One of many photographers' most annoying problem is harsh daylight lighting. In this Photoshop class, we'll teach you how to rescue those photos and make them look acceptable.

Fix Harsh Daylight Photos Photoshop Tutorial

Open an affected photo into Photoshop. Below is an example of a photo with harsh daylight lighting.

First, we'll create a duplicate of the layer. It is necessary to create a duplicate layer and do all the work on this duplicate layer because in case we need to get the original image, we'll always have a copy of it i the Background layer. Press Ctrl+J to duplicate the layer.

Tonal Correction

The most noticeable problem is the harsh shadows. This can be fixed easily with the Shadows/Highlights tool. Choose Image > Adjustments > Shadows/Highlights. Increase the Shadows setting until the details are restored.

Add a Levels adjustment layer shown by the image below.

In the Levels tool, select the middle eyedropper located below the Options button. Then, click on a gray area in the photo. The white balance should be restored but it may take a few tries to get it to the correct color.

Removing Purple Haze

After fixing the white balance, there still seems to be some purple haze in our photo. In this step, we'll use the Hue/Saturation tool to reduce the purple haze.

Add a new Hue/Saturation adjustment layer by following the image below.

In the Hue/Saturation tool, select Magentas from the drop down menu and reduce the saturation to -100.

Enhance the Sky

Finally, we have to alter the sky so that it matches the lighting o the land. Select Layer 1 and create a selection of the sky. This can be easily done with the Magic Wand or Quick Selection tool.

With the selection still active, add a new Hue/Saturation adjustment layer.

In the Hue/Saturation tool, select the Colorize option and alter the settings so that the sky looks blue. Make sure that it is not overly saturated or dark. It needs to look realistic and blend in with the land.

This step is optional. If you want to add a gradient tone to the sky, follow this step. First, Ctrl+Click on the Hue/Saturation 2 layer mask. You should now have a selection in the shape of the sky. Add a Gradient fill layer.

In the Gradient Fill settings, use the settings in the image below.

You should now have a Gradient Fill layer. Change the blending mode to Overlay to make it blend in naturally.

Technically, we're done. But there is one more thing that I would like to teach you. And that is layer groups. To fix this lighting problem, we used many layers. If you continue to work on the image, you'll end up with many layers that are unorganized. As a good practice, you should always group layers whenever it makes sense to do so. For example, in this tutorial, we can group all the layers except the Background layer into a group called Environment Lighting. If you want to add another effect, such as adding rain, you would put those layer in a group called Rain. That way, you can distinguish which layers belong to what effect. To group the layers, hold the Ctrl key and click on all the layers except the background layer. Press Ctrl+G and those layers will be grouped. To change the name of the group, double click on the group text in the Layers palette and you can edit the text.

Final Results

Here's the before and after effect of fixing harsh daylight lighting. As you can see, the image to the right shows more tones and colors. Sometimes it's impossible to avoid harsh daylight lighting, but it's not the end of the world because now you know how to fix such photos.