This technique will give the best on a photo with a large sky area and an open horizon.

It is often embarrassing when your beautiful scenery photo has a bad sky or the scenic photo you have has a dull sky. It can be because of the bad lighting, exposure setting, or polarizing filter on the camera. But, you may want to use the photo on a graphic design project. You can add a little blue to darken the sky or add some black just to make a grey sky much more foreboding. It can improve the quality of an image to that of the previous original tourist photo.

The key to do all of the tasks above is using a gradient fill layer. Yes, with adding a gradient fill layer, you will find out that it is so easy to improve the washed out blue sky or a grey sky look. You can adjust the amount of colour you add. With using gradient fill layer, you can adjust it to your own desire. You can go back, increase or decrease the amount of colour after you apply it. You are also able to change the colour that you apply to get the effect you want or just to create a dramatic look. This technique will give the best on a photo with a large sky area and an open horizon. Here are how to accentuate the sky with a gradient fill layer.

1.    Click the default foreground and background colours icon. Set the foreground to the black colour.

2.    Click the new fill or adjustment layer button. Click gradient. Then, the gradient fill dialog box will appear. The foreground to transparent gradient will be applied to the image. Before we move forward, please make sure that the angle is already set to 90 degrees.

3.    Click reverse. The gradient will be reversed to black at the top. It will change to transparent at the bottom of the image.

4.    Place the cursor over the image. Drag upward in the image until the gradient covers only the sky and the clouds look menacing. Click OK. The ominous sky will be applied as a layer above the background layer.

5.    Click here and select overlay. Double click the layer thumbnail for the gradient fill. After that, the gradient fill dialog box will appear again.

6.    Repeat the steps 4 and 5 to increase or reduce the effect. Each time you drag the image with the gradient fill layer already selected, the sky will change.

After applying this technique, you will get the perfect sky for your design.
M.A.H.

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