When you take photos, your sky may not as blue as you like. This problem can be solving by processing your photos in Photoshop. This post will demonstrate you how to get better blue sky (more dark blue tone) by applying gradient and blending layer property. Anyway, please take a look at before/after shot as listed below.
You may have a problem in regard to capture high contrast photos especially landscape photos. When you try to get the right exposure for the sky, the ground bill be dark and you lose details. On the other hand, if you try to get the right exposure for the ground, your sky will be washed out (lost of details). In order to fight with this situation, you may consider using graduated ND filter so you can balance exposure between the sky and the ground but you need to pay extra money for that.
Well, this problem can be solved with Photoshop. Firstly, you need to take photos with RAW format because you can get more information from RAW instead of normal JPG format. Then, you convert your RAW file into 2 JPG files and merge them together by Adobe Photoshop. Anyway, please be informed that this method is good for differences between the sky and the ground just only 2-3 stops. If you have extreme contrast between them, you may need to shoot many exposures and merge them together into one High Dynamic Range photo (HDR).
Let’s take a look of before and after processing.
Photoshop for Digital Photographers