photoshopping a blue sky

snooples17

Hi guys,

Hoping someone can help. Im just starting out taking photos of horses at competitions, my photos are coming along very well and they are the type of photos that dont need much editing after just a bit of contrast and cropping and they are fine.
However I am having awful trouble with this lovely white sky we seem to always have in Ireland, it can often make my photos like washed out especially if it is a white horse so can anyone tell me the easiest way to make the sky blue
I dont really know anything about photoshop and only really use picasa or the editing software that came with my canon but I am willing to learn!

pullandbang

Take the shots on day when the sky is blue! In fact a blue sky with lots of fluffy white clouds is even nicer than a bland empty blue one.

On a more serious note, try make the sky less obvious by tilting your camera downwards to include less of it. Get closer to the action and fill the frame with the horse. If you're shooting the horse then you need to get him/her/it correctly exposed which may wall leave the sky looking bright and bland. There are filters you can attach to your lens but probably not practical for action stuff. There are also graduated filters in Photoshop / Lightroom that enable you to darken the sky. Not sure about picassa but goggle "filters & picassa" and you should find an answer.

snooples17

Thanks I will look into those filters!
I try and take photos with hedges and stuff in the background if the sky is the usual awful white but often the best jump will be in the middle of a field!

Heres an example of the problem i run into, the sky isnt even near as white in this as it can get but I think you can see a bluer sky would make a big difference

[IMG][/img] 1-IMG_0373 by snooples17, on Flickr

pullandbang

Not too much wrong with that photo tbh. On bright days try shooting with an exposure compensation of -1 or even -2 stops. You may the have to brighten up the subject but you'll get nice skies.

snooples17

Cool thanks, Iv actually never gone near the exposure in my camera so will have a go at that!
That pic isnt the worst as the sky has a bit of blue but some days its really white and iv printed a few out and it looks really bad!

pullandbang

So what are you shooting in? AV? TV? Manual? For that type of work I'd be shooting in manual (assuming the light isn't changing dramatically throughout the day).

snooples17

Yep always shoot in manual for horses! Camera has a 0% succes rate in other settings, it always gets something wrong. For that photo I had no flash (naturally) f/5.6, 1/500 and iso of 100

By not going near exposure I meant exposure compensation, i always just left it at zero, I never even looked at it tbh!

Promac

If you're shooting in manual it won't matter anyway. If you shoot in AV it adjusts the shutter speed to be slightly under-exposed. If you shoot in TV it adjusts the aperture to be slightly smaller. If you shoot in manual, just do it yourself.

M5

Handy post process tip in Lightroom drop the blue channel luminance and highlights. Depending on the dynamic range of your camera the sky may be recoverable. Would need to be shot in RAW for that to be really effective. Tried it on your largest JPEG but there was not enough detail there. Try it on the RAW if you have it

As everyone has said, probably best to get it right on the camera by shooting at -1EV or using a graduated ND

allthedoyles

Why not use a photo-editing website to touch it up

FoxT

Suggest you try a polarising filter. This will darken/saturate the sky a bit for you.

Also, if possible, shoot RAW. This will slow the camera burst rate, and will also impact how many shots you can take in one burst - but you will generally get better results in RAW, especially if you need to do manipulation afterwards.

That is a nice shot, BTW!

-FoxT

Snowie

Its over exposed your shadow is a little to thin i think you could drop the exposher down that'le pull some blue back darken of the shadow its to thin.

Also have a read on dodge and burning in photoshop. How ever I think its just down to your processing I think the pictures over exposed and thats why your loosing detail in the sky.

pixbyjohn

Bring your ISO up from 100 to 200 or 400 and your f stop down from 5.6 to f11 and try that on a similar day to what you took that photo

squareballoon

but allthedoyles, that's just putting a sky over the person and horses head. It doesn't really work so well unless it's masked back.

shleedance

I wouldn't recommend photoshopping one in. Often it looks dreadful.

I usually sort out skies by using multiple exposures in RAW, stack them and then use subtle HDR. Enough to keep it realistic, not to make it rainbowpuke. Doesn't work well for moving objects, but for that I just underexpose a stop to have more detail in the sky, then bring back the rest of the image by a stop.

snooples17

Thanks for all the tips guys! Really appreciate it.
Going to try and practice it on some horses in the fields to get it right. I always shoot in RAW but the day before I took that horse photo I was messing around at home and was shooting in JPEG and forgot to change it back, I was raging when I realised!