, place the horizon on one of those horizontal lines. If you are shooting a photo with an average looking sky, try placing the horizon on the upper third of the image, so more of the land is included in the photo. But if the sky is really dramatic, take advantage of that and include more of it in the frame by placing the horizon on the lower third.
By Darlene Hildebrandt – The sky is dramatic so the image was composed to show less ground and more sky by placing the horizon toward the bottom.
By Ádám Tomkó – as the sky is less dramatic, the horizon placed higher helps minimize the sky.
4 – Use a filter
There are two filters every landscape photographer should have in their camera bag in order to capture more dramatic skies. The first is a graduated neutral density filter. A regular neutral density filter is like putting sunglasses over your lens–it limits the light coming in for bright scenes or long exposures. But a graduated neutral density filter places that darkening effect only on a portion of the image. By placing the dark portion of the filter over the sky, you can properly expose the entire scene. Without the filter, the sky will either be overexposed and bland, or the land will be underexposed and dark. With the filter, you can achieve an exposure that works for both in one shot. The only downside is that graduated neutral density filters don’t work as well with an uneven horizon, like shooting a cityscape. Graduated neutral density filters come in both circular and square formats, but the square is often preferred because you can then place the horizon anywhere in the frame.
A graduated neutral density filter doesn’t work in every scenario–like a very uneven horizon, for example. A polarizing filter doesn’t have as much of an effect on the sky, but it can still be used with uneven horizons. Polarizing filters work by adjusting the reflected light rays coming through your camera lens. Since the sky is blue because of these reflecting rays, turning the front of the polarizing filter will adjust the intensity of the blues in the sky. Since it just affects reflected light rays, it can still be used when mountains or buildings make the horizon uneven. Polarizing filters are also great for enhancing reflections off water or other shiny surfaces too.
Photo Courtesy Justin Katz Photography.
Experiment with motion blur and long exposures
Long exposures aren’t just for photographing waterfalls. If you use a long enough shutter speed, the clouds will blur too, creating a sky of wispy clouds and a slight feeling of motion. To capture motion blur in the clouds, you’ll need to use a long shutter speed. The best settings will depend a bit on the weather and how much motion blur you’d like, but you can try starting with a two minute exposure and adjust up or down from there.
By Kris Williams (Exposure info: ISO 200, f/22 for 75 seconds)
If you are shooting during the day, you may not be able to balance out a two minute exposure with a narrow enough aperture or low enough ISO, ending up with a photo that’s way too bright. So how do photographers capture motion blur in the clouds when the photo obviously wasn’t taken at dusk or dawn? A neutral density filter helps block out some of that light so you can use a long exposure during the day (that’s the same thing as the graduated neutral density filter from the last tip, only the entire filter is dark instead of just half).
Image used with permission of Matt Kloskowski (10 second exposure)
Use the Camera RAW graduated filter tool
While it’s always best to get the shot right in-camera, there are a few editing tools that can improve the sky in your landscape photos. One of those tools is the graduated filter inside Adobe Camera RAW (works the same in Photoshop and Lightroom). Using the tool, you can click over the sky on the image. Like an actual graduated filter, the effect will only cover that portion of the image and gradually fade away, making it possible to create natural looking edits.
The graduated filter tool can be used to adjust the exposure, creating an effect much like using the actual filter. But, the Camera RAW tool can also adjust brightness, contrast, saturation, clarity, sharpness and color. That opens up a lot of possibilities for applying edits just to the sky for more drama that sometimes can’t be done in-camera.
Original image
Graduated filter added in post-processing stage
The sky can make or break a landscape photo. From timing and composition to filters, when you consider the sky as you shoot, you’ll end up with more dramatic, frame-worthy shots.
Do you have any other tips for creating dramatic skies in landscape photography?
House painting is such time-consuming and meticulous work just to get a single color on a facade; perhaps next time you could clad your home in printed image of the night sky instead.
For the Night House, Chicago artist Kate McQuillen covered a suburban house with a contiguous skyscape of nighttime space images digitally printed on weatherproof styrene panels.
The project was funded by sales of a screenprinted poster and created as part of the Terrain Biennial, an Oak Park-based international exhibition of yard, balcony and porch interventions.
Like some kind of suburban camouflage, the covered sections of the home start to disappear against the backdrop of the sky at the right times of early evening and morning. Read also: The Night House, a poem by Billy Collins.
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