In this photo manipulation tutorial we’ll have a look at how to make a gray day brighter. We will remove the clouds and create a new sky, we’ll also do brightness adjustment on the entire image, and also some color adjustment on different parts of the image with the help of some advanced selection tools.

FINAL IMAGE PREVIEW

Here’s a half-and-half split of the image so you can see before and after.

The photo we’ll be using is from FreePhotos.se, you can download it here.
(when window opens Right-click on it and choose “Save as”)

Step 1

The JPG format doesn’t support transparency, but we kind of need that while we work on the image, so the first thing we’re going to do is to add support for transparency.

Simply click on Layer->Transparency->Add Alpha Channel.
That’s it, now we have support for transparency.

Step 2

Now let’s make the image brighter.
Go to Colors->Brightness and Contrast.

For this image it looks nice with Brightness set to 40, and Contrast set to 35.

This of course varies with different photos and also the brightness of your monitor, some monitors (especially CRT monitors) are really dark and then you would want a higher value. You should always play around with the settings to see what looks best.

Step 3

Let’s remove those clouds. Choose the Fuzzy Select tool and set the Threshold to 20.
Also enable Feather edges and set them to 2, this will help make the edges smooth.

Hold in Shift, and click on the clouds a couple of times in different places until the entire sky is selected.

Now hit the delete button on your keyboard.

Step 4

We’re going to create a new sky without clouds.

First of all, get rid of the selection. Select->None.
Second, create a new layer underneath the other layer and name it sky.
Set your FG color to afe3f6, and your BG color to d6edf6.
Select the Blend tool, you shouldn’t need to adjust any settings.

On the layer named “sky”, create a gradient from the top of the image to where the sky starts.
(hold Ctrl to get a straight line)

That should give us this result

Step 5

We’re also going to make the beach a little brighter and the grass a little greener.
These are minor details and doesn’t add that much to the photo, but if you want to learn some advanced selecting then read on.

Let’s do the beach first.
The beach is a very tricky selection because on the very left side of the photo parts of the beach only show through openings in the grass.

First make sure you’re working on the layer with the beach and not the layer with the sky.

Now select the Select by Color Tool and set the Threshold to around 25.
Hold in Shift, then click on the beach a couple times in different areas, try to click in areas with different colors, such as one click on a dark color, then one click on a medium bright color, and one click on a bright color.

That should give us a selection somewhat like this:

Next, enable the Quick Mask. (Shift+Q). This mask controls our selection, the red parts are the parts of the image that are not selected.

As you can see, a lot of areas that shouldn’t be selected are selected, such as very small parts of the ocean and grass.

To fix this, set your color to black and select the Pencil Tool.
Now simply paint the parts of our image that we don’t want to be selected.

Also, if there are any parts on the beach that should be in the selection but aren’t, then set your color to white and paint over those areas.

If you have trouble seeing what is sand and what is water or grass you can toggle back and forth from normal view to Quick Mask view with Shift+Q.

After a some work it should look like this:
(Click on the image to enlarge it)

Disable the Quick Mask (Shift+Q).
Now we have a nice selection of the beach, including the parts of the beach that only
shows through openings in the grass.

Step 6

Now let’s put that selection to good use, go to Colors->Brightness and Contrast.

Set Brightness to 20 and Contrast to 10.

Don’t loose that selection just yet, we’re going to use it in the next step.

Step 7

Now let’s make the grass greener.
First we need to invert the selection. Select->Invert

Next, enable the Quick Mask (Shift+Q).
Things should look like this:

Use the Pencil Tool to paint all the areas that shouldn’t be selected with black.
I thought the grass closest to the bottom of the image is fine as it is so I also painted over that,
leaving only the grass in the middle.

Disable the Quick Mask (Shift+Q)
Now we have a selection of only the grass.
Now click on Colors->Hue and Saturation.

When trying to find the right color, I find it easiest to first play around with Hue until you have a color you like, then adjust the color with Lightness and Saturation until it looks good.

In this case I like these settings:
Hue to 10
Lightness to 5
Saturation to 5

Step 8

Go to Select->None so that we can see our final image clearly: