Fixing light levels in Dark Foreground and Light Sky
By John Sweeney - 16th of January 2007
Have you ever had one of those pictures where you have a lot of sky which is very bright and the foreground is very dark and you would like to correct the balance, then follow the instructions below:
- Open the image in Photoshop.
- Make sure that the colours black and white are showing on your toolbar with Black uppermost.
- In the Layers Pallet (F7 on your keyboard) click on the circular icon at the bottom coloured black and white, the 3rd from the right, "Create new fill or adjustment layer". You will be presented with a drop-down list.
- Choose Levels, A new Levels Pallet opens and it looks like a histogram of your picture. Underneath the histogram there are 3 arrow heads, click on the right hand arrow and move it to the left, until your foreground is brighter or presentable, you will notice that your sky will lighten considerable, don't worry about it at this stage, we are trying to get the foreground part of the picture to a fairly good level. Once satisfied click Ok on the Pallet.
- The next thing we need to do is darken the sky, to do this we use the Gradient tool, Press the letter G on your keyboard. What this actually does is to place a gradient of colour, black and white, over your picture, with Black on the top running down to white at the bottom.
- To test the gradient you can open a new blank canvas, Ctrl N and Press enter, now place your mouse cursor at the top middle of the blank canvas and draw a line down the page towards the bottom and release it, this will show you the effect the gradient tool has. Now you can close down the blank canvas and apply the gradient tool to your picture, but, before you do, look at the contextual bar above and reduce the opacity to about 30 %, you can always increase it if you want to get a better more sustained effect.
- You might need to use the gradient 2 or 3 times to darken the sky, but it does work and it should improve those pictures where you have an imbalance of light between the sky and the foreground.
Give it a try.
|
