Correcting washed out colour of the sky

[amarkin]

Often, I get this problem on my pictures. Sometimes, the washed out colour of the sky is so bad it looks like it’s been bleached.
An example is below. I’ve corrected the colour a little bit using shadow/highlights function in CS2 Photoshop; however, it is still not what I’d like to see.


http://abate.veritynet.net/~joey/rusty.jpg

[PiroStitch]

Was the sky quite bright? The issue you're seeing here is normal as the shot was metered to have the statue(?) and trees properly exposed. However as the sky was probably brighter than the rest of the environment, the result is that the sky ends up being blown.

To overcome this you have a couple of options.

1) Go and get a Graduated (or was that gradiated) filter. Plonk it on the lens and it should limit the amount of light from the sky portion resulting in a properly exposed sky

2) Use a tripod and bracket the shots. Then import the photos in your computer and edit the photos to bring the sky back in.

CS2 has a HDR feature which lets you select the bracketed photos and it will pretty much automatically produce a final image with no blown highlights (or hardly). Search around on this forum as there have been multiple examples of this.

[amarkin]

Was the sky quite bright? The issue you're seeing here is normal as the shot was metered to have the statue(?) and trees properly exposed. However as the sky was probably brighter than the rest of the environment, the result is that the sky ends up being blown.

The picture was taken at dusk. Metering was set to closest subject or single area, I can’t remember now. The sun was behind me sitting just above the horizon.
I am aware of bracketing method and HDRi feature in CS2. What I was asking is how to correct the blown out sky now.

[PiroStitch]

you can drag the highlight level back but not whole lot you can do now.

[amarkin]

Is that any better?

http://abate.veritynet.net/~joey/corrected.jpg

The picture is awful though. If you don't get the exposure right -- you will never get it right in Photoshop. IMHO.

[Aussie Dave]

amarkin,
Unfortunately, once you overexpose the sky, it's impossible to bring it back to what you saw standing there.

One thing (IMO), alot of people forget is that the human eye is constantly adapting to expose exactly what you are looking at, each waking moment. You look at the statue and your eye sees it exposed correctly (and your brain works out the white balance). Move your focus to the sky and you don't notice the change, but your eyes instantly reset themselves, so you see the sky exposed correctly.

The camera, being a machine, cannot do this without you telling it what to do. You'd decided to expose for the statue and as a result, the brightness of the sky was outside the dynamic range the sensor could pick up....hence blowing the sky out.

Bracketing exposures is one way to do this. You could also take another photo of the sky and paste it in over the current sky (using some PP trickery). Another option, if available to you, is to use a flash to help you. By using the camera to expose for the background/sky, you can utilise a flash unit (or more) to expose the foreground subject correctly (in this case, the statue). This way you can bring the statue's brightness levels closer to what the sky is, bringing them all into the dynamic range of the sensor and creating a nice image.

Ever seen the images where a beautiful model is on the beach with a gorgeous sunset behind her. This is how it's done. Same theory applies.

Hope this is helpful....

[big pix]

add a blue grad to the sky....... easy about 10 seconds,,,,, or longer if you want perfection......sample of what is possible......

[amarkin]

Thanks Dave.

[amarkin]

I've added blue gradient.

[big pix]

the grad tool can be used in many ways....... the more you use it the better the results........ looking at your shots, they look over exposed, check your settings on your camera, as you are better having an exposure that you have to lighten, than one that is too light, ....... photoshop is a great program, but an image that is exposed correctly will always give you better results when using PS.......