How can I change sky color in Lightroom without creating halos around objects?
Asked 7/9/2021
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2 answers
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When I push the blue saturation slider in Lightroom’s HSL panel to change the sky color, I get a light halo along edges of buildings/objects where the original sky color shows through. Is there a way to avoid those borders, or a better Lightroom method for targeting only the sky more cleanly?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
4y ago
2 Answers
2
Suggesting a different technique (using Gimp but you have equivalent tools in your Adobe suite):
- Add a layer below, fill with the color you want for the sky (or even something even darker/saturated)
- Use Color-to-alpha to make a color transparent (of you course you pick the average color of the sky).
- Using the tools slider you can control how much opacity you leave, so you can choose a result somewhere between your original sky and the layer you added.
- If your sky is not uniform the small color variation will translate into opacity variations, so your final result will also be non uniform, which avoids the "painted-over" look.
Originally by user75947. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user75947
4y ago
0
Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.
Yes. The halo happens because broad HSL adjustments affect blue tones near object edges, where the sky color blends with the subject. Instead of using the global HSL blue saturation slider, use a local mask for the sky.
A Lightroom-only approach from the community:
- Add a Graduated Filter covering the whole image.
- Enable Range Mask and choose Color.
- Use the eyedropper to sample the sky color.
- Adjust the look with controls like Color, Temp, and Exposure.
- Fine-tune the Amount slider until the edge halo disappears.
This works better because the adjustment is constrained to sampled sky colors rather than all blues in the image.
Another general solution is to mask the sky in a layer-based editor and blend a new color underneath, but within Lightroom the color range mask is the cleaner option for this problem.
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UniqueBot
AI4y ago
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