So you like those dark blue skies with bright white clouds, huh? I once read that the only filter that could not be simulated digitally was the PL filter, this may have been true, until now!.

We will make use of our knowledge in B&W photography and color Filters. When you’re shooting in B&W and you want to darken the blue of the skies you will use a yellow filter, which is the opposite of blue, so that it will filter the blue color and let the others through, and if you want to go for a more dramatic effect you would use a red filter.

At this point you might have a hint (or even found out entirely) where I’me going, you’re right, the new CS3 B&W adjustment layers. Here’s an Image I took for this tutorial:

(I cheated a little and applied Highlight/Saturation adjustment to rescue detail in the leaves, but it shouldn’t affect us)

Now we will take this into photoshop and create a new B&W adjustment layer, from the layer menu we will select Layer/New adjustment layer/Black and White…

Click on the “Red filter” from the preset drop down menu, and click OK, we will get something like this:

Not that great, right? Here’s when the magic happens, go to the B&W adjustment layer Blend modes, and choose: “Soft Light”

 and here’s what you get:

Much better, but still… My leaves are also darker, It’s no good like that, so we will use a Layer mask, since my leaves are all green the best way I can of for selecting them is by “color range”:

And then Click on “Select/Inverse”.

Next, We’ll make sure our B&W layer does NOT have a layer mask already, click on the B&W Adjustment layer from the layers palette, then go to Layer/Layer Mask/Delete (If this previous option is not available omit it), and then go to Layer/Layer Mask/ Reveal Selection.

And Voila!, we have succeeded!

But still… It’s not that dark this sky… O.k. no problem, we will double the effect by duplicating the B&W adjustment layer, Select it from the layers palette and press Command/Ctrl + J, if you consider it to be too much, then lower the opacity of your new layer until you find your sweet spot.

(In this one the Second adjustment layer is set to 75%)

O.k. The color of the sky is great, but what about that graininess?, Since blue channel is usually the noisiest, and what we’re doing here is actually burning the blue areas in our image, it will bring out all the noise in the blue channel, but not to worry!, It should be easy to remove.

First, flatten your image or create a layer that contains a flat version of the image. Then select your sky with the Color Range selection tool:

 

Next, go to filters/Blur/Surface blur:

And apply a combination of a high radius with a low threshold, avoid taking the threshold levels over 10, as it will, most likely end up in disaster, and click Ok.

And now, we have finally completed our tutorial, I hope it will be helpful for you, since every image is an universe itself you will have to find your way for each one, but I trust this is a good starting point. I would like to know about your fortunes and misfortunes with this technique, feel free to reach me at e_revollo [at] hotmail [dot] com