smooth skies

[Karamac]

How do I get the 'smooth' effect in skies etc in Photoshop?
instead of it being pixelled and rough looking?

[Matt]

Do you have an example of what your trying to achieve?

Are you trying to replace the sky?

[Karamac]

A lot of pics I have looked at have a 'smooth' effect about the colours, instead of rough looking.

[Karamac]

http://www.karamac.co.uk/index.php?showimage=64

for e.g. the above pic has a 'rough' looking sky, how do I 'smooth' it out and change the colour?

[Karamac]

e.g your pic in yur gallery of a lighthouse, the sky appears smooth and even

[CT]

The problem there Karen is that the highlights are really blown in parts of your sky and there's no way you can recover detail when they're that blown.

The pixelly look you're referring to is image noise which you can do something about - I just used a selective mask for the sky and used a soften filter. :)

http://gallery.talkphotography.co.uk/data/500/20060621181739_speeton_cliffs.jpg

[noah]

the other thing to remember is that if you up the saturation by a lot on small jpegs you introduce artifacts and the like sometimes :)

[Karamac]

this wasnt a small jpg, it was 3072 x 2304 originally.
Im working my way thru some tutorials at moment, so hopefully pics will get better :)

[Marcel]

Well they dont need to get better than that :thumbs: That is a lovely pic.
CT is right, the pixelly effect is noise, and easily sorted.

One of the most popular approaches is via a plugin for Photoshop.
Personally I use Noiseware by Imagenomic, some other people use, for example "Noise Ninja". Or you can do it yourself by methods such as the one CT describes above...it's all down to personal ability, preference and taste really...I prefer the easy route sometimes ;)

[Matt]

The difference between your photo and my lighthouse one is, you have clouds in the sky.

The lighthouse shot was taken on a very clear evenning, with the use of a polariser and a 3 stop ND grad.
The ND filter has helped balance the exposure, by darkening the sky to match the detail in the shadow areas.
The polariser helps bring the colours out.
Using both allows for use of longer shutter speeds, which can smooth out any movement in the shot.

Did you use any filters in your shot?

The use of a ND Grad could have helped balance the sky, stopping the blown out highlights.
It could have also softened it slightly by using a longer shutter speed.

HTH

[Karamac]

thanks for the help
Ive downloaded both Noiseware and Noise Ninja and currently playing with them ;)

Unfortunately my camera doesnt have filters as its only a Canon S70 Powershot but I am still reading the manual on how to use it :)

[Fangman]

The quick fix is to do a "select by colour" to grab the sky. Plonk the dropper on a bit that looks fairly average for the sky and slide the "fuzziness" slider until you have sky and not foreground. If some has been grabbed - go to Quick Mask and using white remove these areas. Back to dancing ants and then a very little bit of Gaussian Blur - have a look at "Walking with Grandma" in Critique Forum and this has been done between first and last image along with the cropping and cloning! Who says we don't cheat!

[Karamac]

cheers for that...but what is the 'fuzziness' slider??