Make dull skies pop

Simple techniques to add a natural-looking boost when the light doesn’t produce the most interesting sky in your landscapes

In landscape photography, images are often divided into two equally important parts – the sky and the land. While we all know that shooting around sunrise and sunset has the greatest chance of experiencing the most dramatic and interesting light and sky, shooting at these times isn’t always possible for several reasons. This certainly doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t shoot at other times of the day – you should take photos whenever you see something that interests you, even if the light and sky aren’t perfect.

To combat some of the issues you may experience when shooting outside of golden hour, we’re going to look at four techniques that will make dull and difficult skies look more interesting. The aim is to maintain a naturallooking result using an image with a partially clouded blue sky. We won’t be performing miracles here, but some of these techniques will definitely help you in the future.

1 Deepen the blue sky

Click on the Create new fill or Adjustment layer icon at the bottom of the Layers panel and select Selective Color. When the dialogue box opens, click on the Colors dropdown and select Cyans. Set Cyan to +30 and Yellow to -40 before selecting Blues from the dropdown menu. This time, set Cyan to +30 and Yellow to -85 before closing the dialogue box. If the effect isn’t strong enough, with the Selective Color 1 Layer active, press Ctrl/Cmd+J to duplicate it.

2 Recover highlight detail

With the Background active, press Ctrl/Cmd+J to make a copy to work on and go to Image > Adjustments > Shadows/Highlights. When the dialogue box opens, make sure Show More Options is checked. For Shadows set Amount 20%, Tone 10% and Radius 5px. For Highlights set Amount 30%, Tone 15% and Radius 10px then hit OK. With these controls, setting the sliders in a right-leaning diagonal line has great results whatever the strength of the effect.

3 Create a grad effect

Create a Curves Adjustment layer, then left click in the centre of the Curve and drag down and to the right to darken the image before closing the dialogue. Next, press Ctrl/ Cmd+I to invert the layer mask, then press D on the keyboard to set the palette colours to black and white. Make sure white is in the foreground, using X to toggle, and then press G to activate the Gradient tool. Left-mouse-click in the centre of the sky, drag down to near the bottom and release.

4 Warm the sky

Click on the Create a new layer icon at the bottom of the Layers panel, then double click on the foreground colour on the Tool panel to select bright yellow. Press B on the keyboard to select the Brush tool and paint yellow over the sky. Next, set the Layer Blending mode to Overlay and click on the Add layer mask at the bottom of the Layers panel. Go to Image > Apply image, use the default settings and apply a further five times. Reduce Layer Opacity to 25%.