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Ever taken photos in mid-day and were unhappy with the results? There's nothing worse than a drab grey sky. Most often in the daytime you adjust your exposure for the foreground and your sky will be blown-out. You can counter this with a graduated neutral density filter if you have one or you can bracket a couple exposures and do a high dynamic range image to cover the full light spectrum, but there is an easy, poor-man's alternative. There are many ways to do this, but this is the quick and easy way to rescue some of your photos and make them look like this:

Step 1

Start with your source image. In this case, a test photo I took while in Kauai while I was trying to figure out the best location to capture 'Opaeka'a Falls. It was the wrong time of day for shooting this waterfall, but we were on a time schedule so I had no choice.

Step 2

Next create a new layer.

Step 3

Make sure to set your layer blend mode to Overlay.

Step 4

Now make sure your foreground color is black.

Step 5

What we'll be using to create the effect is a gradient on the Overlay layer. The gradient must be Foreground to Transparent.

Step 6

Now we're going to draw a straight line from the top of the image down a couple inches in to the ground. This will create a dark gradient in the sky.

Step 7

As you can see, this wasn't enough.

Now we'll just repeat the steps. Create a new layer, set it to overlay, use the gradient tool and you're all set.

Result

Quick and easy. In this case, the image isn't one I'd want to use, but you never know when you just may save one you were about to throw away.