Make a composite layer.


Now it is time to correct the white balance. Overall, it is pretty good, but the plane has a slightly blue color cast. Click on the HUE/SATURATION ADJUSTMENT LAYER button. The pop-up with the sliders will come up. Click on the HAND POINTING, WITH TWO SMALL ARROWS. This will allow you to turn down the saturation on a single color channel. I put the cursor on a blue part of the nose, CLICK AND HOLD, and drag the mouse to the left. You will see the saturation slider moving. What this did was universally take all of those light blue tones in the image and mute them. I didn't want that, so we will mask off what we don't want affected.


To get just the plane affected, I need to paint back the blue tint to the clouds. The easiest way would be to invert my layer mask. Right now, the mask is white for the HUE/SATURATION adjustment layer. On a PC, press ALT+I, or on a Mac, press COMMAND+I. The mask now turned black. What this did was erase everything you just did. The blues have returned, and the plane has the blue color cast again.


Now, take a white brush, and make sure that the black layer mask (black square) is highlighted by clicking on it. Take your white brush and paint over the plane only. This will remove the blue from wherever you're painting. To make things easier, press the \ button. It will turn your screen red (default color). The red indicates everything that is masked off. Since you're painting with a white brush to reveal what's under the mask (black conceals, white reveals), the plane is showing through. I just painted over the fuselage to get the blue cast to disappear.


You guess it....Make a composite layer..


Next, I still thought the image was a tad bit on the dark side (pun intended), particularly, the fuselage. So, I will add another CURVES ADJUSTMENT LAYER. I pulled up the curve in the middle to brighten it up, and then again on the upper right for a pinch of contrast. I clicked on the white layer mask, to make sure the box was highlighted, and used a black brush. Remember, black conceals. So, I painted the sky around the plane to bring back the darker clouds. When painting with white or black the \ will let you see what you are doing.


Make a composite layer.


***Optional Step***: I am using TOPAZ DENOISE 6 to remove any noise. You can use whichever noise plug-in you have. If you do not have a plug-in, you should really consider purchasing one. They do amazing work and are far superior to the internal PS and LR noise removal. I typically use JPEG LIGHT and adjust the OVERALL STRENGTH slider until there is noise visible.


Make a composite layer..


I want to make those clouds pop a bit more. So, I will go back to COLOR EFEX PRO 4, and click on PRO CONTRAST again. Keep the slider at 65, then press okay.


Turn the opacity of the layer down. For me, 54% looked good, as it made the lower half of the image pop a bit more as well.


THAT'S IT!! To see how far your image has come, group the changes. To do that, click on the very top layer. Then hold shift, and click on the first duplicate layer you did at the very bottom. DO NOT CLICK ON BACKGROUND LAYER! Then press CONTROL+G (PC) OR COMMAND+G (Mac). All of the changes you made are now in a group folder.


Click on that eyeball on the group folder, and the original image you started with will come through. Click the eyeball on and off to see the changes. It's a massive difference!


From here, I still would need to crop the image, resize accordingly, and then sharpen it as needed.