Adding a little bit of blue to a white sky (Elements)

This tutorial is the Elements alternative to this Photoshop tutorial.  It's for adding a bit of plain blue to a white sky.  If you wish to fix a white sky by putting a different sky photo into it, use this method instead.

Start by using your rectangular Marquee Tool to draw a selection around the white sky.  Allow a little bit extra space under the horizon, as I have done here:

Add a "Gradient" layer:

Make it a light-blue-to-white gradient.  Make sure "Dither" and "Align with layer" are checked, and make sure the angle is correct, so it goes from light blue at the top to white at the horizon:

Here's what it will look like:

Then, change the layer blend mode to either "Darken" or "Multiply".  Multiply is best in most cases, I've found.  The colour will blend nicely in with the photo:

Finally, turn the Gradient layer on and off a few times to assess it, then paint with black on the mask if necessary, if there are any areas which have turned blue that shouldn't have.

If you want a different shade of blue, just double-click on the gradient thumbnail in the layers panel, to edit the colour.  Remember, don't go too dark!  It will look silly and implausible.  Keep it light.

Visit me at Ask Damien if you need help with this tutorial.

Preparing files for a wrapped triptych canvas

Triptychs are wonderful, I reckon.  You know, one photo chopped into three parts and hung as three separate photos?  They are groovy.  Not just triptychs either - you can have diptychs (two segments), quadtychs, quintychs, etc.  Yeah, yeah, I made those last two up!  The point is, you can divide a photo into as many segments as you want.

If you are printing a photographic triptych, or a canvas one with plain edges, it's easy.  Just crop your photo into its separate parts, and print them.  But if you want to do it as a wrapped canvas (or print) - where the photo goes around the edges, then it's trickier, right?  Because you don't want to lose any of the image to wrapping.

In this tutorial, I'll demonstrate a simple triptych.  The method I'll show you can be adapted to any number of segments, in pretty much any layout.  Oh, and it works in Photoshop and Elements equally well.

Basically, you'll be following my canvas preparation tutorial.  Have a quick read of it now, but don't start following it yet, because there is a modification.

Skimmed it?  Good.

Fixing Chromatic Aberration

Chromatic Aberration ("CA") is that annoying purple or green (or other colours) fringing you get around bright white areas of your photos sometimes.

See it around the hat in this photo?

Some lenses are more prone to it than others, from what I understand, in photos of high contrast.  I'm not a photographer, so I don't know anything about that.  You'll find more info on Wikipedia and elsewhere.  What I do know about is fixing it.