Enhancing/Changing sky color

[sue24]

Hello everybody,

I am new to this forum and a beginner with photoshop as well. I can't seem to figure out an easy method to enhance the sky color in this picture with out loosing the smoke trails. I tried to replace the sky from another image, but its taking a lot of time and effort to work around the smoke trail. I have quite a few pictures that need the sky enhancement. It was a cloudy day and most of my pictures had grey sky.
I tried gradient tool method as well, but since there is no color to start with in the sky, it didn't produce the result I was looking for.
Can anybody suggest a better way to get this done?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Tom Mann]

There are many different approaches one could take. For the most realistic clouds, I would completely replace the background with some "good" sky. OTOH, if you just want to quickly spruce up this photo, one can enhance the local contrast in the sky and change it from gray to more blue. In both procedures, one has to start with an accurate selection of the plane(s).

In the example below, I used the quick select tool followed by "refine edges" to get a reasonably good selection of the plane. Because this doesn't do a good job on the prop, I used the polygonal lasso tool to include the blurred propellor.

Once I had a good selection, I put the plane and the sky on two separate layers.

I did very little to the plane except to sharpen it up a bit, adjust levels, etc.

For the background layer, I used the content-aware fill tool to fill in the "hole" where the plane used to be. I then used the "clarify" and sharpen sliders (in ACR) to increase the local contrast in the sky, adjusted its brightness and color, and I was done.

It's not great, but it isn't too bad for a few minutes of work.

TomM

PS - I'll leave it to you to do the same for the other planes in that group of 3.

 

[Trevor Dennis]

There's nothing in the original to work with, so 'enhancing' the image is not going to work. If you have any blues at all in the sky, you can enhance them in Adobe Camera RAW using the HSL tab, and darken the blues, an increasing saturation for the blues. If already open in PS, you can do the same thing with a Selective colour adjustment layer. You have to be careful not to go to far, as this trick can produce clumpy noise if pushed.

 

[Tom Mann]

Since there was almost no blue in the sky in the original, instead of using the HSL adjustments in ACR, I used the main white balance adjustment sliders and added a bit more blue using the split toning adjustment tab.

For what its worth, I was able to do this within PS because I'm using the Creative Cloud version of PS, but if you have an older version, it hardly takes any effort to pull the cloud layer outside of PS and than bring it back in using the normal, external version of ACR.

However, as Trevor said, there are lots of other ways to adjust the color of the sky within PS once it is isolated on its own layer. He suggested using "Selective Color". Other options include a "Photo Filter" adjustment layer or a "Color Balance" adjustment layer.

For something like this, it hardly matters which you use, but just don't use a technique designed to enhance or change a color that's already present, e.g., a "Hue/Sat" layer (without checking the "colorize" box). However, one can use a "Hue/Sat" adjustment layer, if you check the "colorize" box because it is introducing new color, not trying to bring out color which doesn't exist.

HTH,

TomM

 

[sue24]

Thank You Tom, I will try this method and see I can produce the result like you did.

 

[sue24]

There are many different approaches one could take. For the most realistic clouds, I would completely replace the background with some "good" sky. OTOH, if you just want to quickly spruce up this photo, one can enhance the local contrast in the sky and change it from gray to more blue. In both procedures, one has to start with an accurate selection of the plane(s).

In the example below, I used the quick select tool followed by "refine edges" to get a reasonably good selection of the plane. Because this doesn't do a good job on the prop, I used the polygonal lasso tool to include the blurred propellor.

Once I had a good selection, I put the plane and the sky on two separate layers.

I did very little to the plane except to sharpen it up a bit, adjust levels, etc.

For the background layer, I used the content-aware fill tool to fill in the "hole" where the plane used to be. I then used the "clarify" and sharpen sliders (in ACR) to increase the local contrast in the sky, adjusted its brightness and color, and I was done.

It's not great, but it isn't too bad for a few minutes of work.

TomM

PS - I'll leave it to you to do the same for the other planes in that group of 3.

Tom,
I have trouble getting this to work. I am not able to separate the Sky and planes in 2 different layers. I separated the planes with quick selection tool into a new layer. But am not able to use content aware fill in the back ground image. I still see flights in that image after I put them in new layer with quick selection tool. What am I doing wrong here? I am using Photoshop CC Trail version. Also how do I get the ACR filter work on the background layer with out having to merge rest of the layers.

 

[Paul]

Have you tried masking out the planes from the background and replacing it with a new sky scene?

 

[Tom Mann]

Hey, Paul - In her very first post, she mentioned that she tried replacing the sky, but wasn't happy with the result for a couple of reasons, not the least of which was that she really wanted to retain the original smoke trails.

It also sounded like she probably doesn't think she can believably brush or composite smoke trails onto a new sky background, especially given the large number of images she wants to work on. To be honest, I would worry about that myself if I had to do a couple of dozen images, not just one or two.

Cheers,

T

 

[Paul]

Yeah i reread the op's post my bad.

 

[sue24]

Since there was almost no blue in the sky in the original, instead of using the HSL adjustments in ACR, I used the main white balance adjustment sliders and added a bit more blue using the split toning adjustment tab.

For what its worth, I was able to do this within PS because I'm using the Creative Cloud version of PS, but if you have an older version, it hardly takes any effort to pull the cloud layer outside of PS and than bring it back in using the normal, external version of ACR.

However, as Trevor said, there are lots of other ways to adjust the color of the sky within PS once it is isolated on its own layer. He suggested using "Selective Color". Other options include a "Photo Filter" adjustment layer or a "Color Balance" adjustment layer.

For something like this, it hardly matters which you use, but just don't use a technique designed to enhance or change a color that's already present, e.g., a "Hue/Sat" layer (without checking the "colorize" box). However, one can use a "Hue/Sat" adjustment layer, if you check the "colorize" box because it is introducing new color, not trying to bring out color which doesn't exist.

HTH,

TomM

Tom,

I have trouble getting this to work. I am not able to separate the Sky and planes in 2 different layers. I separated the planes with quick selection tool into a new layer. But am not able to use content aware fill in the back ground image. I still see flights in that image after I put them in new layer with quick selection tool. What am I doing wrong here? I am using Photoshop CC Trail version. Also how do I get the ACR filter work on the background layer with out having to merge rest of the layers?

would you mind giving detailed instructions? Thanks for your help.