Sky Editing

How to Darken a Sky Without Wrecking Your Treeline in Lightroom
Video Tutorials

How to Darken a Sky Without Wrecking Your Treeline in Lightroom

Sky editing is one of those things that sounds simple until you’re staring at a photo where the clouds are blown out and the foreground looks like it was shot at midnight. I’ve been in that exact situation more times than I want to count, and for a long time my fix was clunky at best. I’d pull down the overall exposure, hate what it did to the shadows, undo it, and then just… accept a mediocre sky.

Fix Blown-Out Landscape Skies in Lightroom Without Touching a Single Physical Filter
Video Tutorials

Fix Blown-Out Landscape Skies in Lightroom Without Touching a Single Physical Filter

There’s a photo sitting in my Lightroom catalog right now - shot at Percy Warner Park last fall, golden hour, the kind of light that makes you feel like you earned something. The foreground is perfect. The sky is a white, featureless void. I exposed for the trees, and the sky paid the price. If you shoot landscapes, you’ve been here. Your eyes handle that contrast between a bright sky and a shadowed foreground without thinking about it.