This may be a silly tutorial, but it’s really simple.  I thought I’d share a quick photoshop trick I sometimes use to give skies a deep, darker color. I have used it in several of my images.

A few examples:

TUTORIAL

Open your image in Photoshop

My Starting Image

STEP 1:  Dupilcate your image.

STEP 2: Got to Image > Adjustments > Black and White

STEP 3: Turn down the Cyan levels and the Blue Levels all the way to the black (-200%). Click OK

STEP 4: Change the Layer Mask to Luminosity.

STEP 5: Flatten Image, or merge down, whichever you prefer. Now the image may be a little grainy for you taste. I make another duplicate layer, reduce noise (a lot), then erase everthing in the top layer other than the sky.

There you have it! You are done!

Told you it was simple and silly!

Afterwards, you can change the image to black and white, and use contrast adjustments to get results like these: