Sometimes, you may take a photo 
of a beautiful subject,
but you end up with a boring gray sky.
Unfortunately, you cannot control the
weather, but there's a lot you can do in Photoshop
to make a boring gray sky into an amazing
blue sky. In this video, I'm gonna show you
several techniques to enhance your skies and
make them blue in Photoshop.
Hi, I'm Jesús Ramirez from 
the PhotoshopTraining Channel.
This Photoshop tutorial is going be packed with information as usual,
so make sure that you stick around until the
very end, so that you don't miss any Photoshop
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to it.
This is the image that I'm going to work with.
I was in Milan, Italy recently. I was there
for a little over a day, but I got to take
this photo of the Duomo. Unfortunately, it
was an overcast day, and this photo would
have been much better if the sky was blue,
so that it would contrast better with the
yellows and oranges of the Duomo. In this
video, I'm going to show a few techniques
that you can use to make the sky blue in your
overcast photos.
The first step is to convert your image into
a smart object. We want to work non-destructively,
so I'm just going to right-click and select
Convert to Smart Object. A smart object is
simply a container that holds one or more
layers and it allows you to apply adjustments,
distortions, filters and transformations non-destructively,
which means you can always come back and edit
them. You can tell that the layer is a smart
object by looking at this little, tiny icon
here on the bottom right of the layer thumbnail.
Now that we have a smart object, there's one
thing that you can try in your photos. I know
that it's not gonna work for this image, but
maybe it works in your photo, so I wanna show
you anyway. I'm gonna go into Filter, Camera
Raw Filter. From the Camera Raw Filter, we
can adjust the tonality and color of the image.
We also have this wonderful tab called the
HSL Adjustment tab. This tab allows us to
control the hue, saturation and luminance
of individual colors with these sliders. Notice
that one of the sliders is titled Blues. That
means that we can control the hue, saturation
and luminance of the blues.
I'm already in the Luminance slider, so I
can drag the blue slider to the left to try
to get some blue back into that sky. In this
image, this is really not going to work. There's
a lotta JPEG compression artifacts in that
photo, which, by the way, I have a tutorial
that shows you how to remove JPEG artifacts
from a photo. I'm not gonna do that in this
tutorial, but if you're wondering how to do
that, I'll place a link down below in the
description for that video.
But anyway, this technique is not gonna work
in this photo, but it may work in your image.
We might be able to just move it a little
bit and try to get more blue in there, but
this is really not gonna work. You could also
try adding a little bit of saturation into
the blues and maybe that gives you a better
result, but again, in this case, I'm not going
to use the camera raw filter in this step,
so I'm just going to press Cancel.
What I'm gonna do instead is create a digital
sky, but first, I need to make a selection
out of the sky, and one of the easiest ways
of doing that with an image like this that
has so much detail is by using the Channels
panel. From here, you will see the red, green
and blue channels that make up the RGB image.
These channels are projecting light. When
you mix the light of these three channels,
you'll generate all the images that you see
in Photoshop, and the channels simply tell
you that where there's a lot of white, that's
a lotta red light, and where there's black,
there is no red light. All three lights together
make white, and the absence of all three lights
make black.
But anyway, what you need to do is click on
each individual channel and see which of the
channels has more contrast between the foreground
and background. In most cases, for projects
like these it will be the blue channel because
there's blue in the sky and there probably
won't be much blue in the foreground, depending
on the photo that you have, of course. In
this case, the blue channel works best, so
we're going to create a channel based selection
out of the blue channel.
The next step is to duplicate the channel.
You can duplicate the channel by clicking
the channel and dragging it over into the
new channel icon and you'll get a copy. You
don't have to rename the copy if you don't
want to. I'm going to leave mine as default.
Next, you need to make the sky white and everything
else black. So one of the things that you
can do is you can start by using the dodge
and burn tools. The dodge tool allows you
to make pixels brighter. Which pixels are
you going to make brighter? In the options
bar, you can see this dropdown titled range,
and you can target the shadows, midtones and
highlights. In this case, I wanna work with
the highlights, and we'll use an exposure,
this is the intensity, of 50%.
So notice that when I paint in these bright
areas, the image gets much, much brighter.
But if I paint on these darker areas, the
effect is much more subtle. So this tool allows
you to target specific tonal ranges. I'm going
to press Ctrl Z on Windows, Command Z on the
Mac, to undo that change, and I'm just going
to paint very loosely on the sky. And it's
okay if I touch the Duomo. I'm not really
gonna make it white, but I'm gonna try to
stay away from it as much as I can, since
I don't wanna lose a lot of those smaller
details. I just wanna make sure that these
areas are completely white, like so.
Next, I'm gonna do the opposite. I'm going
to select the burn tool. I'm going to select
Shadows. Exposure at 50% is fine. I can increase
or decrease the size of my brush by tapping
on the left or right bracket keys on the keyboard.
I'm gonna make my brush larger, and I'm just
going to paint here, like so. Just trying
to make some of those edge pixels darker.
I don't need to worry too much about the pixels
in the center because what I can do is just
select the lasso tool, and just quickly freehand
a very loose selection around these pixels,
like so. And if you make a mistake, you can
always come back and make adjustments. You
can hold Shift, and click and drag to add
your selection, or you can hold Alt on Windows,
Option on the Mac, and click and drag to subtract.
So just make the appropriate selection for
your image, and I guess I might as well select
these areas. But anyway, now that I have this
selection active, what I can do is fill with
black. Black is currently my background color,
so I can press Ctrl Backspace on Windows,
that's Command Delete on the Mac, to fill
with the background color. Then I can press
Ctrl D, Command D on the Mac to deselect.
And we're gonna use some really powerful feature
in Photoshop that allows us to take this channel
and apply it to itself using a blending mode
to either enhance the shadows or highlights.
Let me show you how that works. I'm gonna
go into Image, Apply Image. Then I can select
what channel I'm using. I'm gonna use the
blue copy, and I can select the blending mode.
Currently, the selected blending mode is Screen,
and notice what happens here. Let me move
this to the side. I'm gonna uncheck Preview,
and you can see that Photoshop is applying
this channel with the screen blending mode
onto itself, which makes the image brighter.
So see that? And by the way, here's a pro
tip, you can always press the P key on the
keyboard on any window that has a preview
checkbox to enable or disable that checkbox.
But anyway, I'm gonna leave it set to screen.
You could always adjust the opacity if you
want to. In this case, I don't need to, I'm
gonna leave it at 100, and I'll press OK.
Next, I'm gonna do the same thing, but this
time I'm going to make the channel darker.
So I'm gonna go into Image, Apply Image, and
instead of selecting the screen blending mode,
I'm going to select the multiply blending
mode because that makes things darker. By
the way, if you're not familiar with blending
modes, or why these blending modes are working
the way that they are, I have a tutorial that
talks about all the blending modes. It's an
in-depth tutorial. I also have a written article
about it. I'll place a link down below in
the description if you want to learn more
about blending modes.
But anyway, so you can select Multiply, or
you could also select Color Burn. And you
can actually go down the list and see if any
of these darkening blending modes make a better
adjustment for what you're trying to do, and
this case, it looks like the linear burn does
a really good job. See how it just makes everything
so much darker? So I'm gonna try that linear
burn. I'll press OK, and I can... you can
do it again. Image, Apply Image, and that
does a really good job. And you can keep applying
that over and over again until you get all
the smaller details, or you can go into the
brush tool and just make a smaller brush and
make it a little bit harder, so the edges
are not too soft. And make sure that you set
black as your foreground color, and you can
paint away these smaller details.
Again, you can use the bracket keys on the
keyboard to increase or decrease the size
of your brush as you paint. I'm not gonna
spend too much time fine tuning the image,
but in your project, spend a little more time,
obviously. So we'll just say that this is
good for now, and I can now make a selection
out of the bright pixels in this channel.
I can simply hold Ctrl, Command on the Mac,
and click on the channel thumbnail, and that
will load the bright pixels as a selection.
I can click on RGB and go back into the layers
panel, and from here, I can create a gradient
fill here. And that's going to create that
gradient, but the fill will not be applied
to the Duomo because of the layer mask, obviously.
And what I'm gonna do now is simply select
the color that I'm going to use for the fill
by clicking on the gradient editor here. This
window will come up, and what you can do is
click on black and white if you're on an older
version of Photoshop. If you're on the Creative
Cloud, there's a different method that I'll
show you in a moment. If you're on an older
version of Photoshop, you can click on this
swatch, and then just make this one like an
off blue color. And then this one on the right,
double click on it and make it a blue that
is similar to the color of the sky that you
want to have. If you're in a new version of
Photoshop, you'll have access to this blues
folder where you can click on these pre-made
gradients. For example, there's another one
in here that'll look good for a different
type of day. I think is this one here. Yeah,
this one here will work for maybe like an
early morning, or afternoon, or something
like that, and you can adjust it accordingly,
of course.
The point is that you have all these different
gradients and these groups. Not just blues,
but all different kinds. So you can use those
as well. There's also these cloud gradients
that you can use that might help you generate
skies as well. But for what I'm going for
in this case, I think that the blues will
work great, and the one that I'm gonna use
is the very first one, this one here. And
what I wanna do is drag the blue onto the
right side and the lighter color onto the
left side, and I can double click on it and
edit it if I need to. I just wanted to show
that it's just an off-white color. I'll press
OK, and this is our image. I can now press
OK once more, and I can click and drag to
adjust my fill.
Now, something very important when you're
doing this is that you don't wanna make your
sky too dark. You gotta look at the image
itself and see the other elements. For example,
you can see a lotta atmospheric perspective
here on the back part of the Duomo. So if
I were to make my sky darker, then it wouldn't
look very realistic because this part of the
Duomo is very bright and it has a lotta atmospheric
perspective. So be careful with that. I wanna
show you in a moment something that you can
do to alleviate that problem, but in most
cases, you just want to adjust these accordingly,
so that you don't necessarily have to change
the elements of the image unless you really
have to.
So once again, you can click and drag on the
actual gradient fill to determine how much
blue you have, or how much white, and you
can increase the scale as well. So maybe in
this case, I'll increase the scale and do
something like this. Maybe even drag it up
a little bit more since we need this area
to be brighter. I'll press OK, and this is
my before and this is after. Now, we are gonna
run into some problems in images like this
one that have a lotta small, intricate details.
Let me zoom in into this area here on the
left hand side. I'm going to press the Z key
on the keyboard to select the zoom tool, and
then I'm going to zoom in. And notice that
this area is just completely destroyed by
that mask. So you can see what the original
image looks like and you can see the results
with this mask.
One way to fix this problem is by clicking
on the blending mode dropdown and simply selecting
the multiply blending mode. So that's multiply
and this is normal, so huge difference. You
bring the detail back from the original image.
So make sure that you use the multiply blending
mode. I think that it does a really good job
and it gives you great results. Now that you've
brought back all that detail onto the image,
let me show you other things that you can
do to further enhance that photo.
I'm going to double click on the hand tool
to fit the image to screen, and you can see
the before and the after. I think that the
sky might be a little too dark because notice
that the tower back here just looks way brighter
than the sky. So instead of making this darker
or reducing the opacity, which is actually
something that will work very well, like you
saw there, I'm gonna try to make the back
darker because in some cases you may wanna
have just a little bit of a darker sky. So
how do I make this particular tower darker?
Let me show you a really cool technique.
First of all, you can create a curves adjustment
layer, then delete the layer mask, so right-click
and select Delete Layer Mask. And you already
probably know that you can hold Alt on Windows,
Option on the Mac, and drag the the layer
mask to duplicate it onto another layer, but
doing so makes it so that we're affecting
the sky, and we wanna do the opposite. We
want to affect the building. So obviously
you can click on the layer mask and click
on Invert, and now when you make an adjustment,
it only affects the building, right?
But there's actually a better way of doing
that, and let me first click on this reset
icon to rest that, and let me right-click
on that layer mask and select Delete Layer
Mask. And the faster way of doing that is
by clicking on the original layer mask, and
remember what we wanna do. We want to duplicate
the layer mask and invert it at the same time.
To do that, you can hold Alt and Shift, that's
Option Shift on the Mac, and click and drag
that layer mask onto another layer, and it
duplicates it and inverts it at the same time.
That's a really powerful keyboard shortcut
that I recommend that you use. Let me know
down in the comments below if you're familiar
with that keyboard shortcut.
But anyway, we have this curves adjustment
layer that is targeting the Duomo, so see
when I click and drag, I'm only affecting
the building. So what I'm gonna do is click
on this direct selection tool so that I can
hover over the image. You'll notice that in
the curve that point will appear, so that
is where these pixels appear on the image.
So I'm gonna click and drag down to make those
darker, but notice that I make the entire
image dark as well. I really don't wanna make
the building itself darker, so I'm gonna click
on the building and drag up, so I'm only making
that back part darker.
Obviously, I'm affecting the entire image,
but here's a trick for you. I'm going to create
a group, and I'll just call this group Atmosphere
because I'm going to try to fix the atmosphere
with that group, and I'm going to click that
curves adjustment layer into that group. Then
I'm gonna collapse it and I'm going to hold
Alt on Windows, Option on the Mac, and click
on the layer mask icon to create a black layer
mask, which will hide everything in that group.
From the toolbar, I can select a brush tool
and make sure that white is my foreground
color. So I can click on this icon here to
swap the foreground and background color,
and I can start painting now with white in
the areas where I want to reveal that effect.
Let me zoom in so that you get a closer look
at that. See how I'm only painting on that
tower now? I'm not affecting the sky, I'm
not affecting the other parts of the building.
That's because we have two layer masks working,
essentially, on one part. We have a layer
mask that targets just the building, and then
we have a layer mask that hides everything,
and now I'm only selectively painting the
areas where I want this effect to show. So
obviously, in your images, spend more time
fine tuning these little details. I'm going
to go here fairly quickly, so that you can
see how this effect works, but I think that
you'll get the idea. See how I'm just targeting
that back building, and maybe I could do these
towers as well.
The point is, is that the building, the Duomo
was a little bright in those areas, so a darker
sky wouldn't look so realistic. So that's
before and after. So see that by making that
subtle adjustment, the sky no longer looks
so off. And I can actually probably go even
darker on that sky. So you will have to spend
some time in your own images to get the results
that you're looking for, but just use these
techniques. Again, there's no right number,
there's no right value to input on these boxes,
it's all up to your eyes. So go ahead and
give it a try with your images.
Now, before we finish, I wanna show you one
last thing. I'm going to select the layer
on top by clicking on it, then I'm gonna hold
Shift, and I'm going to click on this layer
here at the bottom, and I'm going to right
click and convert it into a smart object.
So now I have the before and the after. And
what I'm gonna do is treat this new layer
as a single image and go into Filter, Camera
Raw Filter, and from here I can control tonal
and color adjustments. So I can start out
by adjusting the shadows, maybe making the
shadows brighter to bring in just a little
more detail in those shadows, and making the
highlights darker to add detail to the highlights.
And I can increase the texture to make that
building pop a little more, and also increase
clarity, which is contrast on edge pixels.
And I can increase the vibrance, which adds
saturation to an image in a smart way. It
protects already saturated pixels and skin
tones. So I can just add a little bit of vibrance.
Then I go can into the detail tab and I can
increase the sharpening. When you increase
the sharpening, you really can't tell what
the effect is applied to, so I recommend going
into the masking slider and holding the Alt
key on Windows, that's the Option key on the
Mac, and clicking on that, and if you're holding
down that keyboard shortcut, the image will
turn white. This is a layer mask, basically.
White reveals, black conceals. So as I drag
to the right, Photoshop will start finding
edges, and it will hide things that are not
edges the further to the right that I go.
So at this point, notice how the sharpening
effect is no longer affecting the sky, and
that's great. I don't want the sky to be sharpened.
And I can continue going further to the right
to just isolate those edges. So maybe something
like that. Maybe 90 or so. So I'll just leave
it at there. So that's before and after. I
know it's a very subtle effect, specially
with the compression of the video on YouTube,
but hopefully you can see at least a subtle
change. And the sharpening is only applied
to the edges of the building and not the sky
or anything else.
I'm going to right-click and select Fit in
View, and I can now go into the HSL adjustments
that we looked at in the beginning of the
tutorial, and I can adjust the blues now.
See that? See how I can really start adjusting
the blues now, and I can now adjust the oranges
to maybe make the building a little bit more
orange, so that it contrasts better with that
blue. I can adjust the luminance of that building,
and, of course, the sky as well. So feel free
to adjust these sliders any way that you want
to make your image even more amazing.
And you probably already know this by now
if you've been watching my tutorials, I always
like to add grain to my images to make 'em
look a little more realistic since if I apply
any blur or any compositing or anything like
that, I lose that film grain and things don't
look very real. They look very computer generated,
very smooth. So I always like to add just
a little bit of grain to make sure that things
don't look so smooth. I'm going to collapse
this smart object, then I'll click on this
eye icon, and you can see the before and after.
I think it looks much better. Let me know
what you think down in the comments below.
Also, let me know what you learned. The comments
is the only way that I get to interact with
you, so make sure that you leave your thoughts
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