Making Skies dramatic in GIMP

An easy way to make ordinary white cloud on blue skies into dramatic significant parts of your photographs. This is a very simple trick to do in GIMP and the results are great!

Dramatic Skies in GIMP

 

1. Starting

• Open your image up in GIMP – preferably with plenty of sky!
• Duplicate your Background Layer (set to multiply):
• And go, Colors –> Components –> Channel Mixer:
  

Colors –> Components –> Channel Mixer

2. Channel Mixer

• To make your sky really dramatic with dark blue sky you need to really experiment here!
• Firstly, select Monochrome, leave preserve luminosity unchecked:
• In most cases moving the RED Channel to 200 will be fine, but if you have a mixture of colours than you will have to experiment a little:
• The GREEN Channel will sit in between the Red and blue channels, and can be used to increase brightness if your image is lacking red.
• The BLUE Channel is the most important here, decreasing the blue channel will make those dramatic dark skies, so keep this low as possible:
• At the end set the blending mode to Multiply:
• My image could be very different to yours and the settings will vary so you need to play around a bit to achieve that desirable effect:

Channel Mixer – Monochrome: 200, -25, -75

3.a. Gradient Map – Black & White

• A Gradient Map will increase contrast and better define the clouds from the dark blue sky.
• Duplicate your original layer
• Make sure your FG is Black and BG is White:
• Go, Colors –> Map –> Gradient Map:
• And set that layer to Overlay:

Gradient Map – Colors –> Map –> Gradient Map

4. Adjusting Levels – White

• To make your clouds perfect white go, Colors –> Levels:
• Now, select the WHITE Selector (pipette) and click on the whitest part of your clouds:

Adjusting Levels – Colors –> Levels

Here is the BEFORE and AFTER shot:

Before/After – Dramatic Skies in GIMP

That’s It!

If you get stuck anywhere just comment below!