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Darken the sky with Photoshop CC step by step
In landscape photography, the sky is often 2-3 stops brighter than the rest of the landscape. The camera can't capture as many tones as the eye, and the sky in a photo will often be white with no detail. The sky with clouds is an essential part of a landscape, and it can improve a photo significantly if one makes the sky darker without making the rest of the image darker.

In this tutorial, I will show how it can be done step by step.
 
This is a final photo with a darker sky and contrast in the clouds.

This is the original photo, where the clouds are white with now contrast.

What we will do is to make 2 copy of the photo. One where the chives looks right, and another where the sky is darker and then blend the photos.
Make 2 copies of the photos and save them in TIF. Open one photo in the raw converter with Open as raw.

Use Graduated Filter to make the sky darker. It doesn't matter if the chives get darker to. Open the photo and save it.

Select the original photo and open the Channel menu. 1. load channel as selection, 2. save Channel as selection.

Hold down 3 keys, Shift, Ctrl and Alt and double mouseklick on the symbol for Alha channel 1. Do the same thing again. Now the brighter part of the sky is selected.

Select inverse. Every thing but the brightest array are marked.

Use the Quick selection tool to mark the chives.

Select inverse.

Select Layer/New/Layer from bachground. Push OK on the pop up screen.

Select Edit/cut and the brightest of the sky is gone.

Save the photo with Alpha Channels and layers.

Make sure that the 2 photos that are to be blended are saved and open. Select File/Scripts/Load files into stack.

Select Add open files and OK.

Make sure the lightest photo are on top and selectet. Use the slider to balance the tones.

Double mouseklick with the red arrow and select Merge down. The photo are finish and the sky are darker than on the original photo.



 

 

 

 
About, Bird photography, Landscape and Seascape, Macro and extreme macro photography, Surreal trick photography