washed out clouds

[Pastor Bob]

I do a lot of landscape photography. The enhance modes in PSE5 are great. But I have not found a way to fix the clouds. On some of my pictures everything is perfect except for the coluds. They are toooooooo bright. Can this be fixed in PSE5?

Thanks, Bob

[Diana]

Hi Bob,

Try checking out this past thread discussing this issue:

http://www.photoshopelementsuser.com/forum/showthread.php?t=20940

Hope this helps.

Diana

[Pastor Bob]

Thanks for the response. I learned much from the link but my problem is a bit different. I have blue sky and clouds however the clouds are tooo bright. They sow some definition such as light grey on the bottom but the brighter parts are pure white. They look as if they are overexposed

[Byron Gale]

Bob,

Can you post an example for us to see?

You can go to www.pixentral.com (http://www.pixentral.com) and upload the image. After it is uploaded, copy the entire contents of the "Forum" field and paste that into a message here.

http://www.pixentral.com/hosted/1ii0BItetUGqjc9ZHAokm3dEAGaDg_thumb.jpg (http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?picture=1ii0BItetUGqjc9ZHAokm3dEAGaDg)

Byron

[Pastor Bob]

Here is an example of the problem

http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?picture=1AtHhNUPFAiIgHm6kC0DkdezuOIP921

[IMG]http://http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?picture=1AtHhNUPFAiIgHm6kC0DkdezuOIP921

[Rusty]

Bob, I fear you have overexposed to the point that you have lost all highlight details. There's little I know of that Elements can do with that.

You can try selecting the sky/clouds and play with levels or brightness, but reducing the brightness is going to give you a flat, dull gray in place of a flat, bright white.

For that type shot my approach would be to expose for the sky and then use levels to bring out detail/color/brightness in the "land area". The other alternative is to take two exposures: one for the sky and a second as you have now. Then you could merge the two images in Elements.

Somebody smarter than I may come along and tell you how to fix it :)

Rusty

[TonyW]

Somebody smarter than I may come along and tell you how to fix it :)

Rusty

Rusty - I don't think there's anyone around that smart :) - all the white in the clouds is pure white so short of replacing the clouds with new ones I don't think anything can be done.

But I did wonder if that was the original from the camera - it almost looks like it may have been edited some and blown out more of the clouds - in which case there might be some hope in starting from the original unedited shot.

Tony

[sdewenter]

just my .02

[frank abramonte]

Pastor Bob, you can copy some of the gray definitions and paste them into the white areas. Then can alter the shapes so that they no longer match the original details. You can also change some of the grays to a more bluish cast. I know this is not what you want, but it would help the photo.

[Pastor Bob]

Thanks everyone for your help. This is my first time on this site. I have so much to learn> This is a great place to do that. Thanks again

[frank abramonte]

Pastor Bob, I've been out of town so could not post an example of my suggestion. Here it is. You can correct the clouds to your liking even adding more blue rathet than grey. This can all be done on a layer by copy and paste. You can enlarge or reduce a selection to make it look different from the original selection etc.

http://www.pixentral.com/hosted/11Cj50XoHVdHq7phbNMvfI8B0V3WG41_thumb.jpg (http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?picture=11Cj50XoHVdHq7phbNMvfI8B0V3WG41)

[Rusty]

What a nice job, Frank,
This is something I want to try. :)

Rusty

[Edmund]

Pastor Bob, Just a thought. It is a lot easier said then done but try and develope a technique to properly expose for the highlights. here is a pretty good link with a short essay on highlights. http://www.fredmiranda.com/A16/
If and when I remember I go to manual mode and basically do as said in the article.
Good and well developed techniques beats post processing any time and saves a lot of work.
Best of luck ,
Eddie