bring out blue from a white sky

Forum|Forum|1 month ago
February 23, 2026
3 replies
174 views

Years ago someone on Adobe forum showed me how to bring out blue in a white sky. It involved using the sliders of red and green, lessening them and this brought out the blue hidden in the white sky. I did this for years. today, 1st of all when I selected images in Camera raw to make tiffs of, they would not then open Photoshop. After several failed attempts, I went to Creative cloud and opened there and then they opened to Photoshop. I thought that the way I did this was in Levels, but I am not sure and I didn’t even see such a graph where I could slide the individual colors. This didn’t require any alpha channels or anything more complicated. I called Adobe tech help but he said that was impossible, that there was no blue in the white sky, despite me saying I’d done it for years, before opening the latest Photoshop with the increased price and now inability to continue my work flow. Does someon know what I am talking about?

Trevor.Dennis

Community Expert

I think that a Hue/Sat layer takes some beating.

Nancy OShea

Community Expert

There are several different approaches to sky replacement and/or adjustments depending on the image & version of Photoshop you’re working with.

Without seeing your image, it’s impossible for us to say ‘this’ or ‘that’ will work best in all situations. It varies. For a learning experience, try various approaches. Save each one under a different file name and compare your results at 100% magnification side-by-side.

Good luck.

Nancy O'Shea— Product User & Community Expert

Nancy OShea

Community Expert

Which version of Photoshop or PS Elements were you using previously?

Option #1: use AI-powered Sky Replacement.

Edit ⇒ Sky Replacement

Option #2: Image ⇒ Adjustments ⇒ Levels

The default is RGB (all colors).

To select individual colors, open the dropdown panel. Adjust sliders to suit.

Or use a Gradient Fill.

Hope that helps.

Nancy O'Shea— Product User & Community Expert

R

robirdman1Author

Inspiring

Here is from 2022, when I had a preset with the grid and diagonal lines running from top to bottom at an angle, which I could adjust slightly to tweak. This was a white sky. Now trying the latest Photoshop, there is no grid and I find I need to move the red almost all the way to the right before the white becomes greenish and then I can’t really remove the green by moving the that color back the other way. Besides the huge color fringes. Something that worked fine, till the ‘techs’ had to monkey around with something that worked to justify there jobs and make it worse, as I have found almost every ‘upgrade’ since CS6. The one below is the futile attempt to use the newer version as I described. I’d much prefer to subtract from the real sky as before to inserting a phony one. Is that now my only option?

R

robirdman1Author

Inspiring

I found a 2013 email references about this “Re: making white sky blue without artifact in leaves, bird feathers” and Noel Carboni and Conroy had posted, but that forum is gone as those links go nowhere. I saw that Noel is missed but conroy is still posting. Maybe he could review how this was done. How might I draw his attention?

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