Create a long exposure Sky — Give a dull sky new life in a few steps

Let’s say I for some reason would like to spice up the following sunrise image from Tyrifjorden, Norway. Even though it is a 30 sec exposure I am of the impression that the sky could benefit from a more pronounced long exposure look.

I start out with making a selection of the sky using the Quick Selection Tool in Photoshop. The marching ants show the selection we have made.

I store the selection in the Channel’s panel. I could if I wanted to have given the selection a name like for instance ‘sky’. Double click on the Alpha 1 channel if you would like to give it a name and stay organized.

The next step is opening the Filter menu, then Blur and finally Radial Blur. The settings I went for is shown in the next image. I use the Draft option since it is faster when trying to nail the filter effect. I have moved the Blur Center (click and drag) a little upwards.

The blur result:

Since I want the effect to only affect the sky I head over to the Channel’s Panel and Ctrl+click on my selection to activate it. Back in the Layer’s Panel I click on the Mask icon. My sky selection is now separating the sky from the ground.

We have a problem, however. Since the blur also affected the ground this has bled into the sky.

The fix is to copy the sky to a separate layer and carry out the Radial Blur on that layer.

In case I already have added several adjustments layers I need a visible stamp layer on top of the layer stack from which I can copy the sky: Shift+Ctrl+Alt+e is the keyboard short cut.

In this instance I just copied the background layer. I could of course have copied the sky from the Background Layer, but you know, old habits.

Again I head over the Channel’s Panel and ctrl+click on the stored sky selection. Back in the Layer’s Panel I hit ctrl+c to copy the sky from the visible stamp layer. I now add a new blank layer and hit ctrl+v to paste in.

When I this time launch the Radial Blur I set the quality to Good. The final step is to add a layer mask for the sky so that the sky blur doesn’t bleed into the ground.

The Layer’s Panel:

At last we will have a close look at the transition from ground to sky. Our second approach saved the day.

From straight out of camera to finished image: