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

5. Saturation (optional)

Sometimes, depending on the image, the colours are drained. So, in order to get back the colour we can:

Duplicate your original layer
To emphasis the colour go, Colors –> Hue-Saturation
Increase the saturation to maximum, may not be necessary but you can always go back and tweak things.
Drag this layer to the top of the layers, and set the mode to overlay

Saturation

Here is the BEFORE and AFTER shot:

Before/After – Dramatic Skies in GIMP

That’s It!

If you get stuck anywhere just comment below!

If you’d like to use these photographs please Contact Me!

Please comment below if you have any questions and I’ll answer them ASAP!

Written by Mike

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Michael Scott is the publisher and photographer behind Scott Photographics! He is very passionate about his photography and enjoys sharing the best of his experiences for others to enjoy too! Contact Mike via email!

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