Clean up the easy way

If you have a blob of dirt on your camera’s sensor, it’s likely to show up repeatedly in your panorama, as it will be in the same place in each frame. Splodges of grime sometimes go unnoticed in dark or detailed areas, but can stick out like a sore thumb in relatively clear areas like skies.

It’s best to remove these flaws at the raw stage with the Spot Removal Tool. To do this, set it to Heal, then click and drag outwards from the centre of the blob until it’s covered. Release the mouse, and Photoshop will replace the blemish with a suitable clean area with the right tone and texture. To help you see spots and blobs quickly and easily, tick the Visualise Spots box at the bottom of the screen and move the slider until they’re obvious.

Correct any optical flaws

Click on the Lens Corrections tab in the main control panel (Ctrl/ Cmd+Alt+6), and tick the Remove Chromatic Aberration box. This will minimise any coloured fringing on high-contrast edges. Tick Enable Profile Corrections to remove any distortion or vignetting caused by the lens you’ve used. An extensive database of lenses is built into the software; in most cases your lens will automatically appear, but if it doesn’t, select your make and model from the drop-down menus under Lens Profile.

Check for clipping

In the Basic tab, pull Highlights to -100 to restore detail to the brightest tones. Expand Shadows by taking the slider to +100 – this will bring extra detail into the darker areas of the image. The pic will look a little washed out now; to boost contrast, move Blacks to the left until you see a thin line extend on the left of the Histogram. Press U and you’ll see pure black areas in blue in the preview. Now press O and move the Whites slider to the right. Pure white areas will show in red. Adjust the slider until you only have a tiny trace of red on the preview.

Get a rich blue sky

With the points set, press O and U again to switch off the clipping warnings. Click the HSL tab: this lets you adjust the Hue, Saturation and Luminance of the individual colours in the image, so you can use it to give the pale sky more impact. With the Luminance sub-tab selected, decrease Blues to -60 and Aquas to -40. The colour will flood back in. Now switch to the Saturation sub-tab, and nudge up the Blues to around +20 to give a really rich sky. The other colours are nicely balanced in this example, but you may want to boost or cut them in your own images.

Add Ra dial Filter streaks

Select the Radial Filter tool (press J); in the control panel, click twice on the + icon to the right of Temperature. This will increase the setting by +50 and zero all the other sliders. Move Exposure to +0.50 and drag out a thin oval selection. You can move it by dragging within the selection or rotate it by dragging just outside. Position it pointing towards the boat from the bottom right, like a streak of sunlight. Right-click inside it and select Duplicate, then drag the duplicate over to the left. Rotate and position it as a second streak from the bottom left.

Add Dehaze for contrast

Select the Graduated Filter tool (G); in the control panel, click the + icon alongside Dehaze. This will set it to +25 and zero all the others. Although Dehaze is primarily used for adding or removing misty haze effects from shots, it also functions like a contrast control on steroids! Click on the top of the image and drag down to the horizon to see the sky get richer and darker. To make the clouds more distinct, increase Clarity to around +75. To see the effect without all the Graduated Filter lines, just click in the Overlay box to toggle it on and off.

Finishing touches

To finish the picture, a subtle vignette effect will hem in the image, focusing attention on the core content in the scene. To apply one, click on the Hand tool to exit the Graduated Filter display, then click on the FX tab (or press Ctrl/Cmd+Alt+7). Under Post Crop Vignetting, decrease the Amount slider to around -30, then adjust the Midpoint, Roundness and Feather sliders to get the shape and fall-off you want. For this pic, we used settings of 40, -40 and 50 respectively, but you may want to experiment with the values to get the best results for your own images. When you’re happy with the overall look, click Open Image to load the file into Photoshop and save all the raw adjustments you’ve made. To save it in a regular file format, go to File > Save As; choose JPEG for a smaller file size or Photoshop (PSD) for maximum quality.