Selections: sky (applies elsewhere also) using color range

[irishwhite]

okay, first of all i'd like to point everyone to Popular Photography's April 2008 issue for where i got this technique.

i'd also like to apologize that i don't actually have a good photo for displaying this technique, but i think everyone will get the idea and we can all add this into our repertoire (at least those of us with photoshop CS3)

i'll try to describe the step, and then post a link to the screen shot of what i was describing immediately after.

before and after:






one more thing...feel free to use my before pic if you'd like to.

okay, first thing you're going to do is use the lasso tool to make a selection that includes all of the sky. this whole method is so effective because you don't have to make an exact selection. i've exaggerated it a bit just to demonstrate the fact that you really don't need to finess the frustrating pen tool around all of the tree limbs/telephone polls/volleyballs etc. Step 1 screenshot

next we're going to go up Select and then choose Color Range. Step 2 screenshot

now here comes the "tricky" part. at this point a small window pops up where you can configure the different color range options. first make sure black matte is selected from the drop down menu at the bottom of this small window. you'll also notice something called the "fuzziness slider" and you'll see a preview of your image in black and white. the idea is to get all of your sky to be white, while everything else is black. in order to do this, you'll have to do one of two things. first, in the image preview, click on a section of your sky. click around the different parts of your sky to see if you can get all of it white while leaving the rest black. if this doesn't exactly work (as was my case) then you'll have to adjust your "fuzziness slider". i assume this is similar to adjusting the tolerance on the magic wand tool. you can see what i mean by checking the next two screenshots: Step 3 screenshot 1

Step 3 screenshot 2



notice in the second picture how my sky in the image preview is mostly white...and also how the ground is completely black. i probably could have increased the "fuzziness" further but stopped there just to demonstrate what happens.

after completing that, click ok and you'll see a selection on your actual image which should only comprise your sky. please note, if you happen to have a picture of a snow capped mountain against a sky with blown out whites, you'll probably have some issues picking only your sky vs. including some of the mountain top. in this case you'll have to have a smaller value for your fuzziness, and really you should be making this value as small as possible while still selecting your sky.

anyways the next step is to turn your now selected sky into a mask. do this simply by clicking on the layermask icon (small icon, dark square with white circle inside of it) on your layers palette.


once you've made your selection into a mask, you'll want to change the blend mode. this is also found in your layers palette along the top as a drop down menu. according to the author of the article, for great clouds choose multiply. for this example i chose linear light, which gave the sky an amazing looking blue. if nothing else just pick one and use your up and down keys to see which one strikes your fancy.
Step 5 screenshot

the last thing you'll want to do is try to hide the fact that your image was post processed when you zoom in on a section where your ground meets your sky. you do this by going to filter then blur and choosing gaussion blur. use the slider till the "halo" disappears. congrats. it really is an easy process, and now you've got a great looking sky!



also note that this trick also will work if your sky came out great but the foreground is too dark. just select all of your foreground (exaggerating the selection like we did for the sky) and use the rest of this tutorial. :-)

[Nicole]

Nicely written and illustrated with the screen shots Thanks for sharing! While I've used the Color Range tool, I didn't consider the trick of doing a broad selection before using it. That will be a really helpful step to add in.

[Aphnne]

Great Tutorial, I think the sky is a little too blue and is starting to look "fake" but your instructions are great, thank you!

[irishwhite]

Originally Posted by Aphnne

Great Tutorial, I think the sky is a little too blue and is starting to look "fake" but your instructions are great, thank you!

i agree with you, i was more or less just trying to emphasize the difference. i would have liked to have used a photo with more interesting clouds but i couldn't find any on my flickr site and didn't feel like sorting through my photo's on my hard drive to find a better pic.

[Nicole]

It's funny, while the sky is very blue, it doesn't look particularly fake to me. Then again, we get some very blue skies and add in a polarizer, and you can get this result naturally at times.

[forever fallen]

Thank you Irish for sharing the info on this technique.
I appreciate all the work you put into it sharing it.
fallen

[photofun]

Thanks for sharing. You put alot of effort into writing up the tutorial - I've got to give this a try. Thanks again!

[FocalFrenzy]

Does anyone know if this can be accomplished in GIMP?

[MonkeyPie]

This is a nifty little trick! I'll have to try it sometime - normally I duplicate layers and use overlay, and it creates almost the same effect.

[richardpsic]

Originally Posted by Nicole

Nicely written and illustrated with the screen shots Thanks for sharing! While I've used the Color Range tool, I didn't consider the trick of doing a broad selection before using it. That will be a really helpful step to add in.

Same here, never consider before to use laso tool before selective selection.

Thanks for the tip!