Enhancing Blue Skies in Lightroom
The Color control in Lightroom is a powerful tool for selective color adjustments. This tool allows photographers to adjust the hue, saturation, and luminance of individual color tones. One application of this functionality is enhancing blue skies:
Photo of the famous Sydney Opera House with blue sky enhanced in Lightroom
How to Enhance a Blue Sky
In Lightroom 4, the Color control allows separate control of red, orange, yellow, green, aqua, blue, purple, and magenta:
Lightroom 4 Color Controls
A quick way to emphasize a blue sky is to lower the luminosity and increase the saturation of the blues and aquas in the image:
With and without color adjustments
For this image, here are the settings I used:
Aqua
- Hue: -18
- Saturation: +20
- Luminance: -43
Blue
- Hue: 0
- Saturation: +21
- Luminance: -22
Make a Develop Preset
For extra credit, save these settings as a develop preset so that you can quickly apply them later. Note that settings that work to bring out the sky in one photo won’t be perfect for all photos, but this should give you a good starting point.
Here are the settings you need to capture for a sky enhancing preset:
Settings for a sky-enhancing Lr preset
For more detailed information on creating Lightroom Develop Presets, check out this post: 5 Tips for a Faster Lightroom Workflow.
I hope this technique proves useful next time you have a sky that needs just a little more oomph. I’d like you hear your thoughts on this article, please comment below or feel free to connect with me through Facebook or Google+. I’ll do my best to answer questions and reply to comments.
9 Responses to “Enhancing Blue Skies in Lightroom” - Add Yours
December 24th, 2012 at 9:51 pm
I like this article. I have done similar things for image in general but for some reason it never occurred to me to set presets for specific parts. I am going to keep this in mind from now on when I do little “boosts” .
In this set I did not do the sky, but I did use similar method to “boost” the the grass and clothing, bring out definition and decrease shadow.
http://www.dewandemmer.com/london-wedding-photography-melissa-and-gareth/
December 24th, 2012 at 11:10 pm
A remarkable difference for such a quick tweak. Thanks again for sharing Jason. Look forward to seeing more of your insightful tutes.
Cheers
George S.
December 29th, 2012 at 1:16 am
Thanks so much for the lightroom tip. I am still figuring things out in there instead of just uploading and choosing what to export to Photoshop.
January 2nd, 2013 at 2:43 am
Thanks Jason, I already have my preset done. I appreciate the tip:) ~ Judy
January 2nd, 2013 at 2:46 am
@Dewan – for a long time I only used split toning to tint bw conversions too. It was a training video I watched somewhere that got me to think about using it for color too.
@George – thanks mate!
@Linda – thanks for the comment. I used to use Adobe Bridge to browse, and Photoshop to process. It took me some time to change my way of thinking when I switched to Lr. When I first started using Lr two years ago, I actually stopped using Ps almost entirely, but now I do an initial edit in Lr, and then finish most images in Ps.
@Judy – Cool!
January 6th, 2013 at 4:37 pm
I recently discovered that there is a gradient preset in Photoshop CS6 that simulates a neutral density filter. It gives a different effect than you show here, but still really cool. I applied this gradient to my photos here.
I normally only use Camera Raw and Photoshop, not Lightroom, so do you have any tips for find a similar color enhancing tool in Camera Raw?
January 7th, 2013 at 2:53 am
Stephen Emlund – I don’t see anything in Camera Raw that can do this, but once you get into Ps you can do this with a Hue / Saturation adjustment layer.
Thanks for sharing the information about the simulated ND filter. I’m actually just writing about the Graduated Filter tool in Lr, which can also simulate an ND filter.
January 11th, 2013 at 8:53 pm
I think there is a way to do it Camera Raw in CS6. The tab where you can choose to convert into a B&W image has sliders for each of these colours, with options to adjust hue, saturation and luminosity as separate, small tabs above the sliders. Much better than the selective colour layer option that is used later on.
April 6th, 2013 at 12:33 pm
I Took a number of blue sky photographs around the tidal basin this week. Your article Will be very helpful in the future as I try to work with them to enhance them to make them better.
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