How to quickly fix skies in photoshop

[Alex]

Here is a quick tip for helping to make white overcast skies a bit bluer in your photos using Photoshop.

Actually, there are many techniques for fixing skies involving sky replacement, using a gradient of blue colors, etc, but all of the usual techniques take a bit of skill to master. The following technique however, I feel can be implemented by just about anyone who has a basic understanding of Photoshop and without too much effort.

The first thing to do is to go to the Layers palette window. Then from the set of icons at the bottom of the Layers palette window click on the middle icon which is for “adding adjustment layers”. A drop down menu will appear.

Select the option on the menu called "Photo Filter". Then a dialogue box will appear. Then from the Filter drop down menu in the dialogue box select "Cooling Filter (82)". Set the density to approx. 35 and select OK.

Once you have done that you will have a blue filter that covers your entire image and puts a blue color cast on everything.

If there are other areas of your photo which are not part of the sky then you will want to mask the filter off so that it does not effect the entire photo.

To mask off the filter, select the paint brush tool, set your foreground color to black, and paint onto the areas of your photo which you don't wish to have effected by the blue filter.

As you do this you will see the blue cast starts to disappear from the areas you don't want to look blue. If you happen to erase some of the blue color from the sky where you do want it, then you can switch the foreground color to white and start painting the blue filter back onto the areas of the sky where you had accidentally removed it from.

That's it. Your done!

Alex

[Hybrid]

Nice tip Alex I hadn't thought of using the photo filter but that sounds very easy and adjustment layers are awesome... definitely one of my favourite features of photoshop...

Cheers,

Stephen

[Viz]

I'll agree with the method, though I use a gradient layer in a blending mode like multiply (rather than photo filter) that fades to lighter blue trying to match the way a real sky fades. Sometimes it is also good if the sky is overexposed and is just clipped white, you can use the white as a basis for your masking by either using the select colour range, or using the image->apply image and messing about with the levels on the mask itself. But often you need to flatten the gradient layer and add noise - because colour banding can seriously blow your cover.

But that said, the photo filters are far more subtle.