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Written By Steve Patterson

In this Adobe Photoshop tutorial, we're going to look at how to enhance the sky in a photo, bringing out details in the clouds, improving the contrast and increasing color saturation, and we can do all these things at once using a very simple technique.

Often times when taking pictures outdoors, the camera exposes the shot based on the brightness of the subject you're focusing on, which is fine except that it tends to overexpose the sky, washing away that rich, deep blue along with most of the details in the clouds. The usual way of avoiding this problem is by using a neutral density filter, which is a fancy name for what is essentially a black-to-transparent gradient attached to the lens of your camera, fading from black at the top down to transparent at the bottom. Since the top portion of the filter is darker than the bottom portion, less light is able to enter the top portion of the lens, protecting the sky from overexposure.

If you don't happen to own a neutral density filter or forgot to bring it with you, no worries. Photoshop makes it easy to achieve the same results with very little effort. In fact, even though the general rule is to get things right as much as possible in front of the camera rather than relying on Photoshop to save the day, this is one time when I find it easier to do the work in Photoshop since it gives us a lot more control over the end result.

I was out driving around the countryside one morning when I came across a couple of horses proudly standing by the road enjoying a delicious helping of grass. Since I always bring my camera along everywhere I go (I find it makes it easier to take pictures), I couldn't resist pulling the car over and snapping a few photos. Here's one of them:

Overall, it's not a bad photo, and unlike several people I know who run for cover at the very mention of having their picture taken, these two horses didn't seem to mind at all. It might have been a better photo if the wire fence wasn't in the way, but I could always get rid of it if I really wanted to using the Clone Stamp tool. The problem I'm concerned about here is the sky. It's looking quite dull and could definitely use some help. There's a lot of detail in the clouds that we're not seeing, and the light blue needs to be deeper, more saturated.

Here's what the sky will look like when we're done:

Let's see how to go about enhancing the sky.

One thing I should point out here before we begin is that if your sky is completely blown-out, meaning that it is overexposed to the point where it has become pure white and there is no useable image information, this technique won't work. In fact, no technique will work. Photoshop may be extremely powerful, but it can't create something out of nothing. If that's the case with your photo, you'll need to replace the sky completely. We'll look at how to do that in another tutorial.

Step 1: Add A New Blank Layer

With my photo newly opened in Photoshop, I can see in my Layers palette that I currently have one layer, the Background layer, which contains my image:

I need to add a new blank layer above the Background layer, and the easiest way to do that is by simply clicking on the New Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers palette:

This adds a new blank layer, which Photoshop automatically names "Layer 1", above the Background layer:

Step 2: Reset Your Foreground And Background Colors

You may not need to do this step, but just to keep us both on the same page, press the letter D on your keyboard to reset your Foreground and Background colors. This sets your Foreground color to black and your Background color to white, which we can see if we look at the two color swatches near the bottom of the Tools palette. The swatch in the top left shows the current Foreground color, while the swatch in the bottom right shows the current Background color:

Step 3: Select The Gradient Tool

Grab the Gradient Tool from the Tools palette, or press G on your keyboard to quickly select it:

Step 4: Select The Foreground to Transparent Gradient

With the Gradient Tool selected and black as our current Foreground color, Right-click (Win) / Control-click (Mac) anywhere inside the document window and select the Foreground to Transparent gradient from the Gradient Picker that appears. It's the second gradient from the left, top row. Click on it to select it:

Click anywhere inside the photo to exit out of the Gradient Picker when you're done.