This is for PhotoLab 3 (or Nik Collection, I have both. I’m using a MacBook Pro with Catalina. I have a photo I took on a cloudy day, so the sky is white clouds on a gray background.
I know how to change blue to red, or vice versa, or change many of the properties, but I have no idea what to do to convert my light gray sky into a light blue sky. I assume this can be done?
I’ve watched and saved bookmarks for many of the training videos, and am gradually learning how to create beautiful photos that I’m proud of, but this has me stumped. It’s probably something quite simple - maybe select all the sky, and somehow add a tint to it…
If it’s easier to do in Nik Collection 2, I’ll do it that way.
(one corner had the tiniest amount of blue, so I could work with that, but the rest seems to have no coloring.)
Replacement as in select from other image isn’t possible.
You could try to use HSL and select the area of the sky by searching for the skycolor and saturate that more and turn outer ring more to blue. Be aware that hole image area is effected by that.
Other way is use masking by upoint or smart brush and pull out every blue you can find. This is less destructive for WB on the landpart.
Did a super quick test this morning to see what is possible in DPL
activate automask and paint the sky
change color temperature until the sky was blue
Notes:
I reduced zoom value to 20% and made the automask brush really big so that I did not have to fiddle with painting - it’s a proof of concept that I present here after all - and reduced color temperature. When you look closely, you can also see some blue on some of the houses, you can avoid this when you paint more carefully than I did. The sky was really bland, no clouds at all. Can therefore not say anything about how they would look, you’d possibly need to use the eraser to exempt the clouds from the mask… I might have tried on the smoke near the right edge but refrained from doing so for this poc.
Ah yes, the old house selling trick of a blue sky making the house more attractive. Trouble is, this kind of manipulation tends to always look artificial due to the lack of sunlit areas or shadows. My personal take is, if the sky isn’t right, come back again when it is
@Joanna, completely agree. I’ve never used any of this so far (and never will), just wanted to see what is possible with the least amount of effort. Did not imagine it was that easy.
Reminds me of a guy I had met in Alice Springs (Australia) who told me that he had not taken any pictures of Uluru (Ayers Rock) because it had been raining. Missed chance to take an image or two, chance that you have every 5-10 years or so…
Excellent - that will work fine for what I need. I’m not going to make the blue very dark at all, and for the purpose this photo was taken for, that will help. The best answer is for me to wait for a better day where the sky is naturally blue, but your suggestion clearly answers my question.
Activate automask (haven’t used this yet)
Change color temperature until sky is slightly blue.
As I understand it, once the sky has even a blue tint, I can work with it until it’s what I want with other tools. I watched a one hour video on the “color wheel” last night, having no idea at first what it meant, or how to use it. Very powerful, and potentially very helpful for me - but the first thing I wanted to do was “paint the sky” blue. As I see things, a very light blue won’t be “blue enough” to look fake.
Joanna, I completely agree with you, but it’s not always possible to “come back”. Besides, I want to learn how to do lots of things, so when/if I need to do them, I’ll know how. I don’t like accepting “it can’t be done”; I assume that just means I don’t know how to do them (yet).
I think I know enough of the basics to go through the write-up and try what it suggested doing. If I get stuck, I’ll come back here and explain what happened. …and if it all works smoothly for me, I’ll post that as well.
I’ll start by re-reading everything, top to bottom.
