Landscape sky issue

Clovishound

Clovishound

Senior Member
I took this photo at a local abbey. It is a beautiful spot on the Cooper river. I have done a lot of diving in the river near this old plantation turned into basically a retirement home for monks. Anyway, I love the look of this small body of water on the grounds. In the RAW file the sky is very splotchy and bland. I can bring up the saturation using several of the masks, and have managed to smooth it out a good bit, but it still doesn't look quite right to me. Perhaps it is a case of too much time spent messing with it, and I now can't see the forest for the trees. I'm thinking I might need to reshoot it using a polarizer.

Suggestions? Comments? Fixes?

_DAB8063-2.jpg


Here is a panoramic of the same location I tried. Needed to do a series of vertical shots to get the tops of the trees in, and had the wrong tripod head with me for that. This shows some of the issues I had with the sky while processing the single image.

_DAB8106-Pano.jpg
 
Fred Kingston

Fred Kingston

Senior Member
You can do one of two things... Do what Clyde Butcher does, keep going back, setup, and wait all day for the right cloud/sky... Or replace the one you get. :)
 
Clovishound

Clovishound

Senior Member
Not sure I can replace the sky smoothly given all the sky peeking through the tree branches. At least not at my level of skill.
 
BF Hammer

BF Hammer

Senior Member
I too get skies that are far too gray on my Z5. That is with the Raw file, not just Jpg. My solution has been to apply a D750-Normal color profile in post. The sensors are basically the same between the 2 bodies. Works like a charm in my workflow. Don't ask me how it would be done in Lightroom. Never have touched the software.
 
blackstar

blackstar

Senior Member
I am not sure if this problem is due to only my (computer) screen: all your posted images including Fred's sky replacement show a much unnature sky color (like painting greenish). Maybe it's just post-processed color?
 
blackstar

blackstar

Senior Member
Fred Kingston said:
Or maybe it’s your monitor’s color profile and calibration.
Click to expand...
Maybe, but it seems there are rare others' (including my) images I see on my monitor screen having the similar color cast. For example, (if you think my example's color looks off, let me check what's wrong.)

KFW_4171s.JPG
 
Needa

Needa

Senior Member
Challenge Team
Clovishound said:
I took this photo at a local abbey. It is a beautiful spot on the Cooper river. I have done a lot of diving in the river near this old plantation turned into basically a retirement home for monks. Anyway, I love the look of this small body of water on the grounds. In the RAW file the sky is very splotchy and bland. I can bring up the saturation using several of the masks, and have managed to smooth it out a good bit, but it still doesn't look quite right to me. Perhaps it is a case of too much time spent messing with it, and I now can't see the forest for the trees. I'm thinking I might need to reshoot it using a polarizer.

Suggestions? Comments? Fixes?

View attachment 390958

Here is a panoramic of the same location I tried. Needed to do a series of vertical shots to get the tops of the trees in, and had the wrong tripod head with me for that. This shows some of the issues I had with the sky while processing the single image.

View attachment 390959
Click to expand...
Think you instincts are good here, could make a very nice image. It is a very tough image to manipulate the sky for, as what you do to the sky need to be reflected in the water. I do think parts of the sky color is off. You mentioned that you increased the contrast, maybe try adding or removing various amounts of red and green in the sky. Did the highlight in the sky get blown? Maybe not all the channels just one? Id like to see what you come up with if you shoot it again.
 
Fred Kingston

Fred Kingston

Senior Member
Needa said:
Fred, when you do a sky replacement like that does it change the reflections to match?
Click to expand...
Yes, you can...I didn't play with it too much... just loaded it, and swapped the sky in about 3 clicks and reposted it... I was just demo'ing that it does an acceptable job in a relatively painless few seconds...You can resize, and move the sky elements around in the image to achieve any effect you want...using any one of a couple thousand available skies, and/or load your own skies... and sky elements... that includes stars, suns, moons, etc... and even change the direction of the light and glow from those elements... Some of these programs are quite adept at achieving stylistic changes... there isn't a singular program that does everything great...but some of them do do a single task rather well.
 
Fred Kingston

Fred Kingston

Senior Member
Use the above test image on your system. Go into your OS's monitor settings and change your color profiles to the various ones to see the range of the different color profiles... select the one that makes the test photo look the most natural... paying attention to both the color sections and the B&W sections of the image...
 
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