In photos, the sky can often look muted and washed out due to over exposure. In this tutorial you'll learn how to bring back definition and add drama to your sky.
Open your photo in Photoshop.
First add a Brightness/Contrast adjustment layer.
To give definition to the sky you need to increase the Contrast, and decrease the Brightness.
Don't worry about how dark the landscape in the foreground looks, we'll fix that next.
When you're happy with how the sky looks, select everything in the foreground using the Quick Selection tool.
Make sure the Brighness/Contrast layer thumbnail is still selected, then go to Edit>Fill and choose Black, then click OK.
You have now masked out the effect of the Brigtness/Contrast layer in the foreground of the photo.
Next we'll increase the overall contrast of the image.
Add a Levels adjustment layer, and use the black colour picker to choose the darkest part of your image, and the white colour picker to choose the lightest part of your image.
Finally, add a Hue/Saturation layer and take the Saturation down to -70%.
Here's how your final image should end up looking.
And here's how your layers panel should look.
Below are a couple more examples of how this simple technique can add a lot more drama to you photos.
Use the share buttons below if you found this useful, and don't forget to leave a comment.
