Make my sky bluer

I love shooting landscapes, this is one the reasons why I took photography as a hobby. But sometimes the best camera & lens are not enough to capture the real beauty of the scene, like what happened in this photo.

This photo was taken last March in Tarlac, around noon & that explains why the sky was not that blue. A Circular Polarizing Filter (CPL) could have done the job for me but unfortunately I don’t have one. Although I believe that having taken this the right way (with the CPL attached to my lens) is the best way to do it, it’s good to know that this can be corrected using Photoshop. I found this tutorial from Ken Rockwell about Polarizer & tried it. It’s really simple.

1. Open the photo that you want to edit
2. Create a new layer (Layer –> New –> Layer), Name it as GRAD & set mode as Soft Light
3. Select the GRADIENT TOOL from the tools palette (or just hit ‘G’), make sure of the following:
   • Be sure you have the default foreground and background colors, black and white, if you are not sure, press ‘D’ to set the colors to default.
   • Make sure that the “Linear” option is selected.
   • That the “background to transparent” grad is selected.
4. Click, hold & drag until you reach the horizon
5. Select the background layer (where the photo is)
6. Click on the black & white button on the lower part of the Layers Palette & select the “Selective Color” option on the drop-down list
7. Change the colors option to Cyans: adjust the Cyan level to 100 & Magenta level to 100
8. Now, change the color option to Blues: adjust the Cyan level to 100 & Magenta level to 100
9. Click OK.

That’s it! You can play along with the selective color to fit yout taste, by doing that, I was able to achieve a bluer sky.

Like what I said before (and earlier) capturing it the right way is still the best option, photoshop is available just to enhance what is already a beautiful photo.