# Graduated filter for blown out sky causes a sort of moire..what now?



## marsh (Dec 5, 2013)

Hi all,

I've been stuck editing a shit photo of a great location for the past two days, can't seem to figure it out..

i took this photo in jpeg format-i know stupid-and the sky was just boring boring white. so i added a graduated filter, put the exposure down, blacks up etc,. but the new sky just looks incredibly fake. you can see sort of a moire, little lines and i don't know how to get rid of them. i tried to put a mask over the area with the adjustment brush and turned the clarity all the way down, tried putting sharpness down, noise down, but i still get these stupid lines in the 'blue' area. Also the difference between where the sky is blue and white is sort of extremely noticeable... and the edge of the mountain and the sky don't really look very nice when zoomed in..

does anyone have a little advise on how i can tweak this? i have a couple of photos with a shit grey boring sky like this, and it would be great to learn how i can change this from now on!

i have looked this up online, but all i get is skies that are blown out and how to tweak this, but this sky is just pure grey/white and i haven't found any examples.


Thanks so much,
marcella!


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## Victoria Bampton (Dec 5, 2013)

Hi Marcella, welcome to the forum!

That's called posterization or banding.  Because it was a JPEG, which therefore had already thrown away most of its information, and then you've done dramatic changes, there just isn't enough image information to make a smooth gradient.  You might get away with adding grain to the photo to reduce it, but that's a job I'd take into Photoshop personally, to merge a new sky into it.


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## Mark Sirota (Dec 5, 2013)

Instead of the grad filter, try dragging down the blue luminance in the HSL panel. You will likely still get a little banding, but probably not as bad as what you show here.


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## marsh (Dec 6, 2013)

thanks guys xD


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