Use Lightroom to Enhance the Sky

This week I wanted to write about a Lightroom technique to enhance the sky in your photos. Sometime when you are out shooting landscapes you might get a fantastic shot, but when you get home to post process, you find the sky is kind of blown out, looking more white than blue with clouds. How can you fix this and not end up scrapping the image all together, or having the shot look ho hum, enter the Gradient Tool in Lightroom.

Blah sky with some clouds

 The Lightroom Gradient tool in the Develop Module can really help improve your sky, especially if you capture a shot at a lake or river and you can see the blue of the sky and white of the clouds in the reflection on the water. Select the Gradient Tool, which looks like a rectangle and then take the little + crosshair and hold it at the top of your image, now hold down the shift key, which will make your pull down go straight and drag to the bottom of the sky portion.

Some blue added in with Gradient Tool

Next go to the Adjustments for the Gradient Tool and use the Highlight slider or Exposure slider and pull out more of the details in the sky. Generally the Highlight slider will get the job done and I tend to always shoot my landscapes especially with my Light meter in the camera about two ticks before the mid center tick mark. Then, when I edit, I use the Highlight slider and the Shadows slider to pull in more details in those areas, but sometime, you need just a bit more to get that nice looking sky, and thats when the Gradient tool comes in handy.

Finished image

You can even take your adjustments when you are done and save them as a custom adjustment, name it, and then use it over and over again. Lightroom is without a doubt one of, if not THE best post processing software on the market for photography, which is why so many Pros use Lightroom worldwide. Now one thing to remember is shoot in RAW, so you can actually get those details to pull out in Post Processing. You can use Lightroom to work JPG files, but those file types don't allow nearly as much improvement without the file going to crap in the process.

I know what you are thinking, "But RAW files are so BIG"! They are, but memory cards are fairly cheap these days and if you are shooting landscapes, you don't need a large FPS like you would for sports. So, next time you get a nice landscape, but the sky is blown out, don't despair, just grab that Gradient Tool and work some "magic".

Comments/Questions

Wide-Angle Wednesday- Keeping on task!

Greetings from the frozen Midwest!

I’m really starting to think the Arctic misses me and wants me back. I lived three years in beautiful central Alaska, and you would think I was used to the frigid temperatures. With that said, it’s been so cold I have not been out to shoot for a long time.  Additionally if I braved the frozen wind, I don’t have an idea to where or what I would like to shoot.

This mindset leads me to talk about being on task. I know that in order to keep the fire burning and to hone the skills, I need to keep shooting.  This is especially a challenge when not in a photography focused course, the landscape is just blah, and of course the weather. The last photog course I had ended in November and since then I have been focused on math and currently I’m working on color theory for web and multimedia.

So where do I go from here?

I recently found out that this time of the year is a great time to photograph bald eagles migrating down from the North. Sounds like an awesome field trip to the areas they are known to flock. After consulting a few local photog friends, it doesn’t appear I will have a lens with enough focal length to capture the eagles from the area in which people are allowed to show up and observe the flocks. The subject is there but not an option if I can’t get close enough. Though this gives a goal for next season.

Not all is lost, I just had to find the focus and get on task. Remember what Confucius is quoted to have said, “Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.”

Now to turn the page, I have taken sometime to brainstorm some ideas that sound interesting and of course is do able. I figured a great start is finding a theme that can be revisited in times like this. For a previous course I developed a photo series focused on a local historic park in which I titled “Discovering Maramec”. Granted the course has come to an end, but I could always revisit Maramec. Nah I think something new is needed. I looked at maybe a theme based on forced or odd perspectives. Another idea is a scavenger hunt of objects or locations. I’m thinking something similar to the vacation car ride A-Z game we played with our son in our travels across the country. I figured I could come up with a list of random objects and or locations using the alphabet. Figured the theme would be a unique series of 26 images.

Now that I have a focus, I’m going to look at completing this series in one week!

I look forward to sharing what I plan to call “The Alphabet Series” next week.

Last week I wrote about resources, and today I wrote about staying on task with a side of creativity. Feel free to share your ideas by commenting below anytime, any day.

May your Wide-Angle Wednesday be spent someplace tropical!

From My Camera to Yours,

Wednesday's Student Ambassador