Quick Tips to Enhance Blue Skies

Have you often photographed a landscape and the sky doesn’t come out as blue as you’d hoped for? In this free video, world renowned outdoor photographer Ian Plant travels to Lake Superior and shows you how to enhance the blue in your skies. He suggests you avoid the standard solution of polarizing filters because those filters will often result in uneven blues in the sky.

Polarizing filters can also make the blues in the overall image look unnatural. For his sky images, Ian leaves the polarizing filter off the lens and makes the color adjustment when he is processing the RAW file in Adobe Lightroom. To use this technique, go into the HSL module, choose the Luminance tab, and darken the blues in your photograph. The result? A beautiful deep blue sky.

6 Responses to “Quick Tips to Enhance Blue Skies”

1. Larry Miller July 9th, 2018

   I shoot film so post processing is out for me unfortunately….

   Reply

   • Kevin McArthur August 19th, 2019

     Ian, I have seen several times in your emails and using a Canon Camera DSLR mk111, you say you drop your iso down to 50. How do you get it down to low 50 iso. I have tried everything on my Canon mk111 and a 100 iso is the lowest I can go.
     What is the secret?

     Reply

2. Roger Sorenson July 9th, 2018

   I would love to enhance the blue sky in my captures without distorting the rest of the capture

   Reply

3. Winn Gillette July 9th, 2018

   And if you don’t have Adobe Lightroom, let alone HSL module?

   Reply

   • Gary.p.mcginnis November 5th, 2018

     Lower your ISO bleow100

     Reply

   • rockalvaro November 12th, 2018

     You can do it in Adobe Camera Raw or also in Color Efex Pro, They have a “digital polarizer” option and I think it works well, regards

     Reply