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Old June 7th 06, 03:44 PM posted to rec.photo.digital
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Default Please, why is sky washed out?

Pat wrote:
The posts re the overexposed sky are generally correct. You can either
under expose or play with it in photoshop and fix it. Both are
perfectly good alternatives. Shooting in RAW might help, but RAW isn't
the cure-all than many people think.


This is impossible to fix in photoshop (except by copying a sky from
elsewhere), because the sky is just a solid area of 240 240 240.
Obviously, there is not enough information there to do anything. If this
had been shot in RAW, maybe it could have been saved, and maybe not.


I am "old school" so take my advice accordingly. If you are taking
lots of pictures like that and want the sky to look better, keep the
sky from overexposing in the first place and everything after that is
much easier. The way to do that is to invest in a polarizing filter.
That will allow you to darken a sky like that (plus keep interesting
details in it) without underexposing the rest of the image. It will
also cut out most glare that you encounter.


Indeed, a polariser is a good solution, not just to prevent overexposure
but to give more saturated skies etc. I don't see how this is old
school, though.

For an autofocus lens, you want a "circular polarizer" (don't ask why,
it's a long story, you just want one).

People in this group hate filters and they hate people who don't shoot
in RAW, but really, a filter is the answer. That's the way we did it
back in "the day" when we used that stuff called film.

Good luck with it.

Pat