Egalising a blue sky

[RNKLN]

If you have any questions or queries... Well, here i am.

 

I've digitised a set of good old slides from long ago. I've gone through a workflow of cropping, changing levels and removing dust artefacts. The only thing i'm not happy with are the skies (mostly blue, but not always, and often with a few clouds). I want to take out some of the noise, but don't know who to do it, especially since isolating the skies isn't always easy.

 

I've added a sample (it's 125% zoomed in). Any suggestions?

 

 

[Fixx]

Sky is pretty easy to select and Select>Color Range>Blues does the trick almost perfectly. You can edit the selection/mask as needed.

Live Denoise is quite a good filter for removing noise but in your example noise is so soft that filter does not take very easily. Maybe you would want just to blur it out. As sky seldom has any sharp shapes/textures this might work. 

[RNKLN]

Hi Fixx,

 

Thanks for your response. I've tried blurring, but since, in many of these photo's, there are also clouds i end up with these clouds being very 'cloudy'. Doesn't look natural at all. I will try to make selections based on color range.

[armadillo]

I would select the blues, then invert, tint with the color hue of the sky, and finally average the image.

[MJSfoto1956]

if you duplicate the sky, mask it, blur it, then set the "blend if" as shown below you can get pretty close to what you desire.

 

M

[RNKLN]

Thank you all. I'm going to give all the options a try.