Here’s a few tips from a photographer on the many ways to get better skies in your photos.
1) When shooting the scene use a circular polarizer to darken the blue sky. Circular polarizers have a rotating front glass element that needs to be turned based on the angle of the light. You can just turn the front ring and see the skies darken while looking through the lens. A circular polarizer will also increase the contrast in clouds which will help the clouds stand out more.
2) Use a Neutral Density filter when photographing to darken light skies. They are available from 2-10 stops. Neutral density filters are also great for darkening sunset photos to get even more vibrant colors. For sunset photos use a tripod and longer exposure to see even more color in your image.
3) Watch the weather and photograph on cloudy days right before and after a storm to get more dramatic skies and sometimes even a rainbow.
4) Shoot in RAW – When you shoot in RAW mode you capture more data and can bring back more photo details in Photoshop or Lightroom. See video for example. Jpegs are compressed smaller files that have less information.
5) Use Photoshop’s sky replacement to to replace a boring sky with a great sky. See the video tutorial below for step by step instructions. Need great skies? Check out my sky stock photo pack.
6) In Lightroom use the graduated filter to darken your skies. See Video below for example.
Do you want to learn more? I teach Photoshop and Lightroom one-on-one lessons via Zoom
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