How can I make cloudy days clear in the later stage of photography?

Sunny weather is tantamount to making a fake. The problem is that this fake is difficult to do, because you have to consider that the color and shadow of the scene should match the light emitted by the sun, otherwise it will be fake. Consistency needs to consider many aspects, such as the position of the light source-projection angle, the color temperature and tone of the light receiving surface of all objects, and the diffused light received by the shadow, which is too troublesome.

So it's better to adjust the clouds. Take a photo taken before as an example (taken in RAW format and converted into DNG digital negative format). In order to preserve the details of the clouds in the sky, the M-scale photometry does not expose the sky in the third scale, the aperture F4, 1/8000 seconds, and the exposure and color are post-processed.

Original ACR straight out

1 and PS20 19 open files. After ACR is turned on automatically, check that the color temperature is not too large. Click the button to automatically make the ACR light up first and adjust it to the full color scale (it can also be adjusted manually, but it is more troublesome).

Automatic effect

2. Switch to the calibration panel (key point), because the spectrum of the sunlight on cloudy days is partially absorbed by the clouds, and the spectrum is incomplete, and the intensity of this splitting is reduced, resulting in poor color rendering of the scene, which is also the reason why the photos on cloudy days are not brilliant. In addition, due to the barrier of clouds, the light projected on the earth is diffuse (bouncing back and forth in the clouds and finally shining from all directions, like a huge shadowless lamp), and the shadow boundary of the scene is unclear, and the shadow is blurred or even has no obvious shadow, which leads to the weak contrast of the details of the picture.

So, first of all, improving the saturation of blue and green is equivalent to improving two of the three photosensitive layers of the film (because the red scenery in this film is basically a building, and this building is an old-fashioned wooden structure, which does not improve the original color, so it looks older).

Increase the saturation of blue-green primary colors

3. Switch to the main panel, add a little natural saturation on the basis of automatic mode, and add blue to the sky details. In order to keep the highlight, the highlight should not be overexposed, so the overall contrast will be weakened. Therefore, press the dark part (shadow) to add texture, and the reason for adding texture has also been mentioned above (the contrast of details will be reduced under diffuse light, which will affect the performance of detail color and clarity).

4. Open the picture after confirmation, return to PS, and click automatic color coding to finish.

Most of the work of photo retouching can be done in ACR, and only the final drawing can be done when returning to PS. Note that the shadow of the eaves is blurred, indicating that there was no direct sunlight at that time, but the sky after retouching was brilliant.

Finally, it is very important to make an early shot. When the clouds in the sky are not layered, don't shoot the sky in the composition. If there are layers, you can keep the details of the cloud by measuring the sky and underexposed about three files. RAW format must be used when shooting. JPG is hopeless.

Final effect