Saturday, March 23, 2013

Towards Blue(r) Sky(s)

Original (Polarizing)

Increased Saturation

Decrease Luminance

original taken with polarizing filter After Increased Saturation After Decreased Luminance
The light in summer here in Australia is very intense and it is really hard to get a decent blue sky. So I normally have a polaroid filter screwed on the front of my camera from November to April. The filter works a lot like the sun glasses, at different angles they will filter out and cut the intensity of the light. By rotating the filter you can see the darkening. As well as helping darkening the blue of the sky versus gulls or clouds, the polaroid can also work like a mini neutral density filter, to give you a slightly longer exposure on some landscapes. The common approach is just make the sky bluer by increasing the colours saturation.
blue sky saturation

In Lightroom you’d go to the develop module and slide the saturation slider to the right. Notice the gulls beak is also a more intense yellow
blue sky intensity
This is a less obvious route, In Lightroom you can go down to colour adjustment and in the HSL tab go into the Luminace panel and hold back on the blue a little. This just darkens the blue only and leaves the tonal range and colours on the gull untouched.

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