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Tutorial #7

Improving a bland sky using Gradient Fill (a digital ND Grad)

Often a beautiful composition is marred by a bland sky, either a cloudless insipid blue one or a white overcast one - or sometimes this may be the photographers’ fault – when a sky is overexposed because a graduated neutral-density filter should have been used. This tutorial shows how the Gradient Fill tool in Photoshop can be used to improve matters - by creating a digital Graduated Neutral Density filter, or ND Grad..

As an example, I will use this photograph taken at Colwyn Bay, North Wales. After an overcast day the clouds parted slightly in the early evening but unfortunately the camera couldn't compensate for the darkness of the beach contrasting with the much lighter sky and so has compromised the exposure leaving the sky washed out and a drab foreground. My failure to attach a graduated ND filter at the time means I must now use post-processing methods to try and salvage it.

 

Open your photograph with the offending sky.

Click the ‘Default foreground and background colour’ tab so that the foreground is black.

Top Tip ! Just press 'D' on the keyboard to revert to the default foreground and background colours

Create a new adjustment layer and choose ‘Gradient’.

In the Gradient Fill window that opens, click the drop-down box arrow and choose the gradient on the top line, second from the left.

This will produce a gradient going from a solid foreground colour (black) to transparent. At the moment, though, the solid foreground colour will be at the bottom of the image gradually clearing towards the top. To correct this, check the ‘reverse’ box.

You can now make either a simple or detailed adjustment, depending on your confidence with Photoshop

Simple adjustment:

With the Gradient Fill window still open, left-click and hold anywhere on your photograph. As you move your mouse up and down the gradient will move. Release the mouse button when the gradient is at an acceptable point.

Detailed adjustment:

In the Gradient Fill window, click on the ‘Gradient’ box – this will open the Gradient Editor window.

Using the upper white arrow you can adjust how quickly the gradient goes between black and transparent by moving it to the left or right. The more the box is moved left, the faster the gradient turns from black to transparent affecting less of the photograph. In this way you ensure that only the sky is darkened.

Note that the effect on the photograph can only be seen when you have released the mouse button. It is not a live preview.

Moving the small diamond between the black and white markers moves the midpoint of the gradient - by moving it to the right you move the darkness down the photograph.

Fine-Tuning

When you have produced the optimum effect, press OK to close all Gradient Fill windows.

You can then try different Layer Blending Modes and different Opacity values to fine-tune the effect. I generally find that Overlay gives the most natural look although you may want to double-click on the adjustment layer thumbnail to re-open the Gradient Fill window so that you can adjust the gradient again since this blending mode reduces its strength.

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So there we have it – a boring, bland sky has been made more interesting and, because it has been applied using an adjustment layer, you can re-adjust it at any time.

 

Roll mouse over image to see original version

 

Further enhancements:

There are some more advanced enhancements that can be carried out with Gradient Fill:

In the Gradient Fill window:

The STYLE can be changed. By default it is Linear but the drop down box can reveal others including:

RADIAL – gives the effect of a centre spot filter
REFLECTED – gives a reflection of the gradient at the bottom of the photograph – useful if the sky is reflected in water, for instance.

The ANGLE can be changed either by moving the angle line itself or by typing in an angle. This is useful if the sky is only showing on a corner of the photograph and you don’t want the gradient to show on other areas.

Changing colour:

If you want to create a bluer sky – or indeed if you want to create a sunrise/sunset effect - then right at the start, instead of using the default colours, click on Foreground Colour and then choose your own colour from the colour palette.

Continue as before but now, instead of a black to transparent gradient you will get a coloured gradient.

 

In the next tutorial we will look at perspective cropping to cure converging verticals.

If this tutorial was useful to you, please let me know by signing the guestbook. Thanks.

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