Photoshop How To

The sky is  usually a critical element of nature scenes, landscapes, and many other photos you capture in the field, and here's what post-processing expert Matt Kloskowski says about this matter: "Before we can even work on the sky, we need to understand how to mask it before applying various tools and enhancements."

Matt is an accomplished photographer, prolific author, and Photoshop Hall of Fame inductee whose mission "is to create videos that simplify the process of shooting great photos and editing them to get the results you've always wanted." This quick episode demonstrates which Sky Selection tool works best depending on the specific image at hand.

There are several methods from which to choose and they all work a bit differently and are useful for different tasks. A familiarity with various techniques provides you with another option to fall back on when the first attempt falls short of expectations. And these are exactly what you'll learn in the next nine minutes.

Matt's demonstration takes place in the Masking panel, and his tips work exactly the same in any Adobe Raw editor you use, whether it's Photoshop, Lightroom, or Adobe Camera Raw (ACR). You'll also see why it can be important to apply a few global adjustments to an image before introducing sky selections for local enhancements.

The Select Sky tool is the option that Matt typically reaches for first and he demonstrates how this approach works to enhance details in a lakeside scene with an overly bright sky. This includes  an easy method for using a b&w overlay to refine a selection that isn't absolutely perfect. In this case he employs a small brush with a low flow setting to include a portion of the distant mountains within his mask.

When this approach causes problems your second line of defense is to is to apply a Linear Gradient instead, and Matt walks you through the simple step-by-step procedure with another landscape photo that poses other challenges. This technique works somewhat like a Graduated ND filter when your goal is to modify the sky without biasing the tones of everything that falls below.

This method allows you to easily feather an edge and control a transition from hard to soft. And simple sliders get the job done in a hurry. The foregoing illustrates just two of the Sky Selection tools available, and the remainder of episode is devoted to other methods worthy of your attention.

Once the video concludes you may want to check out Kloskowski's instructional YouTube channel where you'll find many more image-editing tips and techniques.

We also encourage you to watch an earlier tutorial we featured with another post-processing expert who demonstrates several "insanely powerful" color-editing tools that anyone can use to create jaw-dropping outdoor photographs.