How can I make the sky in this photo more vibrant?

Question

I spent an evening walking around and shooting with my relatively new Nikon D7000 and I ended up not liking most any of the photos I took..

Let's take this one for example:

The sky was blue and vibrant when I took this shot. Why did it come out so dull?

I was shooting with aperture priority and ISO 1000 and 1600 that evening. What are some things I could have done to make this photo more vibrant?

Asked by Sonic Soul

Answer

Some post processing is needed for some images, and most images benefit from some post processing.

When you take an image like this, where most of it is blue, the automatic white balance will be fooled into thinking that the image should be much less blue. If you had used the "daylight" setting for white balance, it would have been a lot closer to the actual colors.

I wan't there, so I don't know how it should really look, and it's also up to each photographer to create their own experience of the siuation, but here is an example of what you can do with it:

Temperature: -31
Tint: +14
Exposure: -1.05
Fill light: 5
Blacks: 2
Brightness: -1
Contrast: -6
Clarity: +10
Vibrance: +10

Answered by Guffa

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