How do I get those skies?

[hitkaiser]

Hi everyone, there is a photoblog I visit daily, ddoi (http://www.flickr.com/photos/wvs) and this guy always gets these unrealistic but attractive skies..(its not just a polarizer) he won't tell me how he makes them, can anyone figure out how he is doing it (and perhaps some pointers as to how I can reproduce the effect?)

Some samples I could find:

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/140/396475463_fcf8192c9e.jpg
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/147/397260131_0a89b5149e_o.jpg
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/235/445714005_6b2e85f351_o.jpg

[Saralonde]

I'm guessing HDR?

[Nicole]

Yeah, I agree with Saralonde... I'm thinking HDR (probably using multiple exposures from a single RAW file), but with some extra desaturation of some of the colours at the end. Some of the examples in this HDR tutorial (http://www.vanilladays.com/hdr-guide/) also seem to back this theory up.

[hitkaiser]

Hmm im not too sure im convinced
HDR images seem to be more saturated and.. with a wider range of colours

This guys skies seem to have an odd colour to them, the rest of the image seems fine.

[Nicole]

Yeah, that's why I'm thinking that it's been desaturated in some way. It does have the overall look of HDR though for a lot of them. Good luck figuring it out :)

[property#1]

The following technique is as best as I can remember from a vieo podcast I watched back in December. I though I still had the Video but I am sorry I do not. This may be what this guy is doing.


This is done in Elements. Pick a shot with a bland sky or even a nice sky. The thing is the sky has to have some definition for this to work. Make a working copy of your picture name it working or whatever. Then using magic wand tool select all the sky areas. This at times can be very tedious but it's worth it. After you have all the sky selected, make sure that your background color is set to grey. Add an adjustment layer and make it solid color, this will turn the sky grey. Then set the blending mode to color burn. From there you can click on the color in your color fill layer and move the color till you get the desired effect.

It can create some real interesting effects.

[AZ4Runner]

Maybe a neutral density filter, or a red filter?

[wulf]

Remember that HDR style techniques don't have to bump up the colours unnaturally - similar ideas can also be applied with more subtlety (including pseudo-HDR, where you blend versions of the image that have been processed in different ways rather than combining separate shots).

Wulf

[Kvikken]

I think I might know :) !

- To get dramatic colors, especially used to get dramatic colors at skies you can use the channel mixer under adjustments layer. There are two choises then that gives quite different results, those are:

1. Don't monochrome or edit any of the sliders, just click ok, then you set the layer to multiply or overlay. This usually makes the sky "bluer". If the effect is to0 dramatic you can slide the opacity bar to something less than 100%.

2. To get the more "dramatic" skies in a different meaning of the word (like those pictures on the top of this thread) you still use the channel mixer, but this time you press the monochrome button before you click ok. Then you change the layer properties to multiply (and or overlay). You can get some quite stunning and interesting results (and as with 1. you can change the opacity if the effect is too dramatic).

If you want even more dramatic effects you can add more of the same adjustment layers, maybe two channel mixer layers set to multiply where one of them is at 100% and the other at 40%. To get a little bit more desaturated effect you can add an adjustment layer that makes the picture black and white at the top of the other adjustment layers that you like, and maybe set the opacity to something like 30 or 40% or however much you would like. It's just to play around and find the settings that suit you!

EDIT
Here some pictures to illustrate (the first is the original, the second is the edited one):
(The top layer is a channel mixer (monochrome, overlay mode, 50% opacity), and the bottom adjustment layer is channelmixer (monochrome, multiply mode, 100% opacity)).
http://img46.imageshack.us/img46/3075/oslobilder083redyz7.jpg
http://img182.imageshack.us/img182/5153/adjustmentszx1.jpg
http://img123.imageshack.us/img123/6930/oslobilder083red2ky4.jpg

[McNicks]

I agree that it looks desaturated. He may be darkening the top of the sky by using a copied layer with its layer mode set to multiply and then layer masked with a gradient.

Uhh, I am not sure if that makes sense. Here is what I mean:

http://img111.imageshack.us/img111/3928/desatii5.jpg

Not exactly the same but it might come close, particularly if the highlights are not blown out as they are in my original :)

[property#1]

While sitting in my office I attempted the technique I described in my previous post. The following pictures, the original is first and the adjustments were done in fifteen minutes. I am not knowledgeable with Photoshop, and I am sure that someone with Photoshop experience could achieve the effect.

Original
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/210/491629276_69b4e6b418_t.jpg

first adjustment
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/190/491647151_19b0f97464_t.jpg

second adjustment
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/193/491648455_14ab1a989b_t.jpg




<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/manager_2000/">My flickr Photostream</a>
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[hitkaiser]

thanks for the replies, I will try the different methods out in the weekend

[Darren Rowse]

perhaps someone could email the photographer and ask them to write us a tutorial on the technique? I'd love to publish it on the blog if anyone is up for getting in touch with them.

[Kvikken]

Here's another example of the channel mixer method, where I've used some more layers:
(the adjustment layers, from top to bottom, but they were done in the opposite direction, I started with the bottom one!)
1. Levels, fixed the levels to get some more contrast, and make the picture a little bit brighter.
2. Channel mixer (monochrome, normal, 40%)
2. Channel mixer (monochrome, overlay, 10%)
3. Channel mixer (monochrome, multiply, 100%)

http://img175.imageshack.us/img175/1308/channelmixerhu2.jpg

[hitkaiser]

@ Kvikken

Yes!

@ Darren Rowse

I've contacted him.. but he is kinda popular (#1 photoblog for a number of years) and may not reply any time soon

[ab.bs]

Ya this photographer's skies are amazing. I also visit his photoblog everyday. He is a Toronto based photographer... so I know some of the landmark/buildings/streets that he takes a picture of.

Anyways... check out his forum to briefly find out how he gets those results.

http://topleftpixel.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=694

He didn't include any screenshots, so it might be abit confusing. So please take a look at it and if you fully understand how to do it... please let me know and show some screenshots like the previous post.

I'm a visual learner. :)

EDIT:
SWEEEET!! I found 2 other threads that describes his workflow.... check 'em out.
http://www.topleftpixel.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=239
http://www.topleftpixel.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=143

Enjoy....

I can't wait to get home so that I can give this a try.

[stetson ography]

Thanks kvikken, that was very useful and well-explained.

[hitkaiser]

Went through the links ab.bs provided, for the skies, the photographer mentions this:

1. As you might already know from my photoblog, lectures and previous posts here; I'm a big fan of post processing and usually consider my photos half done when I take the picture and the other half happen in post. But my post precessing methods are in the same line as a conventional dark room, meaning I don't use any fancy photoshop filters and such. All I do is adjust my tonal range, contrast, levels and sharpening.

2. All the photos you mentioned above are only one frame, and not a combination of multiple exposures.

3. I shoot always in RAW which gives me much wider range than JPG, and that's why I can save detail in highlight and shadows. I use Capture One to process my photos and export a 16bit TIF version (sometimes export 2 versions with different exposure settings, similar to bracketing exposures in camera) then open the TIF file(s) in Photoshop.

4. I usually colour/level correct my photos in 2 passes: one for the sky/highlights and one for shadows/foreground. I use adjustment layers, mainly curves with layer masks to adjust the image selectively.

5. For the blue colour of the sky which seems to be an important part of the question, I make a black and white version of the image as the top layer, usually using Channel Mixer layer adjustment and turn the layer transfer mode to Hardlight or Overlay. Then play with opacity levels to get the colour that I like. This usually results in an image that is too high contrasty, so I throw another Curve adjustment layer to fix this with layer transfer mode set to luminosity. You can do this by playing with Hue/Saturation or coloured layers on top of an image too. There are infinite number of ways to adjust the sky colour and this is the way i do it, doesn't mean it's better than other methods.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention that I usually use a Circular polarizer filter to get a deep blue colour of the sky which is very important.

[hitkaiser]

Followup, I gave it a little try:
What I did was select the sky (I know, a poor selection :P) Make a new layer out of it, make that layer into black and white and set layer mode to hardlight. I set the opacity to the level I wanted and voila.

Before:
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/hitkaiser/468809482/" title="Photo Sharing"><img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/204/468809482_c156cf2a56.jpg" width="500" height="357" alt="Red on Blue" /></a>

After:
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/hitkaiser/495034630/" title="Photo Sharing"><img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/214/495034630_87e86ec2c3.jpg" width="500" height="357" alt="Red on Blue" /></a>

[ab.bs]

nice... can we see the before picture?

[hitkaiser]

Yup, just updated the prev. post above have a look!

[stetson ography]

Had a go using Kvikken's method (adjusting some of the opacity levels of the channel mixer levels to taste), and came up with this:

Before:
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/stetsonography/395244167/" title="Photo Sharing"><img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/160/395244167_e212c9e688.jpg" width="500" height="375" alt="Angel (17)" /></a>

After:
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/stetsonography/492654628/" title="Photo Sharing"><img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/212/492654628_67c8822557.jpg" width="500" height="375" alt="Corrected Angel (17)" /></a>

Think it's a nice method, with a fair bit of leeway to adjust things depending on the image you have and the effect you're after.

I'm not sure I like selecting the sky only and working on that alone- not only is it more fiddly, but any unselected portions of the picture look out of step with the colours of the sky, making it look a bit artificial.

[ihatecuza]

has anyone tried these on sky only photos(i mean without clouds)? i don't get the same effect with either of these techniques on some photos

[Kvikken]

I think they will get pretty different without skies, as the white in the sky usually adds a lot to it. In this phot I just wanted to make the sky look threating in a way, but it's still kind of similar to the skies that are discussed in this thread, and shows in a way how it can turn out without clouds by using the channel mixer method.

In this photo, to get the desired effect, I also fixed the levels a great deal, as just using the channel mixer wasn't enough.

http://tn3-1.deviantart.com/fs14/300W/i/2007/087/f/c/The_brutal_Dictator_by_Kvikken.jpg

[hitkaiser]

update, sam the guy who took the original shots has agreed to write us a little tutorial ! I'll post back whenever he sends it over

[Saralonde]

update, sam the guy who took the original shots has agreed to write us a little tutorial ! I'll post back whenever he sends it over

Excellent hitkaiser :cool: !

[ihatecuza]

hey... i finally got the hang of that effect and it end up pretty much like the photos in the example..
1.double the layer and set the blending 2 multiply
2.apply on the second layer a filter from the plugin called "virtual photographer"
it's free and u cand find it on the internet very easily. in virtual photographer add the effect called "anvil" set it on blue and turn the slider to the right.. also the effect should be colorizer and set it to the right too
3. then to get the desaturated effect just add a hue/sat layer
i think you end up with more smooth results than using the channel mixer method

[yurik]

oo i'm so excited about the tutorial!
daily dose of imagery has got to be my favorite photo blog (and the reason I'm going to pick up a sigma 10-20)
Thanks for finding out how to get his amazing skies