How do I make sure blue skies come out blue, and not white?!

[javavibe]

The metering mode is how your camera evaluates the light/dark areas of the picture you are taking and then attempts to determine the correct exposure for the situation you are in. I see you were using the Pattern mode on your camera. This mode is a good everyday sort of pictures, but does not correctly compensate for bright backgrounds or backlit subjects (which is what is happening in your case). A good quick explanation can be found here. I would try to use a Center Weighted mode (evaluates light/dark at the center of image). This should help in balancing out the bright background. The steps to changing the metering modes for you camera are below.

[candleman]

i dont have photoshop.. but i just play with the metering, and apeture until i get what i want. (try apeture priority to make it easy)

i havn't got it to a science.. just experiment in each scenario

[digirebelva]

Originally Posted by Bianconero

I like the idea of adding a sky from a different photo, as this will look more natural. Does anybody have a step by step guide on how to do this for us photoshop newbies?

http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...94950958238010


will give you a good idea how to do it. Mind you he is using PSE but you can of course use CS2(3) to do the same thing.

If the link does not work do a google search for "sky clipping mask"

I am waiting for a good evening shot to add to a cityscape photo that had a blown out sky.

[Bianconero]

Originally Posted by javavibe

The metering mode is how your camera evaluates the light/dark areas of the picture you are taking and then attempts to determine the correct exposure for the situation you are in. I see you were using the Pattern mode on your camera. This mode is a good everyday sort of pictures, but does not correctly compensate for bright backgrounds or backlit subjects (which is what is happening in your case). A good quick explanation can be found here. I would try to use a Center Weighted mode (evaluates light/dark at the center of image). This should help in balancing out the bright background. The steps to changing the metering modes for you camera are below.

Thanks. Never really understood metering, so this has helped

[acierman2006]

well i have a canon rebel xti ....and what worked for me was the expo disc to adjust my white setting ...it might work for you ....use your AV setting to do this ...i know i saw a way to do it with a coffee filter on youtube also ...i think it was ...but anyway try it ..good luck my friend

[Chad Z.]

Hey Bianconero. I took your picture and another high res sky photo and blended the sky into your white sky. All i did was take the picture and put it behind your boat picture and then with a soft brush and 5% opacity eraser, erased the sky from your picture so that the back sky would show through. Then i burned the sky with a soft brush and corrected the color to match the relfecting sky in the water. Wood's picture looked fake because it was a different blue than what was reflecting in the water. Then i duplicated the background sky photo and used a Gaussian blur at 10px radius and used the same soft eraser to blend in the soft sky from behind. I also changed the levels on the background sky so that the exposure of the white clouds matched the exposure of the white tip of the boat. Hope this helps.

[muddy250]

Use HDR or grab a set of these and a cheap cokin P holder. Easy to balance the light of the sky and landscape after that. Without it the sky just gets blown out and htere's no way to recover that within the one shot.

http://www.teamworkphoto.com/index.p...ducts_id=10288

Here's one taken using 2 filters 0.6 and 0.9, the sky was very bright and the meter had no chance of working out what to do.