How to fix blownout sky?

[Nate Stephens]

Kent,

I have keyed out the offending washed out sky and replaced it with beautiful fluffy clouds photographed at 50,000 feet…. or I have heard that Graem Natress (forgive my spelling) has a filter set that cures your problem by using the blue and red channels to remake the lost info in the green-luminance channel.

Do a search, I read those details within the last three months on this forum..

[Kent Beeson]

Thanks for pointers…

Thanks

K
web.mac.com/kbcv

[Don Greening]

There’s also Captain Mench’s Blowout Fixer. I think it works the same way as Graeme’s, but this one’s a freebie:

https://pistolerapost.com/pluginz/index.html

– Don

[Kent Beeson]

Just used the Captains’ thingy – works…thank you

Thanks

K
web.mac.com/kbcv

[Harry Bromley-davenport]

You could always use ANDY’S GRADIENT FILTER which is a free plug in located at the website of the great ANDY MEES.

There are several really high quality plugs on his sits. I use them a lot.

ALSO —-

ANDY MEES is a GOD.

Harry.

[Mark Suszko]

IMO, it is always better to slightly under-expose Dv footage than over-expose it, because, once blown out, those white areas have no detail to recover.

A repair trick you can try is to make two duplicate video layers of the same material. Apply your adjustments for brightness and contrast to the “ground” layer to suit, and never mind blowing out what’s left of the sky. Next, pick the other layer behind the “ground” layer, we’ll call it “sky”. Apply your contrast and brightness corrections to this layer. Now under “composite modes” play with the various modes there, first try “multiply”. This should sandwich the two layers in a way that keeps the best settings for both layers. May take some trial-and-error.

If the “sky” layer is still no good, replace it with a fake sky layer generated in photoshop with a pale blue gradient and try the composite mode>multiply trick again on it.

People avoid the composite mode controls sometimes for lack of understanding how easy and powerful they can be. I know I did, until I saw a great tutorial at Digital Juice’s DJTV video tutorials section (in the “Cutting Class” section). If you don’t grock blending modes, this is an easy and clear introduction to their power. Chris Gates did an excellent job there.

[Kent Beeson]

Thanks for detailed reply – very helpful…

Thanks

K
web.mac.com/kbcv

[Captain Mench]

I’m glad the blowout fixer worked for you. It can’t really do justice to actual sky, but for little hot spots here and there it does do wonders.

For blownout sky I really like this technique — ref’d above:

https://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials.html?id=12

Plus, it’s fun just to watch.

CaptM

[Bret Williams]

My first stop would be the 3 way color corrector. You should easily be able to use the luminance limiting to isolate the sky, then increase the contrast, change the hue to blue, and lower the overall brightness to within safer and more pleasing levels.

[Kent Beeson]

Good info –

Thanks

K
web.mac.com/kbcv