How to improve washed out skies?

[huxdug]

This question has probably been answered before but i could not find it with a forum search, but I am looking for a reasonably quick solution to washed out skies. I am using PSPX3 . Any ideas please ? Thanks

[LeviFiction]

You can increase saturation of the sky in any number of ways.

1) Saturation Up/Down brush. This lets you paint in more saturation according to the opacity level of the brush. Left mouse button increases saturation, right-mouse button decreases saturation.

2) Use the Hue/Saturation/Lightness command or Adjustment layer. Select "Blue" from the list of colors to pinpoint and gently increase the saturation.

This will increase the saturation of all blue values in the image however, so using the Adjustment layer you can mask out the areas you don't want to be effected.

3) Use the Vibrancy command. Vibrancy adds saturation to the dingiest colors to really help bring them out. You can limit this to the sky by making a selection or by duplicating the layer and applying a mask. But the quickest method is to just let the command work on the whole image.

And the list goes on (Curves dialog, levels, splitting channel colors and applying effects before recombining them). But those I thought were some of the quickest methods. And of course there are more, some might even be quicker and better.

[df]

If you're looking for a sky replacement take a look at this posting viewtopic.php?f=56&t=45187

[huxdug]

If you're looking for a sky replacement take a look at this posting viewtopic.php?f=56&t=45187

Brilliant thanks for that.

[hartpaul]

Or a step by step to make it a bit clearer: (Image referse to the image on the workspace, image layer refers to the layer in the layers palette.) Revised from the link two postings up.
1. Start with bald sky scenic image, right click the layer and Promote Background Layer and label it Scenic 1
2. Duplicate. and label it Scenic 2 (fFrom bottom up you have Scenic 1, Scenic 2 in layers palette)
3. Load a sky image with similar lighting to the Scenic and place it on top of Scenic 2 layer as a new layer.
(Right click copy sky image, then on the scenic image right click and Paste as New Layer
OR
Have the two images side by side and click on the Sky image , then drag the Sky layer thumbnail on top of the Scenic image. (This does a copy and paste in two steps which I find much faster)
Label it Sky.
4.Select Sky Layer and Make a new mask layer. Layers --> New Mask Layer --> From Image and choose the other non sky image image and under Create Mask From - tick Source Luminance Click OK
(there are other ways of getting the mask layer - Right Click the Sky layer and New Mask Layer ... etc as above).
5. From bottom you now have Scenic 1, Scenic 2, Sky, Mask- Sky, Group- Sky
6. Choose the Group - Sky layer and change the Blende mode to Darken, or Multiply.
That's it. You can even see the sky between leaves etc. This saves a lot of time and is far better than using selection tools, or background eraser, editing/ painting masks although you may need to do some of that if parts of the sky are not totally bald.