How To Fix A Smudgy Sky In Photoshop

This video by photographer Anthony Morganti shows how to use the quick selection tool to fix a smudgy sky using Photoshop.

Sometimes when you over-process an image or even just use HDR you can get a smudgy look to the sky – just like what Morganti is showing in this image. The way he use to fix this image is to select the sky with the quick selection tool and work with the refine edges to make a perfect selection.

Now you need to bring this selection to a new layer by pressing cmd/cntrl J and than reselect the selection (by pressing cmd/cntrl and pressing on the layer you just created). Now we are going to sample from the center of the image and it will only effect the selected area. Now this will work with a simple image such as this one – but if the skies are more complex or have clouds or gradient – this will not work quite so simply. In this case you would probably need the clone stamp tool.

The other way Morganti demonstrates is one that we have already seem on other videos (see below) which is to completely replace the sky with sky from a different image.

Although we do not always think about it in this way, the skies can be a very important part of many of our images – both in landscape photography and other types of images. We have looked at many ways of improving or fixing different problems with skies on previous videos including: “Fixing the Sky with the Patch Tool in Photoshop“, “How to Replace a Skyline in Photoshop” and “How to Replace the Sky in Photoshop“.

You can find many other Photoshop video tutorials on LensVid’s Photoshop section. We have covered many of Morganti’s other videos which you can find here on LensVid.

Iddo Genuth

Iddo Genuth is the founder and chief editor of LensVid.com. He has been a technology reporter working for international publications since the late 1990's and covering photography since 2009. Iddo is also a co-founder of a production company specializing in commercial food and product visual content.